Wristchat with Jack Carlson, Author, Designer and Founder of Rowing Blazers

Last summer, Jack Carlson, hit the headlines for launching a trio of bright and bold Seiko 5 watches inspired by his own personal '70s-era Seiko Sport Diver. The multicolored, checkered bezels paired with gloriously mismatched straps were an instant hit and the entire collection was sold out within a few minutes of the announcement. Inspired by vintage rugby shirts and an old Mets pennant, Carlson is back with a fresh quartet of Seiko 5 watches infused with his trademark preppy remix. Instead of playing with the bezel, this time, Carlson and his design partner Eric Wind have introduced some fun elements on the dial itself.
 

From introducing Rowing Blazers — the book in 2014 to Rowing Blazers the brand in 2017— and now the second watch collaboration with Seiko, Carlson has come a long way. We caught up with him to know more about his exciting journey as the founder of one of the most successful menswear brands in recent years and his foray into horology.

Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey into Rowing Blazers.

I've been involved in the sport of rowing since I was about 11-years-old. I was in grad school studying archaeology and I wrote the book as a passion project. That's where the brand Rowing Blazers comes from. I was, then, training full-time with the U.S. National Team for a couple of years and the brand was kind of my side project. I've since just been pursuing things that I'm interested in and passionate about.

Which was your first watch?

Well, I had a G-Shock that I wore all through high school. It was navy and yellow, which was my high school colors. It was very important to have a digital watch for rowing. I was the coxswain on the team and needed a digital watch. It wasn't my first nice watch. I won Henley many years after first competing there in 2013 and Bremont was one of the sponsors. I was in the Britannia Challenge Cup and received a Special Edition Henley Royal Regatta Winner's Timepiece. That's definitely one of the very special watches in my collection. It's engraved with my initials, the event and the year.

What made you dig deeper into the sartorial history of your favorite sport? Did you always envision yourself as an entrepreneur?

The book was directly related to the sport. The brand is related to the sport and comes out of the book but is less literal than the book. The book was inspired by a trip that I took with my teammates for a competition back when I was in high school in 2004, to Henley Royal Regatta. It's very traditional, I'd say even more so than Wimbledon, in terms of how much it's kept its traditions. One of those traditions is that when you're not competing, or if you're there spectating, you have to wear your club blazer. I saw and met so many different people from all over the world, wearing these different blazers in crazy colors. It really fascinated me. There were rowers from the Netherlands that had a sleeve missing on their blazer, some of them walking around with blazers made out of old curtains. There were so many great stories and I thought someone should write a book about this. Seven years later, when I was in grad school at Oxford, I realized that maybe I should be the one to write that book.

I had been involved in the sport for a while and had raced to the World Championships. I had friends in rowing from all over the world. I had always been interested, I wouldn't say, in fashion with a capital 'F' but in menswear clothing, the history of clothing and in heraldry. I've always believed clothing should be colorful, it should be fun. That's kind of the spirit of the brand — colorful, nostalgic and inspired by sport.

How did your collaboration with Seiko come about?

It's especially rewarding because I get to work with Eric Wind, whom I've been friends with since the very first day of college in 2005. He introduced me to the Seiko team, when Rowing Blazers was about five days old. I think at the time they had no idea what to do with us. I mean, I had no idea what we were going to do together because I was still figuring out just how to do Rowing blazers. We kept in touch and the Seiko team reached out in 2019. We ended up working on the first collection, which came out in the summer of 2021. We had already started working on this second capsule at the end of 2020, even before that first one came out.

What was the inspiration behind the second capsule collection of Rowing Blazers x Seiko?

The latest capsule is inspired by a 1970 Seiko Sport Diver, which has a bright orange dial that I've had since 2017. I bought it from a friend of mine, Alan Bedwell of Foundwell, he was part of our first-ever popup. I just fell in love with it. We basically took that aesthetic and launched it in several different colors, and orange is one of them. With the second capsule, I wanted to play more with bright colors on the dial. There is no bezel, which is part of a conscious choice to have a smaller case — it just makes it a little more wearable for everybody. We were very insistent on having both English and Japanese kanji days in the day complication. Seiko kind of pushed back on us on that. I think they almost always do English and Spanish, when a watch is primarily for the American market, but we convinced them to do English and Japanese. It's just those fun little details that make it for me.

