No more conformations
Early 1993 two Dutch designers, Jan Schrijver and Angelique Berkhout, met each other working as free-lancers. Even though the word ‘free-lancer’ suggests something else, they did not feel entirely free in their roles. Jan was expected to deliver ‘applied art’ and the longer he conformed to this, the more annoyed he became about that frustrating censorship. Angelique had the same feeling after working for several clients: is this all there is? Together Peter Steenstra, who was fed up with the corporate life at IBM, they decided to start their own business; opening a shop in Arnhem Netherlands.
On Friday the thirteenth of August 1993 the slogan ‘gsus is coming’ introduced the shop with a totally new concept for that time: streetwear labels were combined with active sports brands, club wear combined with all kinds of ‘board sport’ labels. From the beginning on, they had the plan to start a collection using the shop as a lab, a test-store for their own small gsus label. One thing was clear from the start; they would pose no censorship on design, instead they would make what they want to wear!
At the time that the oversized skate-look was still very common, they bought a large quantity of tight vintage t-shirts from the seventies, and printed these with all kinds of vintage funky seventires glitter transfers. Within months, the collection of t-shirts went from selling to other retailers out of the back of a car to being available outside of Holland: a collection was born.
This sudden success was largely due to the humoristic, colorful designs and of course the brand name. The name attracted people’s attention from the start. Besides being a very characteristic guitar chord, the name gsus symbolizes individuality and an always-positive view on fashion, ‘fashion soaked in humor’. Much more than a religious interpretation, the company likes to give the name a more controversial touch and uses a considerable pinch of self mockery, ‘gsus sucks’.
This trademark humor and self-mockery is clearly visible in the way the gsus designers like to play with fashion clichés, putting classical fashion standards in a new perspective. In one of the first collections (1993) they used business suite-like garments for their oversized skate pants; their fake fur bikinis were also well known. And still you will continuously find new mind provoking fashion pieces in every collection, because every collection erupts from a blank sheet of paper.
Even though gsus has grown over de years, one thing hasn’t changed; the company profoundly believes in autonomy for the designer, in the arrogant intuition of the creative person. No market research or begging for target group response, instead the designers follow their own feelings and ideas in order to remain exclusive and guarantee authenticity and genuineness.
Nowadays gsus headquarters can be found in Amsterdam. Since 2003, in the new spacious building designed by co-founders Jan and Angelique, after more than 9 years in the old warehouse on the other side of the street. The brand is available in 28 countries throughout all of Europe, Australia/New Zealand, North & South America. Four collections a year find their way to over 1200 shops and about 80 people are cycling to the gsus building every day to create new things. Although the business is growing fast, the company’s main drivers will always remain creativity, individuality and entrepreneurship.
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