Just over a month ago, we shared our article about the independent brand Psylo Fashion. It got a great response from our readers – it looks like many of you are interested in fashion and alternative businesses. It was a pleasure to get in touch with the Psylo team to ask them some additional questions. We spoke with Creative Director Ami Ganiel, who agreed to answer our questions and do his/her best to represent Psylo, without necessarily speaking for the whole team.

Interview produced by Innaya on 11/07/2018

Hi Ami! Thanks for finding the time to answer questions from me and our readers.
What gave you the idea to create Psylo?

It started simply as 2 young travelers who were looking how to continue to go around and evolve, but were in need to somehow finance their traveling life, without the need to go home and to take a regular job, so we started to design some styles and also to buy from other designer friends. After 2 successful seasons with very good feedbacks and a total sold out, we decided to make our own independent brand.

How many people are on your team? Who are the people behind the creative part of the project?

To count how many people is beyond me, because we have different branches in Mexico, Thailand and London.
Psylo Bali is about 100 people, which are mainly in the production side and the majority of them are not stitching or designing, but supporting the prod from many aspects, as Printing, quality control and finishing of every item.
The design team was based for many years on Ami and Shoki, who designed all aspects of the brand and also designed a family together with 2 kids.
We always had 1-2 local designers on the graphic part and we collaborate randomly with different artists who we appreciate they work.
In the last 2 years we started to accept other designers for the team, so we could focus on other aspect of the brand.

So what are your sources of inspiration?

Living life….?!
I personally never had 1 source of inspiration, but many…
I always admired beauty if its man made or nature and as a knowledge seeker, who is interested in vast amount of subject, and I will add, living for many years in Bali, inspiration was never at lack.

If you could dress any celebrity, who would it be?

I would be honored to dress anyone who like the style we do and believe in the values we present.
I don’t really follow celebrities, so the few I see in some cool movies and I like, I wouldn’t know they names…

What is fashion for you?

mmmm….that a good one, if u want to bring on some controversy to this interview ;))

Fashion for me, used to be a tool for a person to express who he is and what he ‘’would like’’ to feel, so the way he stayle himself will make him feel this way.

What Fashion is now? it’s a pile of non useful, non recyclable, partly fish food (microfiber) or simply trash pile, that we will need to bury somewhere, or find what to do with a huge amount of items that nobody will buy or even a bigger amount of items that people will buy, but they will break after 2-3 months and few washes.
So this what happened to fashion thru the last few year, not very different then what happened to food.
And I am referring here to fast fashion only and not to who ever do a valuable, original, high quality and sustainable work (so for you guys, no offence and full respect).

What style icons inspire your brand? You’ve been called pioneers of “Ethno Punk” – what does this term mean to you?

We are always inspired by different lifestyles, culture and traditional art around the world. That where Ethno (ethnic) came from and we were always rebels, never followed blindly or accepted things in life without questioning or testing them first, that were punk came from.

What do you want people who buy your clothes to know about you?

The concept of Psylo and what we do and where we want to go or what we want to present is to be an example for others, an inspiration if I humbly may, of how a business, which based on consumerism in a capitalist world can exist.
We think that consumerism went out of control in this time.
People don’t know what they need to eat and to wear, they lost balance in many aspect in their life.

We want to help and support in the process of re-education for smart consumerism.

What does it mean to you to be environmentally friendly?

Clothes should not be made from fabrics which are too toxic for the environment or for us to wear.
Clothes should be produce efficiently and fast, but with love and care, by workers who will be able to live respectfully from their skills.
The designers should invest in good designs of the product, so the style will be beautiful and the engineering will be in high quality.
If you think that this will be the end of cheap clothes? then so be it.
From my knowledge, clothes are the only product in the world that became cheaper, since the beginning of the 20th century…(I am not sure this fact is correct, as I read it in a random research, but the point is clear)
So… what is the correct price for a T-shirt or a pair of pants? to our understanding the concept here need to be updated and we need to re-educate, ourselves include, what is the right value of those items.
We don’t think that a person need a huge seasonally wardrobe that will change every few month, but a wardrobe that thru his life the person will build and develop and clothes which he won’t want, will go to 2nd hand shop where they will sell cheaper, but still in good condition.
This is the aware way to live and consume and this is for our believe, the right path to walk.

Thank you , Amim for taking time to answer our questions. Below, you can watch a video by the Psylo team called “Behind Closed Doors”, a little look at how Psylo’s clothes are designed and made.