The search for the new classic of Baracuta and Jaguar A journey from London to Milan aboard a custom made E-PACE
With the term West Midlands, we refer to all the air that extends around the airport of Birmingham, a city that together with Wolverhampton constitutes the largest English urban agglomeration after London. Historically, the Midlands has been the land of the English automotive industry. In the '70s the region produced more than 60% of all cars produced in the UK, before the explosion of globalization and the lack of economies of scale left those lands to the monopoly of a single group, the one composed by Land Rover and Jaguar. Jaguar itself was born in the center of the Midlands, in Coventry, in what has now become a lively university town, completing a transition underway throughout the area, which is rapidly transforming from an industrial area into something different.
Not far away, in Gaydon, is the Jaguar Design Studio, the place where the entire engineering and design process of every Jaguar car takes place. And it is here that the E-PACE made in collaboration with Baracuta was conceived and then built. Even though the current period is one of the most interesting for cross-sector collaborations, and although the automotive world has become increasingly interested in the world of fashion - often with very interesting results - it is never easy to succeed in bringing the two worlds together. It isn't if you don't find an important reason why the project is important, an inspirational foothold that can justify the process. In the case of Jaguar and Baracuta, that foothold was Steve McQueen.
Now that the digital era has completely transformed the way we approach the same subcultures, the idea of The Next Classic Guide is to try and remap coolness. To do so, the journey will begin in London and the work of Sam Trottman, known for his Instagram curator account, Samutaro. From the Jaguar Design Studio in Gaydon, in the middle of those Midlands that outline a landscape of countryside that everyone thinks they know but have never been there, Jaguar and Baracuta will move to one of the most active cultural centers in the modern world. From that moment on, a journey will begin that will end only in February, during Milan fashion week, and that will also involve custom makers and artists - who will have the opportunity to work on the limited edition of the G-9 - and Instagram communities and blogs that will tell the inside story of what we try to define as "next classic".
