n the jam-packed fashion market, Bassike has found a niche for comfy yet stylish everyday separates, writes Samantha Selinger-Morris.
The co-designer of Bassike, Deborah Sams, is sitting in what any sane person would describe as hell.
At nine months' pregnant - ''I can hardly walk'' - she is juggling the launch of the label's store in Mosman, a new range of shoes and sunglasses, the revamp of the brand's website and the completion of her dream home in Palm Beach, where she sits among loose wires and a gaggle of builders listening to Shakira up loud on the radio.
She responds to it, though, with the Zen-like calm of someone who is lying on a beach in Bermuda.
This explains in a nutshell why Bassike, which Sams founded with her best friend Mary Lou Ryan in 2006, has become the fashion equivalent of Greenland in a game of Risk: the unassuming country that begins conquering the globe via unexpected, under-the-radar moves.
Fashion is about selling us the lives we aspire to and Bassike's chic, slouchy-girl separates - soft organic jersey T-shirts, tubular dresses and drop-crotch pants - seem to promise to give us some of what Sams has: the ability to sail through life with comfort and confidence without looking as if we've tried too hard.
No wonder the label's gone from catering to the off-duty model crowd (Megan Gale and Miranda Kerr constantly talk up its singlets and T-shirts) to being sold in 90 boutiques around the world and at the e-store Net-a-Porter, whose founder, Natalie Massenet, has said it sells amazingly well alongside luxe labels such as Givenchy and Balenciaga.
''We don't sort of follow trends,'' says Sams, who grew up at Whale Beach. ''We just sort of wear what we want.''
The duo's confidence extends to an uncommon brand strategy: an eschewal of de rigueur glitzy fashion shows to introduce a broadening aesthetic - their winter 2012 collection features a shearling vest, caramel-coloured leather pants and a cream linen tunic dress with a deep V-neck that Mia Farrow circa 1968 could have worn - in favour of yet another bricks-and-mortar store at a time when many other designers are shutting their doors.
''We've always just done things a bit differently, always had a slightly different strategy to other brands,'' says Sams, who first met Ryan when they both worked at General Pants Co in Sydney (eventually, as buyers). The Mosman store on Military Road that opened in October is the pair's third, following their boutiques in Paddington and Avalon.
Opening their own stores enables the duo to showcase their complete vision, Ryan says.
While other boutiques that carry their clothes - such as Barneys in the US and The Corner Shop and Poepke in Paddington - might carry 10 to 20 pieces, their own shops carry the lot (there are 200 pieces in the autumn-winter 2012 collection).
And what about the new line of flat, canvas Mediterranean beach shoes with Soludos and sunglasses, made in Japan, with Inkon?
They fulfil a more traditional fashion function: making us crave what we didn't know we wanted. (Specifically, shoes that channel cleaning-lady chic and Jackie O sunglasses - among other styles - that can be purchased from an optometrist and therefore used as regular spectacle frames.)
And what of replacing Australian brand Sass & Bide as a featured in-store boutique at David Jones this year, after the edgy label hightailed it to Myer?
''I never really thought about it,'' Ryan says.
''I know what the [Bassike] brand's capable of. We stand in the background and just work.''
In fact, the pair knocked back the megastore when it proposed that Bassike come onboard a year ago.
''I didn't think the brand was developed enough,'' Ryan says.
Now that Bassike is established - enough for French actor Charlotte Gainsbourg to request some pieces while shooting the film
The Tree in Queensland last year and Sarah Jessica Parker to place an order personally - the duo is focusing on servicing overseas clients with a revamped online store that will ship internationally come February.
But does it bother the duo that, according to Ryan, 70 per cent of their sales come from the basics, rather than the higher-end goods they have pushed through in the past few seasons?
''I think if something's working, you don't deviate,'' Sams says.
Indeed, this season's basics - including high boat-neck jumpers and cropped, wide raglan tops - come in a broader range of organic fabrics, including super-fine New Zealand wool, double-weight jersey and ultra-light fleece.
Pieces from the range have been ideal while pregnant, Sams says, because ''everything sort of stretches; it's not like you can't wear it again''.
So, I venture, might the pieces also be perfect for her post-pregnancy when, exhausted from taking care of her baby, she could sleep in the separates and wear them the next day without changing, passing the look off as ''Alexa Chung goes camping''?
''No, I'd probably freshen up into something new,'' she says, then pauses before offering more of that enviable attitude she must know we can't resist: ''I wholeheartedly support that though.''
Source smh.com.au
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