I feel like I can't open a magazine in this city lately without seeing some headline-grabbing bad pun about “HASIDS VS. HIPSTERS” in my neighborhood of South Williamsburg, but a pair of designers from Denmark had a very different reaction to their recent encounters with Brooklyn's Satmar community. Christina Horjris Ottosen and Jens Kold-Christensen were visiting New York from Copenahgen (a city known more for the cute girls in its bike lanes than anything shtetl at all) when they came across young Orthodox teenager on a Brooklyn-bound subway, and, gleefully disregarding any potential for political or religious sensitivity at all, leaped straight to another, possibly more important point: those big hats are kind of fucking rad, and besides, long drapey black stuff is pretty much always okay.
And thus, their recently debuted line, Uncommon Creatures, was born. While produced entirely in Denmark of Danish materials, it draws its inspiration from the traditional styles of various sects of Orthodox Judaism. They claim the collection seeks to “send the wearer on an anachronistic journey [with] essential aesthetic elements of various Judaistic societies” — elements which lack in yarmulkes and wigs, but selectively interpret big black coats, lengthy black scarves and wraps, clunky black boots, and enormous black hats of both the the furry-cylinder and broad-brimmed variety. And while we guess the studded detailing, skin-tight pants, and bare-chested Scandinavian boy in their sexy gothtastic lookbook probably would go over as well with the actual Orthodox community as Bedford Avenue's bike lane, hey. Those hats are pretty sweet.
