Sharpe Suiting’s Leon Wu Feature on Sir New York’s Auston Bjorkman

dapperQ is hyped to showcase this year’s annual Sharpe Lifestyle Editorial featuring Auston Björkman, the mastermind behind Sir New York, a top urban brand that has received acclaim from major menswear media like GQ, Complex, and Hypebeast. Sir New York is hailed as being at the epicenter of a momentous shift in menswear, playing with mix goth, streetwear, and sportswear looks simultaneously. Jaden Smith, Wiz Kahlifa, French Montana, and members of the hip hop collective A$AP Mob are among Sir New York’s celebrity clientele.

When Auston Björkman asked Sharpe Suiting to make a custom suit for his designer walk at dapperQ’s NYFW show at Brooklyn Museum, Sharpe Suiting’s founder and head designer Leon Wu was thrilled and gladly accepted with honor.

Below is the conversation between the two queer style powerhouses, Auston Björkman and Leon Wu.

I have been a great fan of Auston’s since our first meeting in the early days of this cycle of the Queer Fashion movement, when Sharpe first set foot on the dapperQ Brooklyn Museum runway. Designing masculinity for individuals, no matter how they identify, is a founding principle of Sharpe clothing, and Sir New York has a genius knack for infusing this value into high fashion streetwear clothing. This season, Sir New York presented dapperQ’s iD fashion show’s final segment with a comprehensive display of fully hand-knit avant-garde looks. How’s that for custom clothing?

Following the runway show, I had the chance to do a leisurely photoshoot with Auston at photographer and blogger Nomi Ellenson’s pad in Prospect Heights. Throughout this session, I found that Auston and I had similar influences that led us to the aesthetics and foci of our brands. Like me, Auston grew up with older siblings in the 80s and was highly impressed by the style of the times, taking cues from such pioneers as Michael Jackson, an artist we both admire. Excitingly for me, in the trade-for-pay Sir New York loot was a stunning Michael Jackson inspired jacket that I proudly wore for the designer walk at Queer Fashion Week in Oakland, bringing the mutual “designer crush” full circle. Stay tuned for Sir New York and Sharpe Suiting team up for a very special designer bicoastal collabo in 2017.

Auston is the first designer to get a custom suit made using our body metric prediction software. He studied Menswear at FIT and his creations have been featured in Teen VOGUE, VOGUE Italia, GQ and other esteemed publications.

Photograph’s of Auston in two-piece suit created using Sharpe’s innovative body metric prediction software. Photographer: Nomi Ellenson (www.naomiellenson.com). Location: Nomi Ellenson photo studio (Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.)

Sharpe: Did you know your custom Sharpe suit was created using Virtual Tailoring software which predicted your full body metrics? How does the suit fit? Would you recommend people try Sharpe’s virtual tailor online?

Auston: When ordering the suit, I didn’t know that. When Leon asked me only three questions for my measurements I was like “uh ok – how are you going to make this suit without full body measurements?” I was really excited to learn about this Virtual Tailor and eager to explore it further. I can’t believe how well it fit, just out of the box, having never tried on anything (i.e. sample cloth or sizing pattern). I wore it on the runway just like that. Stylistically, I will have the pants bottoms altered just a bit for my desired ‘style’ fit, but the waist, chest and shoulders of the suit all fit perfectly. I’m eager to play with it myself and can’t wait to create with Sharpe. So yeah, you gotta give it go!

Sharpe: How do you think software will impact the future of fashion?

I’m very interested in wearable technology and have a project on the table now where I’ll get to explore and develop wearable if all goes well (fingers crossed). I personally would like to see clothing with built-in software that can help us deeper understand our own bodies. I think the future of healthcare and preventative medicine could be reverted back to ourselves if we could take biometrical readings of our own bodies. By understanding vital self-metrics we could then be able to have access valuable information – utilized to suggest what vitamins, minerals, foods, nutrition, electrolytes, types of exercise etc – whatever we need to maintain a healthy balanced body. I may be dreaming but I think anything is possible…

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