Seamless

12: Return with the elixir

We're craving seamless transformation — so indulge our digital minds and analogue hearts.

Seamless design and customer odysseys

My colleague at Thinque, researcher for Seamless, and occasional dandy — Anton Järild — and I descended from our mountain retreat at the chalet at Le Jorat on a misty January morning. Our planned journey of seven and a half hours from the Alps via the Mediterranean would take us all the way from Sainte Foy-Tarentaise to Florence, Italy. We were leaving behind a month of wood-chopping, powder skiing, snow, hammams, and Jacuzzi-based strategy and writing sessions. I promise you, it wasn't quite as Brokeback Mountain as it sounds. There were also vegan dinners, discussions about the merits of quinoa versus bulghur, and whether gluten-free beers qualify as craft beers. Wait — this does sound kind of Brokeback Mountain-ish or at least very hipster metrosexual. This is what can happen when you grow up in a sartorial menswear context as the son of a sartorialist.

As it was, Anton and I were destined for the eighty-ninth Pitti Uomo in Florence on behalf of our client — Georg Sörman. Florence, the mecca of sartorialism, dandyism, and metrosexuality. In menswear terms, we were making the pilgrimage from rural wooden-cabin fever and brands like Woolrich, Filson, Livid Jeans and Barbour, and entering the sophisticated urban piazza of L.B.M. 1911, Crockett & Jones, Berwich, Thomas Mason, Brunello Cucinelli, and Loro Piana. We were ...