Crane Brothers’ print edition of its Dispatch, designed by Liam Ooi, can be folded into a paper crane

Crane Brothers has been the go-to luxury shop for men’s tailoring in New Zealand for 25 years. But their spirit is not contained by just the world of tailoring – they’re playful, and like to have a bit of fun. For as long as Crane Brothers has been online, they’ve published a digital Dispatch, Designer Liam Ooi tells us. “Succinctly described as “irregular musings from the Crane Brothers team” it offers an irreverent and infrequent catch-up on happenings and goings-on. Often, its content has little to do with clothing,” says Ooi. But for their 25th anniversary, the team wanted to do something different, so they decided to launch the first-ever print edition of the Dispatch, and in classic Crane Brothers style, create something far removed from a typical fashion lookbook. They were thinking about the Japanese tradition of folding a thousand cranes for longevity, and wondered if the Dispatch itself could be turned into an origami sheet, and teamed up with Designer Liam Ooi to bring it to life. The parallels were too obvious to not dig into – of course, the folding of a paper crane for Crane Brothers, and then, the idea that each fold made by customers could remind them of the patience and precision that define the work of the brand, honed over the years. And ultimately, the act of folding a crane, a sign of longevity, becoming a wish for a prosperous future for Crane Brothers. Ooi understood each of these parallels as he began designing the edition, ultimately landing at a Dispatch that talks less, but does more. “We wanted to have fun,” says Ooi. “While there is definitely some sentimentality to folding 1,000 paper cranes, ultimately our goal is to provoke a smile from people. Hopefully, they can sense the joy we had in bringing it to life.”