Broke Boys x Kent Andreasen for Vogue Italia: Interview

BROKE BOYS: The feature came about after we had dropped our A/W22 collection, Kent reached out to our close friend and mentor Keegan Foreman with the idea of shooting a fashion film/documentary. That’s when Keegan told Kent about us and then from there, we started bouncing ideas with Kent.

KENT: It came about because I have a working relationship with the team at the magazine. Chiara Nonino (@chiaranonino) and the rest of the Vogue team have been super supportive of my work over the years and are always willing to lend a helping hand when it comes to giving my stories a platform.

BB: Yeah! We shot the project last year in July, I remember this cause one of the shoot days was Sindiso’s birthday. I can’t lie - it was really difficult keeping such an amazing body of work a secret. We’d constantly tease homies about the project that’s coming and just tell them about the concept as we shot with Kent. I think we visited Kent’s website every week for the past year, just to see the project.

BB: As we mentioned earlier, we started working on the project after the launch of our A/W22, so in the shoots we are rocking most of the stuff from the drop and some of our personal pieces as we wanted the project to encapsulate who we are.

K: The style of the Broke Boys is the style of the Broke Boys. I just set the scenes for the crew and I let them populate them with the help from our buddy Courtney Eley (@realeels). The process was as simple as that. If something didn’t work, we made small adjustments and kept going.

BB: The shoot took place in various locations around the beautiful Mother City, from the CBD and Woodstock to Durbanville Hills and Hout Bay. The locations were all scouted by Kent, the idea was for the location to be nothing familiar to the audience as this was just Bino’s dream of us travelling to Geneva, Switzerland. I guess the locations were meant to give you an idea of what our trip to Geneva would look like.

K: Each scene had its own location and it was planned out in advance through the concepts that I formulated. They were spots that I had been mapping out for a while during my time driving around parts of Cape Town. I wanted the shots to feel like they had been shot over a few weeks where in fact they were only shot over 2 and half days. I think we achieved that and it gave the story a bit more depth.

BB: This is a tricky one. All the looks were powerful and very in line with who we are as individuals, but I think the Broke Work Suit and the Anorak were top tier.

K: Alec Soth is my favourite photographer at present. The work really speaks for itself.

BB: Shooting on film is crazy. It’s loads of fun cause you never know what to expect, but it’s different when you shoot with a madman like Kent who only does one take, every shot is intentional and every shot counts. We love to shoot in film cause we think it gives our images more personality than the clean sharp images from digital cameras.

K: My practice has evolved recently due to various factors and I have become more set on conceptualizing each shoot from start to finish. I have also been working with my buddy Alex Pankiv-Greene (@gourmetspaghettiboy) on our collaboration called Manners Studio (@mannersstudio). All these new avenues have meant that I am trying to curate the work before it’s even made, rather than trying to back track on what I have shot. 

Film offers an added sensibility to the process and allows me to really figure out the frames I want to make. It has always been my practice but the more I develop, the more I find the medium works for me.

BB: At the moment we are preparing for our runway showcasing and launch on the 30th of July, but besides that, I can say there are a lot of ideas in the pipeline that we still wanna bring into reality. Not just for the city but for the country and the world at large. We definitely gonna need a bigger pipeline.

K: Yeah, I am working on a book about my practice and its connection to Memory, failed memory and everything that inhabits. It’s called Memory Bank (You can see progress work on my site) and I am hoping to wrap it up sooner rather than later. Looking to make it into a box set that includes a book and some other objects.

I’m also working on an architectural study of the coast from Cape Agulhas to Roy Els that I am working on with my girlfriend, Rese Boshoff (@rese_boshoff). It too, will be a book as well as an accompanying podcast that will contextualize the piece. Other than that, there are a few commercial pieces coming out in that I am excited about and other personal project that are very much in their infancy.