On a quiet street, there is a studio. The air is thick with heat and heavy with the fumes of the city, and down the street young professionals have knocked off early to sip espresso martinis and pluck their drooping collars from damp necks.
As I walk down a corridor, trying to stop my own shirt from sticking to the small of my back, I come to a door bearing a brass sign: SHHORN. I knock, and wait.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the man who opened the door, but I confess, with some shame, that I was anticipating someone stern, the kind of designer who would look with disdain at my scuffed boots and sweaty brow and shoo me away – dismissed, presumably devoid of insight and undeserving of their time. Happily, the man who opens the door was not some self-serious stereotype, but a charming figure with messy black hair, an inviting smile, and eyes that do not glance even once at my well-worn shoes. His name is Sean Tran.
Born and raised in Sydney, Sean received no formal training in fashion design before he began to experiment with making clothes back in 2012 as part of a personal fascination with materials in all their forms. Originally trained as an architect and jewellery designer, his journey into fashion was a slow burn, and launching the label was, in his own words, a decision made “out of boredom really”. At first he just made pieces for himself and his friends, trading them for records and bottles of whisky, but after three years of “playing around” he began to seriously consider fashion.
“2015 was when I went, ‘look, okay, I’m going to sit down for one year and make a collection’”, one that would focus on “really pushing that idea of architectural drawing and making through garments”. Visually, the collection was vastly different from SHHORN’s more refined recent offerings, featuring cocoon like layers of undyed, hand-felted wool atop the monochromatic shirts and trousers that have become the label’s staple. Though striking, Sean admits that this first collection was “still an art project at the time, there was no commercial viability taken into account – it was all about self expression”.
Shoulderless tube top – $179 AUD
Women’s wide suit trouser – $700 AUD
Trapeze bag – $420 AUD
Pleated bag – $350 AUD
Round bag – $770 AUD
Shell dress – $450 AUD
Curved shirt – $480 AUD
The simple fact though, is that these people are not just buying clothes, they are buying art.
Nonetheless, it served to cement the primacy of fabric in the label’s work, and the exploration of material has since come to define Sean’s approach. He moves to a rack and shows me a boxy, shawl like bomber jacket with rough unfinished edges fastened through the front with a brass hook. The fabric is crisp and irregular, its colour an indistinct meld of tea brown and dusty black, woven by hand by Sean and Grace Woods – Sean’s former business partner in the label, who still assists closely with fabric development – on a floor loom in their Blue Mountains studio . It took seven days to make enough fabric for just four jackets. The brass fastener was also made in-house, along with its sterling silver sibling that hangs from the hand cut collar of a neighbouring shirt. On another hanger, a cropped, square cut shirt with loose, languorous sleeve shimmers in warm silk, an innovative combination of mulberry silk and ultrafine merino wool that neither clings to nor overheats its wearer.
Alongside fabric, Sean has increasingly found his focus drawn to slow iterations on form, cut and colour, a process that in practice forms a capsule wardrobe – shirt, pants, and coat – whose allure lies in understatement. It is not explosions of colour or excessive embellishment that catches the eye, but the way a collar sits on the neck, how a sleeve falls from a shoulder, or a jacket stands away from the body. There is a soft, sculptural element to it all that owes itself to Sean’s first life as an architect, and which he says has developed since moving into a new studio that he shares with artist James McGrath and the illustrator Antonia Pesenti, herself a former architect. His challenge now is to balance the contemporary with the classical, and to create clothing that his customers can wear when they’re 20 or 80.
They buy SHHORN because what it is, really, is one man’s approach to life, and his solution to our problems of overproduction, overconsumption and overall excess.
This balance, Sean tells me later over Zoom, has seen his customer base triple in the past 18 months – a fact that frankly seems counterintuitive given the economic havoc that Covid has wrought. As businesses of all shapes and strengths have shut their doors, how has a small, niche, and painstakingly handcrafted label found such success? Well, it helps that SHHORN’s customers are not average by any means: artists, architects and corporate heads. The kind of customer that not only understand and appreciate what Sean is making, but are willing to pay for it even when the world shuts down. It also helps that Sean, affable and experimental, is willing to accommodate their requests in a one-to-one manner that is all but lost; to take on custom orders or alter designs in a way that other labels simply cannot.
The simple fact though, is that these people are not just buying clothes, they are buying art. Every thread, every stitch, every brass hook, blazer button or belt buckle involves countless hours at cutting table and sewing machine, and is imbued with a philosophy that holds permanence and craftsmanship at its very core. They buy SHHORN because what it represents is increasingly hard to find in our modern world; because it will not fall apart or out of fashion; because it will outlive them. They buy SHHORN because what it is, really, is one man’s approach to life, and his solution to our problems of overproduction, overconsumption and overall excess. They buy SHHORN because when they see it, it sticks with them, just as it stuck with me.
Words — Nick Ainge-Roy
Studio Images — Daniel Goode represented by The Artist Group
Campaign & Lookbook Images — Stephen Ward
