Authenticity is elusive in today’s fashion landscape. So, when a brand like Siegelman Stable comes along that can simultaneously and effortlessly straddle several different cultural touchpoints, it makes you take notice. Leveraging Equestrian heritage with modern New York aesthetics - bridging the gap between sports and style - there is an elusive simplicity that Max Siegelman and Karoline Spenning bring to their project. With an uncompromising certainty of who they are and what they stand for, the two seamlessly connect the dots between seemingly disparate elements. What they are doing lends itself to the contemporary mindset - that we exist not just in a single context or aesthetic, but as a multitude of interests and influences at once. Siegelman Stable is refreshing because they acknowledge and embrace the diversity of interests that makes them unique.

Q - How did Siegelman Stable come to be? How did the idea of translating the stable into a clothing brand come to fruition?

A - Siegelman Stable, the racing stable, came to be in the 70s as my father took a liking to horses. He grew up not far from a racetrack on Long Island, New York, and started working at the track during high school. When he went to college for soccer, he could never escape his love of horses and found ways to keep them in his life in Jacksonville, Florida. As he came to his senior year, he had a choice to play professional soccer or go back home and see what to do next. The choice to go home led him back to his passion for horses. He opened his own stable in 1982, training race horses for individuals and groups of owners. He saw early success as a young trainer and continued to get more involved in the “horse world”. He always had a passion for helping others and saw an opportunity to help people through the power of horses. A different kind of horsepower you could say is really what he felt strongly about. He started equine therapy programs for veterans coming home from war and suffering from PTSD, inner-city youth programs to open opportunities for underprivileged communities and children with special needs. Using his racehorses for more than just racing, and giving him a purpose to help others.

Fast forward to 2020, like most of us, I was stuck at home working from my couch. Not having to travel as much for work, I found myself with extra time on my hands. At that point, I decided to take the two logos he had for his racing stable in the 80’s and create hats and sweatshirts. I had zero intention to sell pieces, I invested a few hundred bucks to just make a few dozen of each for family and friends. Working in the creative world with music artists and athletes, I had a few of those folks reach out when they saw me posting them on Instagram. I was lucky enough to have a few of those individuals wear the pieces before I even launched a Shopify. When it got to the point of remaking these same few pieces and selling them, I always said no matter where this all went, I would stay true to my dad’s story and donate a portion of proceeds to equine therapy programs. Here we are just over four years later and the brand evolution has been crazy. Not too different than a Pyrex with Virgil Abloh or others, just printing and embroidering on blanks, to full cut and sew with over 50 SKU’s. This has a lot to do with my fiancé and creative director, Karoline Spenning. Her eye and vision for the brand is beyond impressive. With a passion for both design and storytelling, she has worked across the fashion industry, styling high-profile clients and creative directing. Her mix of design expertise and strategic vision allows her to bring concepts to life, merging aesthetics with purpose in every project she touches. It’s beyond amazing that we get to do this together; building and growing this brand side by side. We are just getting going!

Q - Family is such a large part of the brand story, as the brand evolves and grows how do you continue to keep that front and center?

A - Well, if you ask my dad, we have two CEO’s, him being the Chief Equine Officer. This brand doesn’t exist without the family story and will continue to be a part of the ethos for as long as it exists. As we continue to plan projects and our own collections, we lean in on the initial 80s luxury contemporary aesthetic that Siegelman Stable in its inception comprised of. There are tons of threads to our family story throughout everything we do, even if our customers don’t see them all.

Q - What skillsets or past experiences positioned the two of you to be able to succeed with Siegelman Stable?

A - Luckily, we both have totally different skill sets. This is why we make an amazing team to get this done. Max has his creative experience in the entertainment world and his superpower of “connecting the dots” and being at the pulse of culture. Karoline has a passion for both design and storytelling, she has worked across the fashion industry, making her own clothing, styling high-profile clients, and creative directing projects. Having the two of us finally being able to focus on different sides of the business, has been a part of the brand growth.

Q - Your collaborations, particularly with New York sports teams, have really resonated with your audience, feeling both cohesive and organic. How do you think about and look at collaborations?

A - Being able to have the biggest names in sports in New York rep us has been unbelievable as a New York-born brand. Our organic growth in our hometown adds to our slow and steady growth strategy. Collaborations for us have been an intricate part of our marketing. It allows us the opportunity to story-tell alongside an existing brand that has an enthusiastic audience. Our adoption into culture, especially through sports and music, has been a huge differentiator for us, and I think it speaks to our brand story being so real and relatable.

Q - How do the two of you find the right balance in working day-to-day with your romantic partner on such a fast-paced creative endeavor as a new brand?

A - This is forever evolving! We come back to the fact that we get to do it all together. We get to travel together, do work dinners together and we get to understand what one another is going through on a daily basis. It’s not always as easy as it sounds, because in moments of the brand’s forever evolution, the clock is never turned off. There are plenty of days where we are talking work from 6 am-midnight and it just is what it is. We have tried to implement weekly or daily things to take us away from work and give us our time, but the reality is you can’t plan for a lot of what happens when building and growing a business, especially when it is going well; you just get busier. The silver lining remains, we get to spend hours and hours together and own something together, its super rare and super special.

Q - Tell us about the latest collection, how has it evolved from previous collections, and what is your intention with this one?

A - This collection encompasses a lot of elements of our brand-building over the last twelve months. From our original headwear evolution and styles, now making leather and wool hats, to our knits and full wool jackets with metal clasps. Bringing this to an in-person shopping experience in Aspen, Colorado for the first time and online with FWRD/FWRD Man will welcome new customers to learn about our brand, our story, and our quality and join our journey as we continue to build. We are still so young as a brand and have such big aspirations for where we want to go.