Dive Into Love Brand & Co.’s First Women’s Collection

Gina Kushka, the new face of Love Brand & Co.'s women's collection, photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             Last September, I took a very apropos journey to an area of Chelsea called “The Beach,” where Love Brand & Co. is backing up style with substance. I met with Oliver Tomalin, the founder and creative director of the company, who was kind enough to share his vision with me. (Read the full interview here.) Since 2011, Tomalin has devoted himself to the cause of elephant conservation, ensuring that five percent of all sales are donated to charities (Elephant Family, The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and Tusk Trust) that work towards bettering the situation of endangered elephants through conservation efforts.

             At the time of my visit, Love Brand & Co. only stocked beachwear for men, but less than a year on, I am proud to introduce their first bikini range for women. South African singer-songwriter Gina Kushka is the debuting face of the line and has attributed the partnership to fate. Due to her upbringing in Africa, Kushka has been familiar with the conservation and care for animals since she was born.

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             She began writing her own songs at the young age of 12 and taught herself how to play the guitar and the keyboard. Categorized by an ambient-come-ethereal electro/pop sound, Kushka will be releasing her first EP this year. Much like Love Brand & Co.’s laidback vibe and fuss-free aesthetic, Kushska has been described by Tomalin as someone who is cool and beautiful without really trying. Thus, it was a “no-brainer” to cast her in the new campaign.

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             Borrowing the same basic designs from the men’s collection, expect six statement-making block colors from the women’s collection. Oh, and that “Ice White” shade? To die for with a bronze glow. The bikinis are sophistication at its finest, available in four main styles and five sizes: 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 (by British standards).

Photos courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             Tomalin, ever attuned with the needs of his customers, has designed the bikinis with a “mix and match” concept in mind. Honing in on the wishes of women everywhere, Tomalin’s new collection delivers them with what they want, but are usually unable to find. I can openly attest to this, having tried but failed to diversify my assortment of bikinis through experimenting with different tops and bottoms. Indeed, the cool tones of Love Brand & Co.’s line really take the cake for creating options, as evidenced below in a few examples I have put together:

Photos courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             Who would have thought that “fashion for the love of elephants” could look so, well…fashionable? Tomalin pulls it off by mastering up timeless pieces that also serve as a reminder of their underlying mission. In the men’s collection, the shorts’ drawstrings are emblemized with silver tusks and a red screw to represent the bloodshed of elephants. The women’s collection does much the same with their bottoms, but in a majestic gold. Giving back to the world in a positive way is surely the most tasteful accessory of any season and of any timeframe. Better yet? It never goes out of style.

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             The bikinis might be hanging prettily at the Love Brand & Co. boutique, but in order to do a whole lot of good, they need for you to go and buy them! I have a feeling you won’t need much convincing when you get there. Guys, make sure you tag along too! Once you hit the water, your equally lush Love Brand & Co. ensembles will marry up to stir some poolside jealousy and possibly cause a few ice creams to drop!

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

             Suit up in bikini tops for 59 pounds and bikini bottoms for 49 pounds. Whether it's for an exotic island beach, the pool down the road, or just your own backyard, you're bound to be spoiled for choice with Love Brand & Co., and left feeling good regardless of your location. To get your hands on these effortlessly chic beauties, shop the women’s collection here, surf the rest of the Love Brand & Co. collection here, or take a trip to “The Beach” and visit them at their flagship boutique. To keep up to date with Kushka and her music, check out her website here.

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

A Rainy Day at “The Beach” with Oliver Tomalin

Oliver Tomalin, founder and creative director of Love Brand & Co., poses with an elephant friend in the recently opened flagship boutique

             Umbrella up, leather jacket zipped, and red lipstick freshly applied, I was prepared for my trip to the beach. Do not think sand and surf. Think the exquisite Chelsea Beach, as the street is named, on Fulham Road. As I navigated my way from the South Kensington tube station, I was off to visit the tucked away Love Brand & Co. flagship boutique, which I almost walked right by. With understated gray-black outside décor and subdued block letters above the entrance, the boutique might appear lost, but it is truly a treasure once it is found. 

             I was welcomed by Love Brand & Co. founder and creative director, Oliver Tomalin, who started the brand in 2011. The soothing music, warm space, and affability of Tomalin were a welcomed change to the much less inviting outdoors. The swimwear line currently integrates quirky prints and pops of color with swimming trunks, polo shirts, and tees for men and boys. Now you can think sand and surf. “Fashion for the love of elephants” is the driving force behind the brand, representing an admirable cause to promote elephant conservation. The logo shows two elephants facing each other, their trunks and front feet forming the shape of a heart, an inescapable reminder of the substance beneath the style.

