Noah and Depeche Mode Made the Ultimate Synth-Pop Wardrobe for Your Own Personal Jesus
“I don't want to really speak for them,” Noah founder Brendon Babenzien said in a phone interview last week, “but I think with Depeche Mode”—yes, Depeche Mode!—“they’ve never really done anything like this before.”
What they’ve done is a capsule collection with Noah, integrating some of the band’s swaggeringly melancholic visuals onto outerwear, T-shirts, scarves, and also the most pristine pair of New Wave shoes, made with Noah collaborator Solovair. The collection borrows heavily from the iconography and music videos produced for their 1990 album Violator, which was the band’s seventh but also a smash breakthrough into mainstream popularity, with “Personal Jesus,” “Enjoy the Silence,” “Policy of Truth,” and “World in My Eyes” as its four singles. “Violator was the album that catapulted them into superstardom,” Babenzien said—a record that was moody and baroque but also massively successful.
Getting some of the coolest bands on board for capsules and collaborations such as this one has become a kind of Noah specialty—Babenzien has also organized projects with The Cure, Big Audio Dynamite, Youth of Today, and many others. Many bands, such as Depeche Mode, come from a more traditional licensing background for merchandise, so “we let previous projects kind of speak for us,” Babenzien said. “The artists we’ve worked with, you know, they are artists,” he said, adding that “anyone who’s looked at what we’ve done should see that we don’t get overly commercial with it. We do our best to really explain the history of the band, who they are, who they were, why they’re relevant and important to us. And what it is about them that we love musically.”
It puts potential partners “in a position to be like, ‘Oh yeah, that is very cool. You guys have a different approach. They’re not just a money hungry, big clothing corporation.’”
The Depeche Mode collection includes graphics created by Noah, like “PERSONAL JESUS” inscribed in a cross, and stills from the band’s hypnotizing music videos by the Dutch music video director Anton Corbijn, a longtime collaborator with the band who infused their music with visuals worthy of a fantasia Italian Vogue spread. “We really strove to capture how visual they are as a band,” Babenzien said. The capsule also features the Depeche Mode rose, perhaps the group’s most potent symbol, on a black plaid shirt, a varsity jacket, and more.
Perhaps the most surprising piece in the collection is a pair of single-buckle monkstrap shoes based on a pair of Doc Martens Babenzien had during the late ’80s and early ’90s. “The buckles, to me, just felt indicative of the time,” Babenzien said. “It felt like when I was a teenager and there was hardware on the things I was into and my friends were into.” As a piece in the capsule, “it’s super subtle,” a staple of New Wave style as interpreted by the British manufacturer Solovair, the go-to footwear for English counterculture cognoscenti. To paraphrase the boys themselves, all you ever wanted, all you ever needed.
The capsule will go on sale on Thursday, December 12.