PRPS. Getting Personal With Other Free-Thinkers
Donwan Harrell, creative director and founder of PRPS, positively burns with inspiration. The head of this luxury denim brand speaks with unswerving clarity about what he sees is his art and how he projects that on to the canvas that is each season’s new collection.
It is about grit, it is about integrity and it is, of course, about purpose. (The brand name is “purpose” without the vowels.)
Birds of a feather flock together so we were keen to learn that there has been an intellectual hook-up between Harrell and another inspirational heavyweight, Donovan Livingston, who recently became something of a face after giving this Harvard School of Education speech in spoken word poetry and which then went viral.
The force that makes Donovan such a powerhouse is that his mantra centres upon taking action in what you believe in and the power of education, and that is what moved PRPS to travel to North Carolina, where he is currently working at the University of Winston-Salem, to speak with him about what his PRPS is.
Here’s the very watchable, short video of their conversation.
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Nailed It
As a man who believes in the power of sheer determination, it is possibly no surprise then that Livingston doesn’t mince his words.
My purpose is to help create an experience, a lifestyle, a situation where students, or people in general are able to walk in their own purpose and in ways that they never could have imagined.
This chimes neatly with the PRPS ethic. “Bruised but never broken”, is the motto that drives this New York City based brand and that “get knocked down, get up again” attitude goes a log way to explaining why PRPS continues to go from strength-to-strength while others wither on the vine.
Newly Landed For AW 2016
Back to the gear for a moment: the signature mainstays at the premium “Noir” peak of the PRPS collection are now being joined by a new range of jackets including a worn, cool and sloppy Varsity, a classic Denim in the traditional Trucker style and a distressed variant which is totally the bee’s knees.
It looks like it has been being kicked around TriBeCa since 1978 and which, we think, will slot in to any wardrobe that has a couple of indigo fade projects in full flight. PRPS are pitching it as a “jacket to live in this season and beyond” and we can’t see it ever losing it’s edge, either.
Call us shallow but our purpose in life right now is to get our paws on one!
The Essentials
The PRPS distressed denim jacket is available in selected stores and online priced at $425 or around €450. You will find the full PRPS collection – from raw blank canvasses to Harrell’s thousand-dollar masterpieces – also in upscale retailers or here.