             Five percent of all sales are donated to charities that dedicate themselves to helping endangered elephants from further jeopardy. Love Brand & Co.’s charity partners include Elephant Family, The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and Tusk Trust. The boutique itself is pared down to make space for strategically placed and eco-friendly fixtures. Golden wood and clean white allow the vibrant products to dazzle in stark contrast. A green elephant resides over the boutique, giving the nod of approval to Tomalin’s altruistic undertaking. I spoke to the man himself, with his jaunty disposition and easygoing approach to life, to obtain in his own words the zeal he possesses for his project.

             I would like to give a big thank you to José Berrocoso and Oliver Tomalin for making this interview possible. 

Laura Rutkowski: How did you decide that you wanted to play an active role in elephant conservation through a clothing brand? How did you come across this cause? 

Oliver Tomalin: Elephants are my favorite animals. Elephant Family did a parade across London and that was what brought about all that’s happening in Asia. We contacted Elephant Family and they said we could do something to raise awareness for what they were doing.

LR:  What drew you specifically to swimwear and beachwear?

OT: Again, it’s something that I’m passionate about and I just thought that there was definitely a lack of something different and good quality swim shorts. Then, I thought “Trunks for Trunks.®”

LR: I saw how on the drawstrings of the shorts, you have little tusks. 

OT: Yeah, that’s one of our great little details. See, the screw as well is stained red as a further symbol of the plight of elephants. The cause is ever concerning. We’re supporting one of our charity partners, the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and they’ve started this iWorry campaign with a very powerful statement. One elephant is killed every 15 minutes. At this rate, none will be roaming the wild in 2025. It’s good that you have the tusks on the product because it’s quite a tactile thing and people are constantly brewing about awareness for the problem.

LR: Can you tell us about the current situation elephants face and how you aim to help?

OT: The main problem with the world’s largest land mammal is the lack of land in the places where they are still in the wild, so Africa, Asia, and India. They are running out of space. In Asia, one of the things that our charity partner, Elephant Family, is really working towards is connecting what they call elephant corridors and it’s by rehousing villages that have broken these corridors, which is a very expensive and sociopolitical issue. It’s through doing that the elephants can migrate their natural paths through these corridors.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has a wonderful orphanage in Nairobi and they have a fostering program where they take in orphaned elephants when their parents have either been killed as a result of poaching or natural death. They’ll bring them in and then they’ll go through this process whereby they are actually rehabilitated and reintroduced into the wild. It’s an amazing story actually.

The elephants have keepers through the orphanage who they are with 24 hours a day and once they’ve actually gone into the wild they will come back to the fence of the actual orphanage with their own offspring. It’s just testament to the amazing nature and memory of elephants. [Tomalin visited the orphanage to observe and participate in the baby elephants’ rehabilitation journey.]

I should also mention Tusk Trust, which is one of the most amazing African conservation and general African community and wildlife charities and it’s through them that they are monitoring the species in Africa and doing everything that they can to help save them from becoming extinct.

Photo courtesy of Love Brand & Co.

LR: You just recently opened this flagship boutique, so what has been the best experience so far and what has the feedback been like?

OT: The feedback’s been great. People have come in here quite surprised. It’s quite hard to find, but once you find it, it’s somewhere that you want to come back to. It’s got an interesting mix between this upcycled concept that is key to the DNA of our brand, which is giving everything another chance and the elephants in the wild. Also, materials that we’ve used in this shop have all been things that we’ve found and upcycled to make it work in our luxury store, which is quite unique. These display cases are made of old London scaffold boards, the checkout counter’s an old post office table reinvented, and it goes on with the fruit crates and driftwood that’s just been salvaged and made into a table.

That’s what people comment on as well as the great range of swimwear that we have in store. I think personally just having that launch party at the beginning had incredible attendance and it was just really fun and there was a great energy and feeling behind the whole project. Being here in this part of Chelsea, which is called “The Beach,” is funny because a beachwear brand is finally on “The Beach.”

LR: What can we expect next from the brand?

OT: Love Brand next season is launching its first women’s line, which is extremely exciting. We’ve got Love Brand bikinis with a similar concept to the men’s swim line – classic, an emphasis on quality and color, and a great fit and cut.

LR: What goes into the creative process of picking the prints? How do you decide what you want to put on your clothing pieces?

