Lars Stoten found his love for fashion at a young age, influenced and inspired by his grandfather’s work as a tailor. Stoten went on to study at both the academically rigorous Denmark Designskole (DKDS) as well as the prestigious Otaru Bunka School of Fashion in Japan, and later garnered experience in the fashion world from Paris to London. Stoten now runs his menswear line Mjölk in his Chinatown studio in New York City, where LINE spoke with him about the difference between menswear and men’s fashion, his dislike of the term gender, and why cutting a good garment is so important.

LINE: Where did you grow up?

LARS STOTEN: I was always between London and Denmark. My grandfather had a tailor shop just outside of Copenhagen where he would tailor make suits, he use to make police uniforms, all that sort of stuff. It was really him who got me interested in fashion.

LINE: Where did you study?

LS: I applied to a few places and I studied at St. Martins for a half of a semester and I just couldn’t do it, it wasn’t my thing. So I went to DKDS and took some applied courses and then I went into construction and tailoring, and when I finished up there I went to Japan and studied at Otaru Bunka, which is a technical school in Hokkaido. The Japanese know how to construct a garment and that was the point of being there. I studied in Japan for two years and was working for this traditional Japanese costume designer,