By The Fashion Editorial Team
Fashion is a story of reinvention, but few returns feel quite as momentous as this one. Sander Lak, the visionary behind the beloved yet shuttered Sies Marjan, steps back into the spotlight with the debut of Sanderlak, his new eponymous label. Unveiled this June through private appointments during Paris Men’s Fashion Week, the launch marks not just a return—but a reframing. While Sies Marjan's collections burst with cinematic flair, Sanderlak takes a contemplative path by exploring identity and place. Each year, the brand will center its collections around a specific place, with that location influencing the themes, palette, textures, and mood through the seasons. Starting with Los Angeles, places serve as anchors, guiding the design process and prompting deeper reflections on transience, belonging, and the idea of ‘home.’
Born in Brunei and raised across continents—from Malaysia to Gabon to Scotland and the Netherlands—Lak’s designs have always carried a borderless sensibility: a painter’s palette with a nomad’s soul. After training at ArtEZ and earning a master’s in menswear from Central Saint Martins, he went on to design at Phillip Lim, Balmain, and Dries Van Noten, before founding Sies Marjan in 2016. The label achieved a swift and singular success, marked by its fearless use of color and emotional resonance. In 2018, Lak was named CFDA’s Emerging Designer of the Year. By launching Sanderlak, Lak refines his vision with a nostalgia-tinged fluency of color and conceptual richness into something quieter, deeper, more enduring. Presented through private appointment in Paris during Men's Fashion Week, Sanderlak's guiding philosophy is on intimacy over immediacy.
With collaborations spanning from Maharam to Rem Koolhaas, Lak has made a unique imprint upon the fashion industry. His tenure under the critically acclaimed Sander Lak line was illustrated in a monograph documenting the visual and conceptual development of the brand, The Colors of Sies Marjan, published by Rizzoli. Shaped by Lak’s global upbringing, the new line offers fashion a rare moment of reprieve amidst the frenetic pace of seasonal collections. Transporting audiences to future global locales, one can expect a continual exploration of traditions, heritage, and transience through the brand’s design philosophy—all under the concept of place and where we all call ‘home.’
