Vice Style

People like A.P.C.’s clothing for what it isn’t. The French company's jeans, knitwear and jackets are meant to make you look like you’ve made zero effort. Yet the fit is as flattering as fashion gets, and A.P.C.'s prices are rarely eye-watering. This explains why there's never a huge amount of exposure for A.P.C.: because it’s hard to describe a label that does its best not to be noticed.

Jean Touitou set up A.P.C. in 1987 just in time to ride the 90s craze for minimalism. By 1994, the label - properly known as Atelier de Production et de Creation - was causing people such as the then-fashion director of Details magazine to say to the New York Times, "I don’t hang out at clubs but I hang out in A.P.C." Come the second half of the 90s, A.P.C. benefited from the explosion of interest in all things French and moderne - Air, Daft Punk, Etienne de Crécy, La Haine and the like were a total cultural do.

A.P.C. never really worried about being too obviously fashionable. Sure, a decade ago, A.P.C. jeans came with sandpaper gloves so you could do some DIY distressing. Before that, A.P.C. were ahead of the pack with military style, but this was a logical minimalist thing to do. So while A.P.C. might not be the hottest name in the world any more, for those who consider themselves too fancy for Uniqlo but don't have wads of wonga, A.P.C. is where they head for their basics. Naturally, super-fussy skate label Supreme chose to collaborate with A.P.C. for their the "Fuck Em!" jeans collaboration.