Men’s underwear label CDLP wants a new perspective on masculinity
- Swedish men’s underwear label CDLP was created out of its founders’ view that the market was boring and presented a dated view of masculinity
- Factors such as comfort, durability and aesthetics come first for the brand, while campaign shoots feature only real friends or acquaintances
Former chair of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan once said that he used sales of men’s underwear as a barometer for the health of the economy because he believed they would go down during a recession, when men skimp on necessities such as boxers and briefs.
But for Christian Larson and Andreas Palm, founders of Stockholm-based men’s underwear label CDLP, sales in recent weeks have rebounded to previous levels after taking a brief hit in the early stages of the recent coronavirus outbreak and the pair are well and truly in expansion mode.
“Men now care more about essentials and it feels that our brand is more relevant than ever,” Larson says. “We saw that during the pandemic guys would skip buying that very expensive leather jacket and instead spend money on very responsible essentials.”
Larson and Palm are both recovering from Covid-19 and are visibly spent during our video conversation. They are, however, quite pragmatic about the way that Sweden has dealt with the disease by aiming to have everyone contract the virus to create herd immunity.
The two old friends founded CDLP in 2016 after noticing that underwear was more of an afterthought for most men. The name of the label is an acronym of a French saying, cadeau de la providence, which roughly translates as “gift from God”.