It was the new year of 2014 when I co-founded Lockwood Umbrellas : a luxury accessories business making quality fashion and bespoke umbrellas, ..and our initial break came almost immediately with being invited by Ace Hotels to conduct a Lockwood pop-up store in the foyer of their newly launched Ace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Despite only launching Lockwood that month we pulled together a display and maneuvered antique furniture into the hotel while a blizzard blew hard through NYC. I commissioned a leather bound ‘order taking’ book and we set up in the foyer of the Ace hotel for 5 days that January.
Oak, sourced and shaped in Germany, before being shipped to our workshops in London for fitting springs and the umbrella mechanism. These umbrellas were called ‘Solid sticks’ because the umbrella was fitted around a single, solid piece of wood, from crook tip to ferrule end.
Launching in this space in NYC meant Lockwood quickly gained traction and was featured in a number of publications over the next months, including Pin-Up, GQ, Fantastic Man, Monocle, AnOther magazine and Vogue and secured our first collaboration with RRL line of Ralph Lauren. Once delivered, the orginal samples so impressed Mr Ralph Lauren himself he asked if we could ship the prototypes directly to his ranch in Colorado.
“Despite only launching Lockwood that month we pulled together a display and maneuvered antique furniture into the hotel while a blizzard blew hard through NYC.”
“the orginal samples so impressed Mr Ralph Lauren himself he asked if we could ship the prototypes directly to his ranch in Colorado.”
Lockwood had been started with the premise of building a vertically integrated brand, from an umbrella factory based in London, UK all the way through to offering a fully bespoke umbrella service for private clients or edition's produced exclusively in partnership with selected brands.
Lockwood’s workshop in North London 2017.
Lockwood went on to hold another pop-up store at the Ace hotel in London for 2 months and create further exclusive collaborations with Porter Yoshida and Old Joe Brand in Japan as well as developing new extra strong compact umbrellas.
“At Lockwood we invented new components for full length umbrella design, a product whose design hadn’t been developed since th 1920’s ”
Lockwood Umbrellas. Video Esquire (USA) 2017. [Video. Hearst Digital, Esquire USA magazine].
At Lockwood we invented new components for full length umbrella design, a product whose design hadn’t been developed since th 1920’s in addition to introducing the concept of ‘good’ packaging to umbrellas, raising them from utilitarian items to desirable, fashion accessories.
Portrait of E.Gucewicz at Lockwood’s London workshop [Photo. Popeye magazine, Japan].
Lockwood ‘Pondus : Viribus’ logo, being Latin for ‘weight’ vs ‘strength’ : the core trade-off attributes of a well balanced umbrella. Designed by E.Gucewicz 2016.
I resigned from Lockwood in 2017 to pursue interests developing other fashion products and creative direction goals. But I learned a significant amount about materials, design, and running a successful fashion business from my part in this venture.
