For as long as I can remember I have done things my own way. As a kid I would put outfits together that made no sense to anyone but me, a sock tucked in and a sock pulled over, shapes that were not supposed to go together. I never grew out of it. I just got better at understanding why I was doing it.
The love for clothing came the slow way, through years of trying things, getting them wrong, and going again. There was no single moment, only a long stretch of figuring out which fabrics, which shapes, which silhouettes actually said what I wanted to say. Alongside it grew a love for going out, for nightlife, for the ritual of sitting down to a good dinner and dressing properly for it. Different worlds, the same eye running through all of them.
Travelling changed the way I see. Every place carries its own way of dressing, its own attitude, its own sense of what looks right, and I started taking pieces of all of it. I pull elements from different cultures and the things I have seen on the move, and I shape them into something that did not exist before. Nothing copied, everything reworked into my own language.
Expelled is the place where all of it comes together. I did not want to make only clothing. I wanted to build a world, the parties, the room, the food, the way people dress when they walk in, small pieces of me held in one place. I set out to create what I felt was missing, clothing made to carry a feeling because it was designed for that from the very first cut.
It begins here, with the Origin Tee. This is the smallest version of something much larger, and there is a lot more to come.
Pepijn van IperenFounder — Expelled