For GR10K, Uniforms Are Art
Italian clothing label GR10K exists to exalt utility. Founded by Anna Grassi in 2019, partially response to the mass consumerism inherent to the fashion industry, GR10K specializes in hardwearing garments informed by time-tested workwear, not trends.
GR10K Spring/Summer 2024 is what the brand describes as "a stable platform; a definition of boundaries and styles that could expand and propel creativity without being force-fed by it."
That's according to the brand's typically verbose press release, which cites “Das Atelier Als Manifest,” ("The Studio as Manifesto") published in German art magazine Kunstforum, as a key seasonal inspiration.
If it all sounds a little heady, that's part of the GR10K charm. It's not like the label makes mere workwear, after all.
Though GR10K's garments are indeed inspired by function and shaped by the same supertough textiles that inform the uniforms of laborers — GR10K's clothes are produced by Alfredo Grassi SPA, the workwear manufacturer founded by Grassi's father — its silhouettes are warped, distorted, deconstructed.
Recognizable garments are rendered alien by fabrication. For instance, a polo inspired by an Italian engineer's shirt may sprout external taped seams or rear 3D flaps interrupt a mil-surp-inspired pant's straight leg.
GR10K's bread and butter is a boxy shirt cut from an unusually high-spec fabric — like Klopman crease-resistant twill or Eurojersey Sensitive microfiber — or accented with unusual tech detailing, like a GORE-TEX "tie". Snap buttons, laser-cut patterns, and internal pockets are de rigeur. Ordinary rendered slightly less ordinary.
GR10K's collections celebrate the beauty of determination.
Why shouldn't a deadstock military overshirt or discarded track jacket be as celebrated as capital-F Fashion? These clothes may not be fancy but they are designed with intelligence and with intent. They are designed to be worn over and over again, without prejudice. Does their unassuming utility not render them superior to purposeless luxury indulgence?
But GR10K is as much an artistic expression as it is a clothing brand with enough bonafides to land not one but two Salomon sneaker collaborations.
Thus, its new collections are foretold by performance art pieces and anti-fashion manifestos, its inspirations come from intellectuals like Heinrich Böll, and its apparel is as much workwear pastiche as it is, well, workwear.
"Every man is an artist," Joseph Beuys famously said. Perhaps if GR10K reinterpreted that idiom, it might say, "Every uniform is art."
