THE DRIFTWOOD TALES
Apparel for the very alive
I’ve been involved in urban golf since 2003 and I’ve seen many brands take an intrerest in the sport, but yours is the first that understood its spirit. Martjin and Tirzah, founders of The Driftwood Tales, have been involved in creative direction for O’Neil and advertising, respectively. This brand is a culmination of their careers. The collection for 2016 will soon be launched. I’ve had a sneak preview and it’s just amazing. We’ll let you know as soon as it’s available, but for now go visit their website.
- Martjin and Tirzah: "We are The Driftwood Tales. Dreamt up somewhere in Bali and brought to life in Amsterdam. We create fine and fresh apparel for the brave men that go wherever the current takes them. Courageous guys with stories to tell and places to go, with women to meet and jokes to joke. Very alive men."
19NEWS Mag: The Driftwood Tales, how did it start?
- Martjin and Tirza: "We have always worked for brands … be it ad agency side or brand side. Fairly often, that’s actually pretty frustrating for a creative because you have all these ideas but the client or brand owner wants something different. You can only influence other peoples’ brands to a certain level and at a certain point that was just wasn’t enough for us anymore. All our lives we’ve been doing sports like surfing, snowboarding, skateboarding and various martial arts, but we also happen to love golf. Coming from that action sports background with all its little cool lifestyle brands, it really made us want to create something similar for people like us who love the game of golf, but hate the dress code. People who don't solely belong to the golf tribe and get their style references elsewhere. They surf, they're into art or music, they travel….and they golf…but there’s not a single golf brand out there that caters to this group. Why can there be cross over brands in surfing or skateboarding, but not in golf while a lot of the time it’s actually the same guys doing those things? So we thought it would be interesting to create an authentic and qualitative cross over golf brand, a brand that tells a lot of different stories but all these stories are connected through golf."
19NEWS Mag: Who or what do you take inspiration from?
- Martjin and Tirza: "Some of our best inspirational trips are trips to Bali. We always come back full of ideas and with an overload of energy. It’s the combination of the local creativity of the Balinese, meeting new interesting people, the latest hot Australian brands in the shops all mixed with playtime in some of the most perfect waves on the planet. Throw in some great Indonesian food and “hello new idea’s”! It has similar body and mind dynamics to a city like LA…"
19NEWS Mag: What next?
- Martjin and Tirza: "Right now we’re doing apparel and obviously we want to extend our still small collection with other apparel pieces every season, but we’d also like to add other kinds of products that fit our brand story. We already did a small collaboration with a cafe racer builder and produced a golf cafe racer. And why not our own whiskey or chocolate? Our own event is also something we’re working on. With a brand like this the sky is the limit. I think we should go for world domination! :-)"
TRIPS & STORIES
by The Driftwood Tales
A surf/golf mission with J.Brooks in mystic Cornwall. Shot by Chris McClean
CORNWALL: On our last surf/golf mission to Cornwall, England we hooked up with miste Jonathan Brooks for a few days. Mr Brooks, born and raised in Byron Bay, Australia has been coming to Cornwall for 4 years. Summers are good but when the days get shorter and the wetsuits thicker he moves back to Byron for a few months to catch up with friends and family and takes recovering drug addict surfing or fishing. Besides being a surf pro, Johnny also knows a thing or two about swinging a golf club. He started to play when he was young and really got into it during his high school years where he (as he puts it in his own words) ‘kinda learnt to compensate for my slice rather than fixing it’. Due to sponsor obligations he’s not playing golf as much as he would like to but when he’s back in Byron Bay and the drug addicts don’t feel like fishing or surfing he makes sure he gets his Tee Time.
Photos: Martijn Andriessen
CAFE RACER: We did it just for fun. A friend of ours is a bike builder (Bravado & Company) and he loved our idea to build a cafe racer for golf very much ... so that’s what we did.
Photos and video: Martijn Andriessen
FAROE ISLANDS: Our buddy Chris McClean from England is a filmmaker ... mostly cold water surf movies. We heard he was going to the Faroe Islands so we decided to join him because not only is there great surf to be found in these frigid waters but we also heard there was this little obscure golf course on the island. It was really hard to find because nobody knew where it was. It’s pretty shit, but it’s also a lot of fun ... right in the middle of the ocean.
Photo’s by Chris McClean
LEATHER: We proudly present a limited edition collaboration with Klaas Van der Laan of Old Dutch Leatherworks. This skateboarding madman from Groningen, Netherlands turned himself into a leather craftsman and creates handmade premium leather accessories.
Photos: Martijn Andriessen
Video: Tijl dhe Nije
WADIRUM, JORDAN: Pictures from the shooting of the look-book 2015 in Jordan. When the sunlight was too bright for our photo shoot we opted for some serious desert golf.
