Meet Dylan Best
When Best Jumpers beat out industry favourites to take home the coveted National Designer Award, it proved our appetite for elevated streetwear shows no sign of slowing
With such a surname, Melbourne-based designer Dylan Best was arguably handed a golden goose when it came to branding potential.
Even though the 38-year-old originally steered towards a commerce degree, it was fashion that would end up being the course on which he set his career trajectory. His namesake brand,
Best Jumpers, is a succinct collection of elevated streetwear that sits somewhere between smart casual and relaxed leisure.
It’s a choice that also paved the way to Best being named the most recent recipient of the National Designer Award at this year’s Melbourne Fashion Festival.
“I was a bit shocked when they called my name out,” recollects the designer. “The first thing I thought was, ‘I have to make a speech now’. It was only a few words long, but I think I did OK.”
Best was up against some serious competition for the win including Jordan Gogos, whose multidisciplinary approach under his label Iordanes Spyridon Gogos has been lauded for the colourful inventiveness of his sculptural creations, and fellow Melbourne designer Natasha Veenhuizen for her slow fashion brand Van Der Kooij.But the win cements the truth that fashion isn’t just about creating a spectacle.
It’s also about wearability and the simple pleasure of well-crafted clothing that rises to the occasion. Flexible working conditions, the erosion of what constitutes office attire and a national reticence to put the suit back on form ideal conditions for a brand such as Best Jumpers to thrive, thanks to its mix of preppy casual elements that tie in athleisure.
But to take it back to the beginning, Best hadn’t originally planned to work in fashion, despite a personal background in the industry. (“I have a cousin who’s also a designer and they have a knitwear factory and my grandfather was actually a shoemaker,” he says.)
But after a year working in marketing, he opted to take the leap and score two goals at once: live in New York and follow the family footsteps. He earned a place at the prestigious Parsons School of Design, one of only a handful of Australians enrolled. After graduation Best interned at Rag & Bone, going on to cut his teeth at Ralph Lauren and Club Monaco. It was here that ideas for Best Jumpers took hold.
“I wanted to create something that was uniquely Australian,” he explains. “I wouldn’t have done that without living overseas. So that’s where the concept came from, and in terms of the aesthetic, it’s also from living, studying and working in New York.”
When Best launched his eponymous label back in 2018, it was a minimal collection of unisex garments that included hoodies and tracksuit pants in whites and dusty pastels, some with the playful phrase “Stick it up your jumper” printed on the front.
These days, the line is a bit more fleshed out. Coats and bombers made with technical fabrics, comfortably cut button-down shirts and polos, as well as womenswear that plays on traditional masculine pieces such as the aforementioned shirt but cut long into a dress, and even sneakers are now part of the Best line.
The slogans are still there, of course, but in the form of the more colloquial terms such as “No worries” and “Mate”.
These details, Best reflects, were the perfect way to balance his love of heritage that he found at Ralph Lauren and Club Monaco, while retaining an Australian sense of humour.
He also learnt the importance of provenance. While plenty of younger designers, for time management or simply financial reasons, look offshore for manufacturing, Best is proud that his clothing — bar the knitwear — is constructed locally in Melbourne.
“Our fabrics all come from Japan. There’s an agent in New York that I used to use when I was working at Club Monaco and Ralph Lauren, so I’ve been using them the whole time.
Everything is predominantly made in Melbourne, but our knitwear is made in China using Australian merino wool. While the focus for Best is to continue expanding the casual category, and even play with the definition of what casual means, the prospect of moving into more sartorial territory isn’t off the table.
“I see us doing more tailored pieces like suiting,” he says. “This season we’ve done a lot of outerwear and a lot of short jackets and tailored jackets, so we’re sort of going slowly in that direction. I keep wanting to elevate the brand each season.”
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