Image Courtesy of Bonne Suits.
S: Introduce us to Bonne Suits.
Boone Reijn: Bonne Suits began in 2014 and it bears my name; a name that has been passed down for generations in my family. I first got into fashion at 17, when I started working at a high-end clothing store in Amsterdam called Supermarket; and then, a few years later, I was employed as a stylist. Pretty quickly, I fell in love with fashion as a creative outlet, an art form. But after experiencing the fashion industry first-hand, I realised how flawed it was. That’s how Bonne Suits was born. It was founded with a desire to change the industry in mind.
At the same time, Bonne Suits is a personal journey for me: an attempt to reconnect with my past. Until I was eight, I grew up with my mother and my great-aunt Mien Ruys, who was a celebrated landscape gardener. We lived at Mien’s house, a beautiful old stable with lots of surrounding land where flowers used to be cultivated, and my mother looked after her. Then, I was abruptly cut off from that place after my mother’s sudden death, when she was only 36. Mien was unable to take care of me in her old age, so I spent a lot of my formative years with foster parents and family friends. In a way, Bonne Suits is a kind of endless search for my mother. It’s a combination of a longing for my past and a desire to change what fashion is and could be.
S: Is Bonne Suits challenging the conventional standards of the fashion industry?
BR: Very much so. Knowing the luxury fashion industry from my time spent working as a stylist and in retail, I understood that fashion has never been made for the everyday person. It’s exclusive and inaccessible. Like my great-aunt, who took the elitist element of gardening away by creating small gardens for people who live in the workers’ districts, I wanted to make fashion more accessible. With Bonne Suits, I make pieces for all genders in all sizes for any occasion, at a reasonable price.
S: Why the uniformity?
BR: I’ve always liked the idea of a uniform and it comes back to my ambition to change how fashion works. There’s so much overproduction and constant demand in fashion; the utopian idea of a uniform is that it would centralise the clothing production chain and slow down the system.
S: You say that Bonne Suits is about “recognising yourself in the other […] emphasising your identity by losing it. It is what remains, the true person without any judgement or mask.” Why do you think reduction can create uniqueness?
BR: This quote is really what Bonne Suits is all about. A few years ago, I went to a nudist beach where, of course, you cannot wear clothing. It was a little odd at first, but it was actually very interesting because the dynamic of fashion is completely removed. You are unable to categorise someone based on what they’re wearing and any social structures just completely fall away. Instead of “what are you wearing?” and “how are you wearing it?”, we were asking questions like “how kind are you?”, “what drives you?”, “how do you approach people?”, “how do you deal with people approaching you?”.
I’m fascinated by this dynamic between people. The principle of Bonne Suits is to lose yourself and rebuild again, to become yourself in a crowd. I think social media has really created this hyper-individualism which I think actually alienates people further from their sense of self and community.
Image Courtesy of Bonne Suits.
S: It’s interesting to hear a fashion designer rejecting, in a sense, conventional individualism, since fashion is all about individuality…
BR: In the age of the Internet, we’re brought up with this illusion of individualism, yet there is rarely ever any true individual knowledge. Everybody is receiving the same stream of information, making us entirely the opposite of individuals and more like robots. I think when you can embrace collectivity, and start to have real conversations with those around you, individual knowledge is born. That’s why I work through the idea of a uniform. It strips back the masks that people hide behind and encourages us to engage in a meaningful dialogue with one another.
S: Why suits?
BR: When you think about the connotations of a suit, what first comes to mind is a white Western businessman. I want to challenge that. I think the suit can be such an interesting carrier for non-conformist messages because it’s such a bold piece. I want to make suits not just for the office, but for somebody who works in construction, somebody who works in a garden, somebody who wants to go to the club, or for same-sex couples to get married in – which has actually happened a lot with our pieces! The suit is an interesting medium, as everybody can wear one and there’s a lot of ground to be won for inclusivity.
S: Can you describe the creative process of your work?
BR: I’m not very technical. I enjoy the more conceptual and entrepreneurial side. I think a lot of my inspiration and desire to create comes from spending time in my surrounding environment, walking through my neighbourhood and interacting with the people in my stores. Life is my process and inspiration.
S: Aside from your mother and great-aunt, who have both had a profound effect on your direction as a creative, who are your biggest influences – in life, art and design?
BR: Artists involved in the Russian constructivist movement have really inspired me, as they designed products that can be perceived as usable art. Grayson Perry is another one, I really love the ideas he proposes. I think more than anything though, the people I encounter in my day-to-day life are my biggest influences.
S: How do you hope to create positive change in fashion through Bonne Suits?
BR: I hope that Bonne Suits will continue to connect people, to create a more interconnected, meaningful society. We’re also encouraging consumers to be more sustainable and responsible, through an in-store recycling initiative where you can bring back worn Bonne Suits pieces in exchange for store-credit. Our most recent collection, Bonne Suits Full Circle, was made entirely from recycled materials and natural dye. I hope that younger, emerging brands like Bonne Suits reach the conglomerates to really create the systemic change needed to build a better future for fashion and beyond.
As featured in SLEEK 75 – HAPPINESS. Available in print and digital here.