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Catching up with Joe Lauder of Satta

Born out of London’s Brixton Beach, Satta has grown to global recognition as a brand that produces high quality, consciously sourced and produced goods. Initially gaining attention through their unique hand crafted skate boards, made meticulously by the brands founder Joe Lauder out of his modest London based studio, the brand seamlessly made the transition in to clothing with earthy colour palettes and hand drawn designs applied to classic silhouettes. Satta’s ability to set itself apart in a highly saturated market without compromising it’s integrity is admirable, although you get a sense it’s effortless. Satta is a physical representation of a lifestyle, rather than a brand playing up to a new trend, and you can’t get much more authentic than that. 

This season, the collection is largely influenced by Joe’s personal experiences on his travels to the spiritually and culturally rich island of Bali, Indonesia, where the brand has been based for the past year. Heavily graphic focused, you can find Buddhist and Hindu iconography that aligns with the brands central theme of connectedness, while the colour palette aligns with previous releases. As the concise Autumn/Winter 2016 offering begins to land in stores across the globe, we had a brief catch up with the brands founder – Joe Lauder to talk more on the brands history, his travels and future plans…

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Since the birth of Satta you’ve been predominantly based in Brixton. Have your roots there influenced your vision for the brand at all?

Brixton’s quickly changing, the cross-cultural melting pot is being diluted into a gentrified mashed potato,  but it’s the richness of different cultural influences alongside the place I spent most of my time in Brixton – Brixton Beach, the local skatepark which was a perfect place to see my love’s for surfing and skating mix together that played a big part in Satta’s initial influence.

As a fairly young company, what would you say has been the biggest hurdle for yourself and Satta at this point?

The hardest thing is not having any weight with the factories. I would love to be developing and innovating new fabrics to work with but I just cant because I cant meet the minimums required.

That and trying to do a teams worth of work with no team.

You’ve been to a wide variety of destinations in your travels, such as the Amazon jungle alongside Tibet and Nepal. Do you have any more adventures planned in the near future?

At the moment I’m just trying to decide where to settle next.

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You’ve been skateboarding a long time and that clearly resonates within everything you do at Satta. Could you tell us a little bit about the impact skateboarding has had on your life personally, and how it’s influenced your brand?

I started skating relatively late, around 20, and I came to it after surfing, so I was always more into the roots of skating and seeing the fluidity of surfing translated into skating.

I think the main influence skateboarding has had on my life and Satta is the DIY spirit you find in so many skaters, the will to carve out and create your own (sub)culture.

With your travels in mind; where would you say your favourite place in the world to skate?

Brixton Beach

Do you still find time to work in gardening and furniture with everything going on at Satta skates?

Unfortunately not, that stopped soon after Satta was born in its current form

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The appreciation of the natural world is clearly an integral part of your aesthetic at Satta. Does this approach tie in with sourcing the wood and materials you use for the boards and clothing?

For sure, we try to use locally sourced wood as much as possible and are using hemp and organic cotton in a lot of our clothing.

Are there any new projects or collaborations from yourself and the brand coming up this year you can tell us about?

Just keeping on keeping on.

Satta’s Autumn/Winter 2016 range is available now on the brands online store and at select stockists including Goodhood

To celebrate the release Satta and WuLu teamed up to put out a special edition of the brands ‘Satta Sounds’ Mixes. The mix is available to listen to here – sattalivity.com

Interview: James P.Lees

Additional words: Kieran Sills

Lookbook Imagery shot by Joe Lauder