Bats: Rebellious leather jackets from Petersburg
IN RUBRIC "NEW MARK" Wonderzine presents young designers and tells where and how you can buy their things. Our heroine this week is Maria Kalashnikova, founder of the St. Petersburg brand of Bats leather jackets. She creates classic leather jackets without extra accessories.
In recent years, St. Petersburg has become a center for concentrating young, pleasant brands of basic clothing and accessories. It all started, it seems, in 2008 with the advent of Oh, my: its founders immediately decided to focus on inexpensive knitwear - first of all T-shirts and long sleeves - and now they are rightfully considered to be one of the most successful and well-known manufacturers of basic things.
Brand Bats is also devoted to a very specific category of wardrobe - leather jackets. Her creator, Maria Kalashnikova, before launching Bats, worked as a graphic designer and was also fond of sewing clothes. According to Kalashnikova, it was the profession that gave her the ability to think conceptually. First of all, the brand’s philosophy is connected with the founder’s passion for motor culture and travel, the symbol of which is a leather jacket. The first Bats thing to be released was a classic cowhide motorcycle jacket. Maria decided to recoup on the lining, making a gradient stretch of color on silk. After this reception was repeated in all models of Bats.
Now in the online store of the brand you can buy two models of jackets and one - vests, all black. But just the other day Bats will present a new autumn color palette. The color range of jackets will vary from collection to collection. The brand is also developing a new model of leather jackets in collaboration with the Petersburg tattoo artist Sasha Masyuk. In the near future - the release of the winter line of warmed leather jackets and sheepskin coats, which is especially important for the early start of winter. In the spring, the Bats team planned a project with one of the Russian motorcycle workshops and, of course, in the long run, open their own offline store.
Our brand is for a person who does not pursue per minute trends: he has expensive jeans, unkillable shoes and, of course, a leather jacket. This is our attempt to make a quality thing that will last for many years. We are trying our best to keep the average pricing policy for Russia, despite the fact that we work with premium leather and accessories. We understand that in our country it is not customary to spend big money on new brands.
The most difficult was to assemble a team of people who truly support your cause. The second problem is the materials, the headache of any designer. We have suppliers of Italian leather in Russia, with whom we cooperate, but the choice is small and the price tag is higher than abroad. The search for foreign partners is simply inevitable - this is not the easiest process, but solvable. But with a small production in Russia, in my opinion, everything is not so bad: we have a lot of intelligent craftsmen who are able to keep the bar.