The Working Hour is a project created by Robbie Lawrence showcasing the Thom Browne x Asics collaboration.
"we remember the suit because a suit is sometimes the first thing to seem out of place. we remember the suit because running in a suit is the stuff of suspense. it's all wrong and spellbinding. it's instantaneous. there is no un-seeing it."
it was a long time coming. two artists who share a deeply similar approach to form. to trusting the form and repeating it, over and over, and claiming—with repetition—the beauty of resisting reaction. the designer thom browne has always been a runner. he describes his time on foot as wonderfully devotional and alone, when his mind is "free and open." ideas take shape and collections come together because running—much like his single-minded, decades-long project—requires focusing on "one thing, really well."
Similarly, the photographer Robbie Lawrence, whose crepuscular images often reflect a symphony of light and movement, with a profound consideration for person and place, draws inspiration from recurrence. He likens his process to painters who work over the same canvas, allowing previous layers to emerge. A sort of sustained practice that is both divine and grounded with compositions that are naturally enchanted by shadows, almost reassured by what is concealed.
Like Browne, Lawrence's work is patient and studied. Direct and honest. One is tempted to use the word timeless because his photographs—like the ones in this collaboration—count on the soft collision of contrast. Like, warmth as it makes nice with cool, or two faces generations apart, or perhaps the most striking, moments of speed, totally accelerated and breathless, that feel instead like the rarest thing: pause.
