“Just take everything that relate with us in daily life as inspiration” Interview with Kevin, the founder of Captaineast

In this issue, we welcome Captaineast, a streetwear brand from Indonesia. When it was found, most of famous brands are from West, so Captain ‘East’ have an original intention for bringing eastern brands to be the tops. As for inspirations, they take everything in daily life, and for them, Captaineast is a place to share us with their expressions and any thoughts about life.

Nana: Could you give us an introduction about CAPTAINEAST?

Kevin: Captaineast is a minimalist streetwear brand. We aim to inspire young creatives with our design and share the same streetwear spirit. So basically Captaineast is a place for us to share expression and any thoughts about life.

Nana: Why did you initially create the brand and name it “Captaineast”?

Kevin: The philosophy from the name is actually really simple, when we started on 2018, we’ve kind of boring to see that mostly the famous and well known global brands are usually coming from western. So that’s why we name it ourself Captain ‘East’ as a spirit to bring eastern brand to be a top of mind as well.

Nana: How do you describe the style of CAPTAINEAST in three words?

Kevin: Streetwear, minimalist, timeless.

Nana: What are some inspirations behind CAPTAINEAST?

Kevin: Our inspirations are from many designers like, Reese Cooper, Villasenor, Virgil, and many more.

Nana: How do you come up and decide on the themes for your collections?

Kevin: Usually we came up with what’s happening right now in our life, so that’s really simple, just took everything that relate with us in daily life as inspiration. Maybe from experience that we just had, how’s the world going, architecture, vintage stuff, etc.

Nana: Is it possible to let readers know a little about your next drop (collection)? If so, what has inspired the theme and the pieces in them?

Kevin: The next collection will be a vintage collection, just like we mentioned before, we do everything that relate with us right now. So right now we really like to observe some vintage items like 1980s Katherine Hamnett, 2000s Junya Watanabe, etc. Especially Junya Watanabe x Nike black Air Kukini hahah that item really got us !

Nana: Can you tell us about some of the most challenging experiences you have had during the process of building your brand?

Kevin: I guess the most challenging is how to make our idealism accepted by the community and our customers. Because sometimes what we really like is not the best selling item haha.

Nana: Do you have any advice for our readers who are seeking to find a way to build a brand just like “CAPTAINEAST“?

Kevin: Just start it, because we’ve met many people who have a lot of ideas but always afraid to start it. Because sometimes imperfection is the perfections, so you just need to start and enjoy the process.

Sometimes imperfection is the perfections.

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