Plain Tiger Spotlight: Float
A Sustainability Accelerator Success Story
By Renee Fortune
Try as you may, you will be hard pressed to pin Float’s design aesthetic down to a specific subculture or style. You could rock the Check Pullover with a pair of jeans. But you could just as easily dress it up with a pair of chinos. You could opt for streetwear swag with Float socks and a pair of knee-length shorts. But you could also don them with a classic black suit. This is because Float is a brand that was designed to defy convention and transcend societal norms.
It’s for surfers and beach bums, but it’s also for the girl or guy next door and individuals who dare to daydream.. Float exists on a ‘level beyond normal,’ where who you are, what you do and what you represent matters less than the fact that you share a love for meeting different people, striking up random conversations with strangers, and nurturing a healthy sense of curiosity about life. It’s a brand that ‘floats between worlds’ – hence the name.
Float was started by two childhood friends, Keegan Foreman and Matteo Viotti who wanted to build a brand that connected the worlds of fashion, art, design, photography, music and videography.
Float was Keegan’s brainchild, conjured up around the time that he was attending university. And no, he did not study fashion. In fact, he studied engineering at the University of Cape Town. Needless to say, he’s not the typical engineer. Beyond the numbers and the equations and the technical skills that he possesses, he is a creative at heart – someone who believes in keeping it real. The Float design aesthetic is just that – real. And it’s designed for real people.
In the range you’ll find texture-rich corduroy, sumptuous cotton and bull denim. And it’s designed, manufactured and packaged in Cape Town, South Africa according to ethical production processes with limited outputs that focus on the longevity of each garment. Mass-production simply doesn’t feature. In fact, for Keegan and his team, it’s an outdated concept that will hopefully give way in the near future to a more conscious philosophy on buying and wearing good fashion.
As Keegan explains: “Conceptually we represent the youth of today. We design clothing for dreamers and boundary-pushers. We design for people who live to love, share and soak up the sun. One of our mottos is, “For Everyone.” We don’t discriminate or focus solely on a specific sub-culture. Rather, our focus is embracing difference and bringing people together.
Above all, Float is a lifestyle. We are more than just fashion. When you buy a piece from Float you are buying into our lifestyle, you are joining our community and becoming a part of our family. We also interact with our community, host events and exhibitions and create spaces for people to discover each other and themselves by cherishing and embracing the good times.”
The Float team was recently part of the cohort of designers and creatives who joined Plain Tiger’s Sustainability Accelerator Program. The Program aims to introduce entrepreneurs in the fashion arena to the sustainable fashion sub-sector, and provide education and training on how to build a business in this future-forward and emerging industry.
Commenting on his experience with the Accelerator, Keegan comments that: “the learning experience was invaluable to the growth and development of Float. Sustainable fashion is the way of the future. It requires brands to evolve and innovate to find ways to develop unique products, that are aligned with sustainable practices and global imperatives.
It’s a new way of thinking about fashion and the culture of aesthetics. The team behind Float is ready to embrace this change. We encourage all brands and designers to equip themselves with knowledge around sustainability and join the revolution that is sweeping through the industry.”
