One of the biggest perks of this job is discovering new brands. Some I encounter on my own, others I’m tipped off to, and still others just sort of appear in my life, and then immediately feel like they’ve always been there. In the case of New York-based Small Talk, it’s all of the above and more.
Small Talk has been around since 2020, when Nick Williams and Phil Ayers began embellishing workwear classics like garage jackets and carpenter pants with hand-drawn illustrations, releasing them in highly-limited, often one-of-one, numbers.
In 2023, Williams and Ayers launched their first ready-to-wear collection, grafting that tactile, homespun sensibility onto an assortment of easy-wearing staples—and, perhaps most impressively, discovering how to maintain that sensibility at scale.
Which brings us to their newly-launched spring 2025 drop, a culmination of the work they’ve put in thus far. “This is the collection where we feel like we’ve hit our stride,” Williams tells me this week, “and landed on what we feel is a solid and durable brand identity.”
“There’s a nice harmony to it all,” Ayers says, pointing to the balanced representation of the artful graphics first-day Small Talk fans are familiar with, and the subtler flourishes the brand continues to develop. That harmony is evident in every stitch, seam, and brush stroke splashed across the spring collection, a glorious hodgepodge of references just as indebted to the louche elegance of Serge Gainsbourg as it is the freewheeling psychedelia of the Merry Pranksters. That telltale mix helps explain the appeal. “We’re trying to put together collections that feel elevated and playful at the same time,” Williams says, “and I think that gives us a lot of room to maneuver.”
Take the brand’s showstopper of a suede jacket, a classically-proportioned blouson finished with Williams and Ayers’ signature hand-applied illustrations. On a material like suede, the DIY collage could feel jarring, cheapening the silhouette’s luxe Italian-calf exterior. In this case, though, it’s transformative, turning a hardy, handsome jacket into an heirloom-worthy one.
Or look at the brand’s sumi-dyed canvas suit, which I’ve thought about so frequently it deserves squatters’ rights in my head. It’s an “unlikely combination,” Williams notes, referring to the jacket’s kimono-like closure and tuxedo-adjacent shawl collar, to say nothing of the curved-seam double-pleated trousers that accompany it. It’s a suit you won’t find anywhere else but Small Talk, and it’s indicative of the brand’s irreverent approach to the newer silhouettes in its repertoire.
That irreverence is also accounted for in more technical flourishes, like a “mesh stripe” knit polo in which the stripes are actually crocheted across the torso, much the same way the western-style yokes are rendered on this sneaky-freaky cotton-poplin shirt.
That particular type of juxtaposition is what Williams and Ayers have been aiming for all along, going back to their days of doodling on chore coats. Those original hand-drawn pieces were special, but they were also something much simpler, and a lot harder to achieve: fun. Fun, as you’re probably aware, is in perilously short supply at the moment. So when the opportunity to embrace light-jacket season in a gloriously-graffitied suede stunner comes along, who wouldn’t take it?
