Part 1: How It All Began
Made for the Stands – the story behind Casualline · Part 1
It was the summer of 2024. Casualline was actually meant to be a side project – build something small, see where it goes. But that thought didn't last long. Pretty quickly, we wanted to turn it into something really big.
Every beginning is hard, and ours truly was. We lacked almost everything you need in this industry: experience, contacts, know-how. We paid a lot of tuition the hard way. Our first sampling attempts went completely wrong – in the end, we were holding full-zip sweat jackets produced in Asia that didn't come close, quality-wise, to what we had imagined. Frustrating. But in hindsight, one of the most important moments, because it made us understand what we actually wanted. Nothing half-hearted, but "all or nothing".
Why clothing in the first place? Because we live and breathe football. For years we made our pilgrimage to the stadium, and at some point you simply belong to the Casual culture. We didn't just want to wear that feeling, we wanted to help shape it. It started with a T-shirt and ended with a winter jacket – at some point the wardrobe only had one style left to give.
Many readers will know this: you only really felt like you belonged once you were kitted out like everyone else. With Fred Perry or Lyle & Scott, and for the old-school guys, Stone Island or C.P. Company. The North Face, on the other hand, we filed under the outdoor segment fairly early on rather than the Casual cosmos. The prices of these brands were, of course, quite the jaw-droppers at first. But like anyone who moves in these circles, we quickly understood: this was not a cheap style of dress to choose.
On top of that came frustration with what the market offers. At many established brands, quality has noticeably declined. You buy, you wash it – and the piece shrinks or simply stops looking good after a very short time. So you buy again and wait for the next sale. A cycle that has nothing left to do with the idea behind good clothing.
And then there was something else: many brands have drifted away from their roots. Clothing that was the heart of the Casual scene in the late 90s is now worn by US rappers in music videos. The style got lost. Instead of subtle logo placement that only true connoisseurs would notice, huge prints suddenly appeared across chest and back.
That's exactly where we wanted to start. Back to Old-School-Casual. Back to lasting quality and back to subtle details.
That was the beginning. A lot of what came after was harder than expected. And that's exactly what we want to tell you honestly in this series: about setbacks, small wins, and the whole road to the launch on August 10.