Heritage
A house, in its own words
Sjaak Hullekes built his reputation as a menswear designer in the Netherlands before turning his attention to the structural waste problems of the fashion industry. Together with Sebastiaan Kramer, he founded Hul le Kes in Arnhem, a city with a long tradition of fashion manufacturing. The pair had previously launched Studio RYN, a small-scale production company that produces limited runs for young designers, which informed the technical backbone of their later label. In 2018, after a period of reflection on fashion's environmental footprint, Hullekes and Kramer formalized Hul le Kes as a sustainable, circular, and socially minded brand. The label is anchored in Arnhem's Hommelstraat neighborhood, where the Hullekes Salon serves as a meeting point for clients, wine, and conversation around timeless, locally produced garments. The brand's name, Hul le Kes, is a playful rendering of the founders' surnames, a Dutch convention that gives the house a distinctly personal identity. Fragrance entered this ecosystem in 2012 with 64, created in collaboration with Barnabé Fillion, marking Hullekes' first move into scent as an extension of his fashion philosophy. At the core of Hul le Kes lies a refusal to introduce new raw materials into the world. Every garment is produced from recycled fabrics, and the brand relies on natural dyes drawn from plant-based sources rather than synthetic alternatives. This circular logic shapes not only the studio's output but its pace: production runs are intentionally small, and each piece carries the character of the materials it was made from. Hullekes has described the brand as a return to local, small-city manufacturing, a model that values proximity, transparency, and the people behind each garment. When the label moved into fragrance, the same principles applied. The brand's sole perfume, 64, was conceived as an olfactory portrait of the Hul le Kes atmosphere rather than a conventional men's or women's launch, and was designed to be worn by anyone regardless of gender. Scent, like clothing, becomes a vehicle for the brand's broader worldview: considered, unhurried, and grounded in material honesty.