11/12/2008
The Spanish accessories brand signs José Jiménez as their new creative director, and puts the finishing touches to their internationalisation strategy.
The Spanish accessories firm Fun & Basics has just incorporated José Jiménez into their team as the new creative director. A graduate in footwear, design, and technology, Jiménez has extensive experience with the largest companies in the sector such as Inditex. Although he will be staying faithful to the fun, urban, cosmopolitan spirit of Fun & Basics, Jiménez will also bring a breath of fresh air to their designs. His arrival at Fun & Basics is part of a strategy to consolidate brand image and begin the process of internationalising the company.
José Jiménez will make his debut at the head of the brand with the spring-summer collection 2009, although his mark is also evident this season in the form of the Goldie bag, which is already available in shops. Jiménez has imbued this creation with all the characteristics that identify the brand: functionality, high-tech fabrics – including the nylon which is already typical of Fun & Basics – and a wide range of colours.
José Jiménez has also developed the first 100 per cent authentic Fun & Basics print, which has been baptised Funatic and takes its inspiration from the sixties with tones in beige and maroon. This season the brand’s iconic shopping bag is transformed into funatic class and funatic deluxe, its urban and sophisticated versions respectively, which feature an embossed leather design. In the future the funatic range, which is definitely here to stay, will be reinvented in a variety of different materials, colours, and finishes in order to become one of the brand's emblematic designs.
Moreover, Jiménez himself has confirmed that Fun & Basics will set out to ensure that all their leather creations are chrome-free by 2010, and that by 2012 all their collections are environmentally-friendly. In the short term, the brand will release a new fabric called Ecoalf 1.0 in February 2009 which is made of 100 per cent recycled plastic bottles. It will be used to manufacture many products, from suitcases to trainers.
Since the company was founded in 1994, Fun & Basics has expanded its product ranges, and today their collections include accessories and footwear, menswear, and a line of babywear and childrenswear. The company aims to have more than 100 shops worldwide within the next few years.