OT: I design a lot of the prints myself and one of the things in this collection that’s virtually continued into our new collection for Spring/Summer 2014 is this idea of a double meaning, which we do quite a lot of in our brand. For example, these three [shows me various swimming trunk designs]. We’ve got the conversational of little fish at one level when you look really closely, but from a distance it’s a shimmering reflection of a lake or pond, and similarly, these dragonflies are also like the weave of a basket and these camels are like the crashing surf. It’s quite cool and it’s just fun. All of the prints are limited editions and inside we print the limited edition name and number that we’ve produced. It’s just whatever springs into my mind.

LR: Would you ever consider trying to sponsor any other endangered animals or do you want to just focus on mainly elephants?

OT: I think we’ll continue to support elephants until they’re no longer endangered, and once they are sustainably and happily living in the wild in their natural habitat, then we will be able to support another animal in need. The underlying concept of Love Brand is fashion for conservation and we’re currently working extremely hard to help elephants because they need our help right now.

LR: Thank you very much!

OT: [jokingly] You weren’t going to ask me my favorite flavor of ice cream?

LR: No, I promise I wouldn’t! I actually hate those kinds of interviews. If you could be an animal, what animal would you be? You’d be an elephant, right? Obviously.

OT: I would be, because they’re my favorite!

             Discover Love Brand & Co. and their inspiring vision here.

Underwater Reverie

             Apparently, my love of sharks and fascination with underwater creatures has only grown as I’ve gotten older. As far back as show and tell in fifth grade, my teacher asked us all to bring in items that represented us. I brought in a great white shark fact sheet. Luckily, there is a place for people like me, where I can unashamedly admire sharks and other animals with fellow devotees. This brings me to my recent trip to the London Sea Life Aquarium, situated in the County Hall Building. The attraction rightly earns its place next to the London Eye and the London Dungeon on the South Bank of the River Thames.

             Obligatory children were ever-present while making their rounds of the tanks, pressing their noses up against the glass and staring wide-eyed at the mysterious animals. That being said, the aquarium is by no means a fun day out solely for kids. I witnessed couples, friends, and full-grown adults admiring in the beauty of the water and its inhabitants. Since we as humans cannot survive underwater, watching animals glide effortlessly around their natural habitat is quite a spectacle, especially when the aquarium accommodates their animals with over two million gallons of water!

             The assortment of animals that can be viewed include jellyfish, sharks, rays, lobsters, piranhas, Gentoo penguins, clownfish, crocodiles, green sea turtles, and seahorses. That’s just to name a few! Each exhibit delves into recreating a natural, realistic setting, based on whether the animal is completely or partially water dependent. In the poison dart frogs’ stomping ground, I found myself surrounded by foliage in a muggy rain forest. After acclimating to that environment, I was struck by an instant chill as I entered the penguins’ arena, a feature that opened in May 2011. Etching my initials onto an icy white surface, it became harder and harder to imagine London existing just outside of those frost-dominated walls. Another section paid tribute to the film Finding Nemo, where sea anemones, clownfish, and blue tangs reigned supreme.

             The animals were truly mesmerizing and watching them was unusually soothing. I could have easily perched on one of the ledges next to a tank and stayed there all day. Rays seemed to be flying above me as they passed by in the surrounding tunnel with an unmatched elegance. In the ray pool, they were even more impressive. They weren’t afraid to get friendly and come up right next to me. A variety of sharks were on offer, from nurse sharks to sand tiger sharks to blacktip reef sharks - my own personal shark heaven! Then again, I am biased towards the ferocious beings, so my elation should come as no surprise.

             The aquarium makes it top priority for visitors to feel connected to the animals, to grant them the respect they deserve. We are merely voyeurs in their territory and I realized just how small I felt compared to something as magnificent and great as the green sea turtle. A comparative size chart on one of the walkways further demonstrated this, stretching to varying lengths of different sized sharks. My mouth was left agape at how very small I would appear underwater with the tremendous whale shark, which can reach 40 feet or more in length!  

             It is important to note that many of the animals housed at the aquarium are endangered. A sad reminder of this exists in information displays next to each tank, where animals are ranked on a scale of not in danger to critically threatened. While the aquarium is indeed an attraction to be enjoyed, an underlying tone pleads with us as visitors to help in animal conservation efforts. The London Sea Life Aquarium plays an active role in practicing what they preach through breeding, seal rescues, re-homing, and campaigns. Did you know that shark fins actually add no nutritional value or taste to shark fin soup? Neither did I, until I started reading the placards placed around the aquarium. Above appreciating the sea creatures, the aquarium spreads awareness.

             After touring the aquarium, I exited through the gift shop, naturally toting my new shark keychain all the way home.

             Visit the London Sea Life Aquarium website here to plan your trip, check for feeding times and offers, and find out how to get involved.