ALIS—from skatewear to streetwear.
ALIS: from skateboarding to streetwear.
For an industry that’s purportedly driven by change, fashion loves a comeback and puts a whole lot of stock in the idea of heritage. Rains’ Philip Lotko and Daniel Brix Hesselager certainly endorsed these ideas when they acquired the 28-year-old Danish skate line ALIS and tasked Tobias Birk Nielsen with reimagining it as a contemporary streetwear fashion label. ALIS 2.0 will be introduced to the world at Copenhagen Fashion Week with a big show, followed in a few months with a store-cum-“playground and universe.”
ALIS (pronounced like Alice) was a skate brand named after its cofounders Albert Hatchwell Nielsen and Isabelle Hammerich that was started in Freetown Christiania 1996. (That’s “just a year after Supreme,” noted Lotko on a call, adding that he doesn’t know if the founders were aware of that fact.) Sales of cannabis were legal in Freetown until 2004, and, in Lotko’s telling at least, along with T-shirts, the company also dealt in “what else you were selling in Christiania back then [hash cash] to make everything go around.”
From the start, there was a strong sense of community based on location and skateboarding—Albert is responsible for building Christiania’s Wonderland skate park. Isabella, who remains involved with the company, “represented something else—she was pushing way more into a fashion forward contemporary segment,” Lotko explains. The decline of the brand in recent years seemed to mirror that of Christiania itself. When ALIS was sold in 2022, Albert was out, upsetting local skaters. Rains bought the brand in late 2023.
A preview of ALIS’ autumn 2025 campaign.
A review of the ALIS Fall 2025 campaign.
Nostalgia is one of the driving forces behind this resurgence; the other is advertising knowledge. No matter how talented the founders were, Lotko says, they were not able to “run a company and organize the backbone of what could have become a real export story in Copenhagen. ” He and Hesselager want to replace that and much more. “We have to cut some roots and cut some ties to the afterlife in order to grow something new,” Lotko says. “And one of the things we want to cut is probably the ties with Christiania in order to flourish elsewhere. ” Additionally, The new ALIS focuses on cool urban clothing. “We are not skaters. We will not build a new brand of skateboards,” Lotko called under pressure. But “we are humble. We will pay homage and have the utmost respect for this culture. ” This sentiment was echoed by Nielsen, who does not wish to be perceived as creating “a fake skate brand. “
For Lotko and Hesselager, this “return” is largely related to nostalgia. “We were little kids in the late ’90s, so we grew up seeing those logo T-shirts that said ALIS all over town,” Lotko says. “It actually existed at that time because it was underground. It was a type of movement. For Nielsen, the task has many other levels. A graduate of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he ended his eponymous line after wasting his wife. ALIS obviously represents a new beginning on a very private level, but it also sees the bigger picture when it talks about “the honest and sincere power that we, the modest team [ALIS], have deployed to give this iconic logo that we know many Other people worry about a loving impulse towards a new solid island to stand on.
A general than niche audience means an expanded product range, adding new categories (accessories and shoes) and new fabrics (leather and denim). According to Nielsen, the task is not to bridge skatewear and fashion, yet streetwear and fashion through channeling the original team’s “crazy preference to create” a wardrobe of “everyday garments that you can use in many situations”.
A sneak peek at the fall 2025 ALIS campaign.
A preview of ALIS’ autumn 2025 campaign.
Although streetwear has long been part of Danish culture, business-wise it hasn’t been a large part of the fashion conversation. Lotko sees opportunity in a Copenhagen Fashion Week calendar that has changed with Ganni’s move to Paris and the closing of Saks Potts and (di)vision. “I think there’s definitely something that’s up for grabs in showcasing a new interesting take on what a creative streetwear brand from here could look like in 2025.”
Skaters may be obnoxious and not everyone who knows the ALIS legacy will like those changes, but the new owners are moving forward. “Back then, anything as undeniable as wearing an ALIS t-shirt was enough to make you a part of anything and show that you had a connection, simply through a logo and a t-shirt,” Nielsen says. “We need to give the new generation this platform so that they can also connect through ALIS, as we had the opportunity to do. “
The part of the legacy the team most wants to carry forward is a spirit of freedom, one that is both specific to the brand and associated with skate culture more broadly. “As a creator, I work the absolute best when I connect with the message that I’m conveying professionally,” Nielsen adds. “We believe that by talking through a sincere voice, showing there are actual real humans putting in an effort to bring back something we once had close to our hearts that [we] will connect to others out there who find themselves in situations where putting in extra effort and walking that extra mile ends up making sense.”
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