This Sydney-based label began as a side project for Melvin Tanaya, who had something to say and initially chose graphic tees as his medium. Bringing in high school friend and Italian fashion school-trained, Lyna Ty, the duo now had the creative direction and the practical abilities to bring their combined visions to life. In the two short years that SFTM has been around, these two have generated a lot of buzz, especially in the fashion hubs of the world.

Selling in exclusive fashion boutiques both here in Australia and overseas, they are also the winners of the Designer Award 2011 at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival and have shown at Australian Fashion Week, Singapore Fashion Week and in Paris. We caught up with Melvin Tanaya, creative director for Song for the Mute to give us a background on the brand and to find out what happened in Paris that almost spelled the end of the label.

1. What are you doing these days?
Summer holidays have always been one of the busiest periods of the year for us. For the past few weeks we’ve been designing and preparing our new FW12 collection which we will be taking to Paris next month. We have also been checking up on our SS12 production to make sure everything is on schedule for mid-Jan delivery.

2. How was Song for the Mute born?
Song for the Mute originated from our desire to create something that could communicate to a customer more deeply and represent something meaningful. It all started as a side project. During my studies,  I’always wanted to do something for myself and I had this rough concept for a clothing label. Initially, I envisioned it to be a graphic t-shirt label.

I wanted to create my own pattern for the tees but I didn’t have any previous training in fashion design and that’s when Lyna came in. She was in Florence at the time finishing her Masters degree, and I waited until she came back to tell her what I had in mind for the label in the hope that she would design the pattern for me. Instead, she fell in love with the concept and decided to get on board.

3. What is the driving concept behind Song for the Mute?
Things have changed since we began but the core idea of the brand or what I want it to represent have remained the same. The core idea of the label has always been about self-empowerment. There are a lot of people, who through peer pressure, past difficulties or just unfairly high expectations from those around them, are pushed to do things they dislike.

Some don’t have a choice at all. We want our garments to be a catalyst for them.

4. Your latest collection Milieu draws inspiration from your grandmothers and more specifically the emotions triggered from the loss of such important people. Are the stories behind your collections always personal ones?
Song for the Mute is involved in every aspect of our lives and is growing with us in the way we shape ourselves. We place the brand dearly close to our hearts and this label almost acts like a communication channel that we use to voice our thoughts and feelings.

It may come across as personal stories but as unique as you think you are in the world, there is always someone out there who is experiencing the same thing.

5. Do the works of other designers influence your work or do you draw ideas from a wider array of sources?
Culture plays a great deal in the label’s aesthetics. Where and how we’ve been brought up has shaped who we are and definitely is the core influence of our work. By moving around to different cities, you tend to lose yourself in an unfamiliar environment – but you get to learn to adapt and appreciate other ways of life – and this is truly a privilege.

We significantly value the importance of our background, culture, values and beliefs. We’ve been lucky to see lots of ways people live in this world, and the melting pot of all those different cultures is the main product of our design.

6. Finding a niche or gap in the market can help brands stand out from the crowd. How would you describe your niche, your customer?
The “Song for the Mute” man takes pride in individuality. He is a fashion design enthusiast that has an interest in quality products that differ from the standard offerings. He is aware of trends but does not follow them. He dares to be different and expresses his personality through what he wears. He enjoys the challenge of hunting for the items that he wants and he perceives exclusive products as one of his most important criteria in brand selection. For him, fashion stands at a unique crossroad of artistic and individual expression, utility, and commerce.

7. The choice of fabrics is a major consideration for any fashion apparel brand. How important are decisions about materials for you and how does it influence your design process?
The design process begins with fabric selection. It is always our first step and Lyna and I stay in very close contact with our fabric suppliers. Inspiration for any new collection almost always comes from the fabrics sourced. Lyna draws her designs with the cloth already in mind. This is essential if we want to give our customers the highest quality possible; we continually search for fabrics that are special, fabrics that talk to us in a certain way.

Lyna then tries to find the best way to use this fabric. We have to think about how the fabric will react to the design, the construction, and particularly the comfort. Ultimately, the different tactile sensations from the fabrics draw our design reactions. The subsequent construction is heavily based on heightening those tactile sensations to convey quality.

8. I heard about the terrible loss of your entire collection in transit to Paris for press showings during Fashion Week earlier this year. How do you cope as individuals and as a brand with a major setback like that and continue to move forward?
I would say it was probably the hardest thing we have had to endure since the beginning of the label – it nearly cost us everything. We were really close to giving up altogether, questioning ourselves if we were meant to do this. Thankfully we received a lot of support and that helped to make the situation better. Our close friends and families continued to give words of encouragement.

We also believe everything happens for a reason – now that I think back, perhaps we weren’t quite ready to show in Paris back then.

9. Despite the aforementioned bump-in-the-road, Song for the Mute has experienced quick success for a brand entering its second year. How do you build on those achievements and grow the brand?
Being a very young brand and business – we are in this for the long term. We just need to keep our head down and work hard. Plan and prepare for what is ahead.

10. In such a competitive retail market, how do you stay relevant and remain in the public’s consciousness?
Our main challenges have always been to find a balance between artistic inclinations and commercial realities.
Lyna is the Design Director and spends most of her time working on the collection. She develops all the designs, pattern-make all the pieces and then creating toiles/samples. I’m the Art Director and I take care of the positioning, branding, visual communication and graphic design, as well as the business side of things. With this in mind, we both have our own challenges that are unique to our respective roles.

For me, fashion is grounded in commercial realities and I believe graphics is a vital part of it – it essentially gives shape to what would be an intangible concept.

Through our branding – we are able to consciously manage public perception and it is also a tool for personal identification. More than an identifiable logo, branding is considered a promise, an experience and a memory. We value the importance of visual communication as much as the design of our collections. It can ultimately create and develop a look or a feeling of each collection. We believe a great idea is a start but execution is everything. Fashion is about packaging.

11. Assuming everything won’t end in 2012, where will Song for the Mute be in three years?
2012 is set to be a big year for us so we definitely will still be around! In three years we hope for both of us to be happy, healthy, proud and able to continue to do what we love with an addition of a full women’s wear line, accessories line and open up our very own Song for the Mute first flagship store.

12. Why should people care about Song for the Mute?
I can’t answer this. Why people should care about the brand is up to them. We just hope to reach out to people who love design as much as we do, offering them and any potential customer quality materials, top notch construction and unique design.

13. If there was one piece from Song for the Mute you would give every man, what would it be, and why?
A pair of our pants. Doesn’t matter which style but we believe a good pair of pants can change a person’s silhouette.
The Grandpa Pant was the very first piece we developed when we first started the label. We began with a blank canvas, we could have ventured into any market we wanted – but that one pair of pants was designed to represent us and to give a preview of who we were and who we wanted to be. It was the very first garment that Lyna presented to show me what she had in mind for the label.

We had to go through many different shapes to get it perfect – it took us 6 months which may sound ridiculous but it was necessary at the time. The pattern of the Grandpa Pant eventually became our main block for the majority of our pants.

Our thanks to Melvin for the interview, and to both he and Lyna for the opportunity to learn more about how they continue to satisfy their creative itch.

www.songforthemute.com