BREDA is now available at Banana Republic, the first timepiece brand to be carried online and across fifty stores nationwide. It's a partnership built on shared principles: utilitarian design, timeless classics, and the belief that the best things are built to last.

For this debut, we turned to Matte Bartow. A stylist, model, and the founder of Sachraga, a design label built on the textures of wilderness and the discipline of restraint, Bartow embodies the collaboration's ethos. His relationship with clothing has always been about texture, memory, and the kind of commitment that shows in a well-worn patina. But before any of that, before the titles and the brand, before this partnership with BREDA and Banana Republic, his relationship with clothing started on a strict high school budget in upstate New York. He researched runway shows, studied the history of designers he was interested in. Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela were two of his first loves.

"I remember buying the 032c Helmut Lang issue when it came out in 2016, as well as buying scans of Rizzoli fashion books on the internet from guys who had the full collection."

What began as research became obsession. Design has always been the main pillar. But over the years, he's navigated through two key secondary principles. When he was younger, at the start of his collecting days, it was about history. "A lot of my wardrobe carried underlying fables stitched into the cloth. There were deep references tied to time periods and collection themes that I studied, and it was always a pleasure to speak on those smaller details when asked."

Today, he prioritizes construction. The clothing he wears still carries stories, but now they stem more from the personal world he builds in his mind through wearing time-honored craftsmanship. Now that he has a better understanding of himself, he puts more of his investment into the longevity of a garment.

That understanding came gradually, shaped by a condition that could have been limiting but instead became defining. Color-blind since birth, Bartow's approach to both wearing and collecting developed along parallel tracks. Growing up color blind, it was natural to only wear earth tones: grey, black, brown, and white primarily. This played a massive role in what he wore but not as much what he collected.

"Being eclectic in collecting allowed me to preview and understand a vast range of tastes while not having to make them a part of my day-to-day rotation."

The line between collector and participant blurred when he least expected it. Modeling wasn't part of the original plan. He was scouted one day in Brooklyn in an uber pool and went along with it to get closer to the industry he was studying in his free time. He left school in the Adirondacks, and his supply chain degree, to travel and live in New York City, working in the industry for a few years.

It was during this period that he began to see fashion not just as garments to collect, but as a language to speak. A pivotal moment came on a job in London for Prada. "I met a man named David Bradshaw who changed my point of view on things. He was the stylist on set but told stories of being right-hand man to Miuccia Prada and bringing Miu Miu menswear to the market in the 90's."

As a collector of this generation of Miu Miu, it showed him how blurred the lines can be in titles within the creative world. Although Bradshaw was labeled as a stylist, he offered design solutions to Miuccia as he carried a unique point of view of how garments work together in a look. That conversation planted a seed. After years of collecting, studying, and modeling, Bartow was ready to create his own vocabulary. That realization eventually led to Sachraga, the design label Bartow began in 2022 after collecting and selling hundreds of vintage garments from primarily Japanese designers. Named after the Adirondack peak Couchsachraga, derived from the Algonquin word for 'wilderness', the label distills the beauty of the mountains into garments of refined modernity.

"It's a project that began as a means to communicate the contrasts between my current life in New York City and my childhood life living between two mountain ranges in upstate New York. Another important facet of the brand is how my colorblindness makes me fixate on textures rather than a wide range of vibrant colors. While some may consider this a handicap, I have learned to cope and think of it more as a specialization."

Building his own label has given Bartow perspective on what's been lost in the industry's evolution. When he reflects on what's changed in fashion, he thinks about designers like Margiela. Contemporary fashion is now used as a broader entertainment channel, he says. It funnels every interest to relate to fashion in some way.

"When I began collecting, it was more sacred and spiritual. Martin Margiela at the helm of his brand did not show his face much or take in-person interviews. The soul of his brand was built on the way it made people feel. And that soul lives on through his brand today. It is not just clothing but a feeling and a philosophy."

Social media is an incredible platform for young people to express themselves, he acknowledges. But the soul of a brand independent of click performance and algorithms is something he admittedly misses. It's that search for soul, for brands that prioritize craft over spectacle, that drew him to this collaboration. The brands he kept when he collected through the years frequently matched his active lifestyle and roots. Not just in the way the garment is built or what it is made out of, but in the values and the design philosophy in the artists themselves.

His upbringing shaped these values. Growing up near the mountains, he was an avid climber in the Adirondacks. He wore garments from designers and brands that prioritized movement and function. But function alone wasn't enough. "I would find comfort in learning about designers that had similar life experiences or had interesting stories that relate to the way they view pieces of fabric."

Hidden functionality was always a detail he found very appealing. It is one thing to make a garment serve a purpose greater than covering the body, but traditional functionality typically comes at the cost of less refinement. He found that Banana Republic was able to execute this utilitarian design over a long period of time without any expense, and for that, he was very impressed.

That same balance of form and function drew him to BREDA. His connection to the brand came naturally, though it took time to develop. Growing up, Bartow never wore a watch. "I didn't use it, so I didn't wear it." But he was always a big fan of vintage Bulova Jump Hour watches, the small windows of numbers on a simple brushed steel face.

When he found the Pulse watch from BREDA, something clicked (literally and figuratively.) He developed a habit to always wear it. Its bracelet-like appearance with a small time window felt natural to him. It wasn't just for the sake of wearing a clock on his wrist, it was simple and geometrical and complimented a lot of what he wore. This felt like an extension of whatever he was trying to communicate with what he was wearing. "The ritual of the 'click' that it makes when it locks to my wrist is a satisfaction I will never grow tired of."

For Bartow, a watch occupies a unique place in a wardrobe. A watch adds hardware to softgoods, he explains. It doesn't drape or flow in the wind. It is sturdy and structural. Unlike jewelry that dangles and swings, a watch is stable and still. Unlike a shoe that creases and clicks, a watch is solid and silent. Trustworthy and never changing position. There when you need it.

"A companion of sorts."

His preference leans toward simplicity. He finds it comforting to have a watch that is familiar. Time passes and it stays with you. That sentiment extends to how he thinks about memory itself. For over a decade, Bartow has photographed what he wears, each wardrobe of every year of development and phase in his life. The garments he's reminded of from 5 years ago bring him to a specific event in his life. He feels the temperature of the air, remembers the song he was listening to most at the time.

"It is a bookmark of these memories that are not always easily available."

The pictures he created for this collaboration are reminiscent of that ongoing documentation, a form of time travel through material and memory. It's a practice that mirrors his broader philosophy about how clothing should exist in your life. It's a philosophy both brands seem to share. Walking into the Banana Republic store in Soho to select pieces for the collaboration confirmed what he suspected about the pairing. As someone who is very picky about everything he wears, he was surprised that most of what he tried on could easily pair well with his current favorite items. It wasn't strained or forced and the quality was not compromised.

"Banana Republic and BREDA is a very natural and mutually beneficial pairing."

That naturalness, that sense of endurance without expiration, is what Bartow values most. He recently came across a thread of Banana Republic advertisements from the 1990s and saved them to his camera roll. The beautiful thing about his admiration of an advertisement from 30 years ago is that the concept never expired and the clothing in the image he would wear to this day.

"The only true measurement of timelessness is time."