Remember when adidas took me for a run in the New Mexico desert? (It was right after my delusional trip to Japan). Whilst there, I also visited the visvim store in Santa Fe with my new friend Phil. There, we bumped into Sam Trotman, a.k.a. Samutaro.
It was a fitting place to meet him, given that Sam is one of the world’s foremost denim experts. As a teenager, he remembers being fascinated by denim culture, poring over magazines and imploring his mum to buy him off-price Evisu jeans. After completing a university course in fashion merchandising, he got an internship at a trend forecasting agency, and later became Denim Editor at WGSN.
It was around this time that he began his Instagram account, Samutaro. Initially, it was focused on denim, later expanding into adjacent subcultures. Since then he’s become one of the platform’s most respected research pages, posting carefully crafted stories about niche pockets of style, art, music and fashion, and earning the respect of people like Takashi Murakami, Tyler the Creator and the late Virgil Abloh.
Whilst the research is deep, the format is simple: each post consists of a carousel of images, accompanied by a detailed caption which describes the cultural moment or trend - recent examples include the cultural history of Ohaguro (blackened teeth), the use of infrared cameras in fashion, film and music and queer-coded denim.
In this episode of the Threads of Conversation podcast, we discuss Sam’s unique journey in the fashion industry, growing his platform, operating with integrity, and what goes into running one of Instagram’s most popular research accounts. Sam’s such a fascinating guy, and I loved hearing more about his work. I hope you do too!
As always, you can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in the player above. And you can now watch it on YouTube, too! Shoutout to my wonderful DOP Anna Niamh.
If you enjoy the episode, then don’t forget to hit the heart/ thumbs up button, and subscribe for more Threads of Conversation.
Related Threads
Threads of the week
Wearing Dries van Noten x Linda Farrow sunglasses, Hanes tank, MA2 jacket, Comme des Garçons skirt and COS boots (designed by my friend Leonie). Apart from the tank, everything is secondhand!
Loose Threads
In the photo above, I’m en route to see the incredible Noah Davies exhibition at the Barbican. Here’s one of the paintings I loved:
I was on another podcast last week! This time it was ‘Hip Replacement’ with
and . We chatted about the new KFC ad, whether James Bond can fix the masculinity crisis, if Boom Boom is an aesthetic or an attitude, kidulthood, corp-core, micro-retirements, micro trends and glamour models!Three times a charm: another podcast I really enjoyed was Thom Bettridge on the BoF podcast, talking about his career in magazines and his new vision for i-D. “We’re moving from an attention era to a retention era,” he said. I feel like magazines are really feeling exciting again: Dazed, i-D, The Face, System, all of them have great energy right now.
I recently bought this book for a friend’s birthday.
Last weekend, I went to see La Horde’s incredible new show, ‘Age of Content’. La Horde are a French dance collective, and I’ve been obsessed with their work for years. If you don’t know them, I’d recommend watching this music video they made for Rone, this film they did for Burberry, and reading this interview with The Face.
Start your own Thread
Let me know what you thought of this week’s episode! Are there any other research accounts you love? Who do you want to see next on the podcast?
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