From introducing Rowing Blazers — the book to Rowing Blazers — the brand, what has been the biggest turning point in your career so far?

When I launched the brand in 2017, a lot of people were actually telling me not to do it and that it was not going to work. Basically because it was going to be preppy and that was not what was happening in fashion at the time. When we launched, I think people didn't quite understand what it was that we were gonna do. I had the vision but until other people actually saw it, I think it was hard. It was hard for people to wrap their heads around it. So we did a popup six months after we launched — there was a line outside and down the block. We were very small, we didn't have a big Instagram following, a big press team or anything like that. I was amazed by the response. That was a big turning point — the first moment of feeling a lot of validation for what we were doing.

There were a lot of turning points along the way subsequent to that. Our very first collaboration was with J. Crew, that was a big moment. When we launched our fall 2020 collection, we relaunched these two iconic sweaters, famously associated with Princess Diana. We worked with the original designers, the Warm & Wonderful "Sheep" sweater and the Gyles & George “I’M A LUXURY” sweater. That was a big turning point. I would also say our first Seiko collaboration, which came out last year, was also a big turning point. The response to that collaboration last year was strong and overwhelmingly positive. That was a big surprise to me. In terms of sales and how quickly they sold out and were selling on the secondary market, all of that is not stuff that I took for granted at all. It was a very big moment for the brand.

Your favorite style icons?

Princess Diana, King Charles III, Tom Ripley, Andre 3000, Arthur Ashe, David Hockney, Vincent Cassel. Muhammad Ali. Pablo Escobar, that's controversial. Frank Ocean, Tintin, Gwyneth Paltrow, Björn Borg, Biggie, Babar, Peter Arno, who is a cartoonist for The New Yorker, Duncan Hannah. January Jones, Billy Idol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a U.S. senator. Jesse Owens, David Bowie, Inspector Morse from the British TV show, François Hardy, Eazy-E, Alexa Chung, Indiana Jones. They all dress in a way that is very mindful of the classics and of the rules, but also, breaking the rules in a perfect way. Color is a big theme, there’s a sense of style.
 

Thoughts on vintage watches?

Right now, I have a nice little collection. Eric is my watch rabbi. I always get Eric's advice before I do anything. I think one thing in this vein that's been kind of cool is like the Domino's Rolex, which I've posted on Instagram many times and we've sold several now on Rowing Blazers. It was a pandemic project, and shouldn't even be called a project. It was just something Eric and I did for fun without even really realizing it. I had been so into that watch for a long time. I think many people in fashion and in the creative world were fascinated by this watch.
 

According to Eric, it was not very desirable in the watch community, and was often regarded as the cheapest Rolex that you could get, because people didn't want to have Domino's Pizza logo on the dial of their Rolex. Many of my friends in fashion have had the watch on their mood board forever but I never knew anyone that actually had one. So during the pandemic, I ended up getting like three. Eric then bought a few. And then I bought a couple more. We were probably paying anywhere from USD 2000 to USD 4000 each. We just ended up buying, I think, every Domino's Rolex that was on the market at that time. I didn’t really want it to sell but I thought it would just be a cool thing to put up there.

We basically just did that a few more times. I don't want anyone reading this to be mad at us. We inadvertently changed the price of these Domino's Rolexes. The reason why that happened is because we bridged the gap between how the watches were perceived in the watch community, and how basically a lot of menswear nerds, those in fashion and creative individuals viewed the watch, which was, it being very desirable, but didn't really know, where could you actually get one and know that it's the real thing, and so on. We bridged that gap, that was a weird, fun thing to be involved in. But apologies to everyone for accidentally changing the price of those watches.

What can we expect of RB in the coming years? What kind of collaborations are you working on?

It is an adventure. It has been one since the very beginning and continues to be. We have some very exciting collaborations coming up in the next year or two, including doing more with Seiko and some very cool projects with a few other watch brands that I love as well.
 

Finally, if you had a five watch collection, which watches could we expect to see?

A Paul Newman Daytona, a Cartier Crash, I guess one other that I don't have and you could add to the list — the Tintin Speedmaster. Dominos Rolex, my 1970 Seiko Sport Diver and the Rally Bezel Rowing Blazers Seiko from our first capsule.