I’m just going to get this out of the way. I don’t remember the details, and it doesn’t matter at all anymore, but I recall that the first interaction between Brice and me (on email) did not go well at all. That’s all. Moving on.

Back in 2018 or maybe a little before, I walked into INNER. on Via Pasquali Paoli in Milan. On the rack in the back corner by the cash register, there hung two or three garments which appeared to be running clothes. I checked the price tag on an iridescent pistachio colored windbreaker and thought to myself, “well these can’t be running clothes…no one would buy running clothes that cost that much!”. I bought the iridescent pistachio-colored windbreaker.

There are two landmarks in running apparel which I am aware of:

1: My mom always talks about her early years at Blue Ribbon Sports where she created the Windrunner jacket back “before they invented running,” as she always says. Running was not a sport that normal people did for exercise, and there were no clothes to wear which were running specific. This was the genesis of the Nike which we now know today.

2: Somewhere in 2010, Jun Takahashi created Gyakusou for Nike and running became cool. And somewhere in 2015, Brice Partouche created Satisfy and running became “Rock and Roll”.

We aren’t going to talk about running anymore though. That’s too obvious. I’ll talk about running when I show you the photos of Tommy Hubert (also of Satisfy). We are going to talk about community as this is what I see that Brice is providing through his work.

Touch down in Florence for Pitti Uomo twice a year and there is a group chat which I made, titled “Pitti Pain Patrol”. All the guys (and some girls) meet at the crack of dawn on Ponte Vecchio, and we rip up the hills of Santo Spirito and up to the summit well above Piazza Michelangelo, where we watch the sunrise while we taste iron in our spit.

In Milan groups of us will meet around Porto Venezia before the shows. In Paris we congregate to Ob-La-Di, a café owned by Brice in Le Marais, where an ever-growing group gathers to get our collective heart rate up before appointments and shows. In Copenhagen there are daily group runs hosted by an assortment of brands who are beginning to realize the power of movement and the force of a community with actual purpose behind it.

Brice did not invent the idea of a running community, I’m fully aware of that. But, in my opinion, Brice, through his brand, allowed running to become something less strict, which no longer needed to fit inside a box that had been established so long before. A reinvention of the wheel, if you will. And just as Rapha did this with cycling back in the early 2000’s, Satisfy broke the mold of running.

The point here is supposed to show how a person, through their work, can challenge the way that we perceive everyday things. You do not need to own anything from Satisfy. It’s expensive. I choose to wear Brice’s designs often, as I feel like it somehow ties me to an ethos. Maybe it does. Or maybe it’s just excellent marketing by the brand.

I’m standing in Brice’s living room now. The room is not rock and roll. I thought it was going to be very rock and roll. The room is calm and warm. Dare I say, hyggeligt. There are vinyl records, of course. Little hints of rock and roll, but the space surprises me. It’s beautiful, but completely different than how I would have imagined it. We have some coffee with his partner, Alisa. Everything in the apartment is white, cream, or beige, and I’m terrified of spilling my bean juice, as it may cause irreparable damages.

I make two visits to the Satisfy offices, six months apart from one another. The brand is growing, and the office is expanding. The construction you see in these images has since been completed. The first visit I photograph Brice at his desk wearing a Mister Green hat, sitting in front of his collection of RC cars. One image of the cars accidentally shows an upcoming shoe collaboration which I cannot show until August of this year. The second visit I photograph Brice trying on my jacket, designed by my buddy Colin Meredith.

That’s all. No big epic story. Brice is a guy I find inspiring not only through his work, but as an individual. I know it’s not very rock and roll of me, but I love these little moments in peoples’ private spaces. Early mornings. Lunch breaks. I just dip in and out of their lives, seeing little glimpses behind the curtain.

Thanks, Brice.