Fashion Reverie Exclusive: JAKE, Finding that Fashion Balance

What’s in a name? Apparently, if you are launching a fashion brand, the right name can mean everything. From household name recognition to brand awareness, finding the right name for your fashion line can have the effect or consistently registering in the mind of consumers or doing your fashion brand to obscurity. Surprisingly, the name does not have to be catchy or evoke images of luxury, sophistication, or immaculate style. Quirky, avant-garde, and even quixotic names can work also. What is most important is that the brand name is memorable.

The fashion brand JAKE has found that its unique name, when deciphered, evokes an All-American masculine style and sophistication married with a product that is deeply rooted in originality and modern sensibility. And it’s been proven that a one-word brand name comfortably etches into the minds of modern consumers.

However, coming to that one-name distinction was not an easy journey in that the company prior to the name change went through some structural changes. And that name change occurred after creative director Jake Wall appeared on “Project Runway” season 14.

“Artful Gentleman became JAKE in August 2015. The very evolution of the brand goes back to our first year of business when we noticed that our business was almost evenly split, 60% male and 40% female. In those early days we leaned toward what we called the androgynous client, the female that wanted a more masculine edge in her suiting. As time went on were seeing that that was becoming more pluralistic and it shifted more to 50/50. Now we had a gender man name and that was becoming a roadblock for our potential audience who thought we only made menswear,” explained  Jake Wall.

That said; the name JAKE was selected for this new brand iteration. Hmm, a fashion brand named after the creator, now, that’s an original idea‼ Wait, now let’s see, there is Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein, just to name a few. So, originality is out the window. Still, an eponymous namesake had nothing to do with the choice of the brand name JAKE.

“I actually didn’t want to give the brand my name. It is my name and I don’t feel like it should belong to everyone else. The brand is not just me; it is me and Nathan (business partner) and our ministry of makers. Going to a specific name worried us, but we soldiered on. We learned that a lot of women has a crush on Jake Ryan from John Hughes’ “Pretty in Pink” and every man wants to be Jake Ryan, so the name tested really well. And the rest in history.”

Still, at the end of the day, especially in the fashion industry, a name is a name is a name, and what matters are the clothes. And with JAKE the clothes are glorious‼ Which is amazing coming from two folks who never went to design school and have bucked the established fashion trajectory route.

“Some of our mentors liked the fact that we haven’t taken the traditional designer route … We haven’t gone through a fashion curriculum that tells us what we can and cannot do. We get up every day and decide what we want to do. And most of the time when someone tells us we cannot do something, we get a little pissed out and put our full commitment behind doing it,” proclaims Wall.

Along with their atypical path toward creating a fashion company is their process in identifying their consumer and brand aesthetic. Most fashion brands start out marketing to one gender, later adding on the other gender, followed by accessories and other products, solidifying the brand as a one-stop lifestyle brand. For the JAKE team, designing for men or women or both is not an end goal, the impetus for the company is creating clothes that speak to how the modern consumer live their lives and wants exceptional clothing. “We make clothes for people who want to be noticed. And you can decide if you want to be noticed in the supermarket or noticed at a gala. We don’t care how you live your life, but that you are enjoying your life. We put a lot of work into the things that we do and we want to make amazing things. We think of the work that we do as exceptional ready-to-wear and we are making clothes that are not meant to hang in the back of the closet. We are making garments that our customers find so amazing that they are making excuses to wear and finding places to wear our clothes,” details Wall.

Business partner Nathan Johnson concurs, “Our clothes are for consumers that have a certain kind of style and panache, who wants to make up excuses to wear our clothes because they feel amazing in our clothes … They get that confidence from our clothes and they come back again and again. We believe that everyone has personal style and our clothes provide the platform or the fertile ground for consumers to find and explore that personal style.”

While some would concede that JAKE is for a particular niche market－polk-dotted men suiting, men’s camouflage tuxedo suiting, and women’s polka-dotted suiting with black silk lapels is not for the fashionably tepid－Jake Wall and Nathan Johnson would soundly disagree. Wall declares, “I think the audience that we have is not nearly as niche as the market would define it … there are a lot more people that want to have more style and have innovation, creativity, and edge to their clothes, but the major retailers are too afraid to take that risks.”  “When consumers came to our store, they love the way the clothes look and feel and they have told us that we show them a way that they should be dressing. They do want to ‘peacock’ a little bit more. We give our customer’s a sense of fashion adventure and more freedom,” explains Johnson.

And isn’t that what fashion should be about, making fantastic clothes that gives consumers the freedom and ability to express themselves. And with the JAKE flagship store recently opening in San Francisco, the JAKE design team is giving the modern consumer just that, as well as finding that marketable balance between gender and fashion-forward sensibility. Well done guys‼

－William S. Gooch