The basic concept for The Hill-Side, a workwear-inspired accessories line that’s blowing up right about now, came from a measurement. “I had bought this vintage, hickory-stripe fabric,” explains Emil Corsillo (right), who created the Brooklyn-based, Japan-influenced brand with his younger brother, Sandy. “It happened to be 54-inches wide from selvedge to selvedge. I made a tie that ran from one end of the fabric to the other, and it worked really well for a first test—it felt like an ‘it was meant to happen’ type of thing, like the most simple, perfect solution to making a tie.”

Their square-tipped style took on fast, and soon enough, the orders—of ties and pocket squares, handkerchiefs, and scarves as well—were too big for the very small lots of salvaged fabric they were using (and which they returned to for their Of a Kind pieces, by the way). “Everything really accelerated when we found a factory in the Garment District. And we have a Japanese friend who I went to college with and who Sandy was roommates with in Brooklyn—he had gone back to Tokyo, and he found this amazing Japanese mill that we still use as our main source for fabric today,” Emil adds. “So we suddenly had this product we thought was really cool, a fabric resource that we had dreamt about, and a factory to make the stuff.”

thehill-side.com