Avance, a New Swedish Brand, Is Aimed at Dreamers and Achievers

What happens at Paris Fashion Week (mostly) stays at PFW, joked Iskias Araya and Oliver Kumbi on a recent call from Stockholm. Friends since childhood, the pair once united by basketball are now connected through fashion, specifically through their new ready-to-wear label, Avance.

Prior to getting the brand off the ground, the two men traveled to Italy and then Paris, where Kumbi, a top model, face of Ralph Lauren, and sometime photographer, gave Araya, a music industry veteran, a behind-the-scenes introduction to the fashion world and its festivities. This gave the friends time to get reacquainted after spending five years following their own paths. “I felt like we [had become] different people,” says Kumbi. “We wanted to do something bigger. It felt like we had another journey to begin.”

Avance

Photo: Cornelia Wahlberg / Courtesy of the photographer and Avance

Their new venture starts from and is rooted at home, in the suburbs of Stockholm (which in Sweden are often economically disadvantaged communities), where the pair grew up as close as brothers and from which they have launched their first capsule, titled Unfadable. Made in a family-owned and operated factory in Turkey, the cotton sweatshirts, pants, and caps are unisex—and uniform. It’s an idea, Araya explains, “based upon the solidarity and the unity in the working class community that we grew up in,” where, he says, “you see people in tracksuits, in different sets, that make them almost look united.” One of the designers’ stated missions is to “defy the separation of race and gender identity.”

Avance

Photo: Cornelia Wahlberg / Courtesy of the photographer and Avance

A sense of togetherness is captured in the brand’s first campaign images, photographed by Cornelia Wahlberg in a location a few hours outside of the capital city. Though Sweden has not imposed strict coronavirus lockdowns, Araya says that people are “reconnecting with nature and themselves right now.” “A really simple idea for this campaign,” he continues, “was to tap into that trend by casting a group of models who are diversified, by age group and color and everything.”

Avance’s debut pieces are executed in black and white, and printed with the word unfadable, which suggests that they will be timeless wardrobe pieces. But it’s also about a mindset “about having an unfadable mentality about things you do,” says Araya.

Avance

Photo: Cornelia Wahlberg / Courtesy of the photographer and Avance

It was Kumbi who came up with the brand name, Avance, (“forward” in French), and it has become the pair’s single-word mantra. “What is a constant thing that we have in our minds?” the men asked each other. “You notice how you need to work around or conform to certain things,” Araya says. “And we were like, you need a forward mentality to kind of maneuver through that, and I think a lot of people can relate to that—anyone who’s on a journey or trying to pursue a dream.” Adds Kumbi: “You get closer to your goals by moving forward. The kind of mentality we have is to always try to believe in your goals a 100% and keep on moving forward. You might get there one day.”