It might be the subtropical weather or its positioning on the far western edge of the continental US, but Los Angeles has always been a hotbed of visionaries and utopianist thinking. And Entireworld, a premium basics brand from Angeleno designer Mr Scott Sternberg, is built on such optimistic, futuristic ideals. The geodesic domes of Mr Buckminster Fuller, the primary tones and languorous sensuality of Mr Éric Rohmer’s films, Rubik’s Cubes and the 1979 Sesame Street segment Geometry Of Circles by Mr Philip Glass are all inspirations behind Mr Sternberg’s creation, and they are as eccentric as they are specific, in much the same way they were with his first creation, Band of Outsiders.

Like most Angelenos, Mr Sternberg came to town from somewhere else – in his case, Dayton, Ohio. After working for a while at the Creative Artists Agency, Mr Sternberg, with some coaching from his friend Ms Emily Woods, who was then CEO of J.Crew, started Band of Outsiders with a line of ties in 2004. Band of Outsiders and Mr Sternberg broke up in 2015 and he began moodboarding what would become one of the most exciting brands of 2018. As we proudly launch the new collection of Entireworld on MR PORTER, we talked to him about what goes into the threads.

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How does Entireworld differ from Band of Outsiders?

Band was me stumbling one foot in front of the other, trying to teach myself how to design, tell a story within the context of the fashion industry, which is very different now. With Entireworld, there’s full confidence, complete awareness and transference between product and platform. I started another clothing brand because I feel that style is just an incredibly powerful, emotional platform from which to put out a lot of ideas, whether they’re imagery, music, events, theatre, whatever it might be.

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You advertised Entireworld’s launch on Instagram with references to Mr Rohmer’s films and culty, primary-colour sweatsuits. How do you go about realising that kind of vision?

It’s really hard. I’m like, I’m going to launch a fully realised 360-degree view of what this brand is. So, what it looked like in terms of typefaces, the fact that it was about video versus film, for example. Film was the perfectly analogy, just as one example, for a Polaroid for now. [Many of Band of Outsiders’ campaigns were shot by Mr Sternberg on a Polaroid camera.] I didn’t do that out of a sense of nostalgia. That was a cheap camera from a drug store and, without a lighting crew, I shot famous people and they could see the playback or the negative. The two key words for the brand concept were iteration and experimentation. We wanted things to be deliberately a little bit messy and a work in progress.

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Describe the musical influences.

Well, it’s ambient music. It’s Brian Eno, Music For Airports, its soundtracks and series. I bought a keyboard from the early 1990s that had all these pre-programmed sounds. You’re creating this framework. I’m able to communicate to the team every little bit of this. And then think as I was designing the clothes, how do these things connect without them being forced? What are the natural connections that are already there? What feels forced and doesn’t belong? And then just letting it live. I think it’s exciting for people to be part of these iterations and be part of sort of the storytelling.

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How do you go about creating a welcoming network that people want to be a part of?

Part of the brand concept is about this idea of utopia and about this idea of hippie modernism, which manifested itself in some more positive cults and a sort of Ken Isaacs style. I think we’re incredibly isolated and alienated. Social media has created this idea of a surface connection being a real connection. You’re not really forced to go much deeper. We used to find connections with new people based on cultural touch points. Somebody who’s 19, 20, 25, 30 years younger than me knows all the music I grew up with, has seen all the movies that I can reference in terms of Rohmer or Raski or whoever the f*** it is. So with that gone, I think it’s an open question how we can connect. And for me, this idea of community was just so raw and relevant enough that I wanted to put it right at the forefront. Even coming up with the name it was very deliberate. Band of Outsiders versus Entireworld. But I don’t know, man. We’re all in a bit of a rough place.

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So, in your SimCity, they listen to Mr Eno. But what is the culture? What are the rituals of Entireworld?

So, what is the architecture? Well, it’s the geodesic dome, a utopian vision of sustainable living. That’s the meeting place, the living place. The moving vehicle? It’s a VW bus. The uniform is a sweatsuit in a primary matching colour, and hopefully one that’s shaped different from your neighbour. The key is, though – and this is the reason why I wanted to make basics and not make fashion – is that if it really is something meaningful, all of these values will find their way into the product codes and into the design ethos as well.

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When we met in 2011, you told me that you didn’t want Band of Outsiders to become Gap. Is there an analogous operation, something you’d like to emulate, aspire to?

From a brand perspective, you want a brand to feel at once idiosyncratic and completely universal. That’s the big challenge. How do you create the world’s biggest cult brand? That is what Gap and J.Crew – and Band – always were. That’s my challenge now, right? That’s how I think about what we’re doing.

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