Case Study: Creating Culture
ELEVEN03
ELEVEN03 was a Saskatoon, SK, based fashion brand that hosted a prominent blog and podcast, The Common Ground. From the years of 2014-2019 they released three full collections, Low Life, Future ‘89, and Chaos ‘84 as well as sold a line of lifestyle apparel while helping contribute and grow the fashion and music scenes in Saskatchewan.
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In 2017, ELEVEN03 made a transition from lifestyle apparel to doing handmade high fashion collections.
At the time there was not a market for this type of clothing in Saskatchewan and high fashion brands mostly existed in major centres like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
We set out to create the culture that would support high fashion and the culture that surrounds it, including music and art, within the city we were based in.
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We analyzed other high fashion brands in cities across Canada and came to the conclusion that we would be able to get exposure through musicians.
This led to creating our blog and podcast, The Common Ground, which featured album reviews and interviews with up and coming artists as well as artists that had established themselves in the Canadian music industry.
Through interviewing members of Trifecta Sound Co. , we established a strong relationship and friendships with their collective and began to co-promote shows with them, provide wardrobe to their artists, and travel with them to shows.
Through the exposure we gained and artists we supported we were able to create a community of likeminded individuals who had interests in fashion and music.
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From the years of 2017-2019 we were able to release fashion collections in a number of festivals, collaborate with modelling agencies on lookbooks, put on our own fashion shows, and push the boundaries of what people expected from a fashion brand in the prairies.
We featured in the Saskatoon Fashion & Design Festival, Saskatchewan Fashion Week, The Western Canadian Fashion Week, as well as putting on two fully conceptual fashion shows of our own that featured performances from Trifecta artists. These shows were titled Future ‘89 and Chaos ‘84.
Creating Content
After analyzing the landscape of the high fashion industry we came to the decision to create a blog and podcast that focused on up and coming musicians as well as entrepreneurs that we wanted to collaborate with. The blog and podcast, The Common Ground, launched in early 2017 and led to interviews, exclusive music releases, and album reviews with prominent artists including, Factor Chandelier, VBND, and Samurai Champs.
Collaborative Relationships
Making connections with musicians through The Common Ground led to a strong working and personal relationship with Trifecta Sound Co., an artist collective from Saskatchewan. We worked with them to co-promote concerts and events in Saskatoon and Regina which led to exposure for both our brands and helped to cultivate the culture needed to support both hip hop and fashion in the prairies which at the time were underrepresented.
Executing the Vision
Once a supportive community was created we set out to begin releases collections. We released three full handmade collections, Low Life, Future ‘89, and Chaos ‘84. These collections were released at festivals and our own shows and had conceptual look books to help promote their releases.
Low Life Collection
The Low Life Collection was released in Spring 2017 and was featured in Saskatoon Fashion and Design Festival, Saskatchewan Fashion Week, and The Western Canadian Fashion Week. It received praise from bloggers and critics for pushing fashion forward in the prairies and paved the way for us to put on our own shows for the following collections.
Roles: Art Director, Photographer, Marketing Manager
Future ‘89 Collection
The Future ‘89 Collection was released in Fall 2017 at our own event that we hosted in the Saskatoon Indoor Skatepark. The event was the first of it’s kind as we converted the skatepark into a runway show with full production and lighting. The runway show was followed by a concert by Samurai Champs as well as DJ’s Tefrondon and Daigaro.
Roles: Art Director, Photographer, Marketing Manager
Chaos ‘84 Collection
The Chaos ‘84 Collection was our final collection, released in Fall 2018 at our most ambitious show we had done. It featured a short film, full lighting show, an art piece, and music that we composed ourselves. The runway show was held in an art gallery and was followed by a concert with Alex Bent + The Emptiness and DJ’s Mikey Dubz and Tefrondon.
Roles: Marketing Manager, Production Manager
