Following the launch of DORKO’s collection, new Balaton-related T-shirts have cropped up on the market. However, Balcsi Original is not a mere collection, it is an entire brand. The webshop is already up and running, and the T-shirts will soon be available via ONE Fashion Store, too. The concept of the brand originally comes from two soldiers of the Budapest advertising scene, Tamás Hlavaty (pictured) and Csaba Török. The former gentleman answered some of We Love Balaton’s questions sent via e-mail.
WLB: On your website you can see that the starting point for the brand is the clichéd yet adored Balaton feeling: lángos, being on a train heading to Lake Balaton, summer dates. How did the idea of a clothing brand come about?
Tamás Hlavaty: It may sound crazy, but there are clichés that people love. Clichés like watching the game with your buddies, getting drunk at the weekend, and of course, going to Lake Balaton and doing all the compulsory Balaton things. But this is not where we got the idea. About a year ago, I sat down with Csabi Török, the other founder of Balcsi Original, to brainstorm for @RC. We were working on a poster idea when, after a few detours, we came to the realization that Lake Balaton had never had its own brand. Any kind of merchandise sold in shops at the time was impossible for young people and tourists to identify with, while the lake had become insanely trendy in the meantime: festivals, national and international tourism etc. You only have to have a look online to see the enthusiasm - Instagram doesn’t lie. The bottom line is that Balcsi (as Lake Balaton is affectionately referred to by Hungarians) deserves its own brand. This is what we set out to do.
WLB: You go out on the street or pop down to the store, and you are guaranteed to run into at least one person donning a T-shirt adorned with palm trees and phrases characteristic of Hawaii or other exotic places. In a local sense, can Balaton be a similar land of dreams you wear on your T-shirt?
T.H.: Of attainable dreams that you can actually live, yes, it can. But that may be an overly ambitious claim. It is more than enough that it’s a fantastic region with a lot going for it, a lot of beautiful locations. It is amazing regardless of whether you are in it, near it or above it. Lake Balaton has become a cool brand automatically, the same way Budapest has in the past few years. This is exactly why we believe the view of Füred or an image showing the Zamárdi vibe is just as effective on a neatly printed T-shirt as Los Angeles or Hawaii, both of which are a million miles away in many regards. Let’s not forget that there are places we are attached to and we can be proud of. We have short-term plans for launching a collection which incorporates that philosophy, but more on that in a minute.
WLB: You come from Érsekújvár, and you currently live in Budapest. How does Balaton come into the picture?
T.H.: Actually, I come from a tiny village located near Érsekújvár, on the bank of the Váh river, so I grew up by the water despite paddling to Hungary pretty soon. Csabi was born outside the Hungarian border as well, he comes from Nagyvárad, so we have a lot in common, beside the fact that we have sat next to each other for a year and a half at the marketing agency we work at. Our love for Lake Balaton is such a common trait. Even though I have no childhood memories of Balcsi, it took me no time at all to fall in love with it. My girlfriend, for example, is from Balatonaliga, so I visit quite often, and Csabi can almost exclusively be found in Füred at summer weekends.
WLB: Northern or southern shore?
T.H.: Buda or Pest? The Stones or The Beatles? Giving an answer to questions like these doesn’t get any easier for me. Saying “both” would be a cop-out, so I think I’ll say I tend to hang out more on the “south coast”, but the north coast is close to my heart as well. Unfortunately, there are many towns I haven’t checked out yet, so I definitely need to go on a bike trip, which I’ll do before I get dissed for not having wandered all around the lake. Do you have a bike? Mine just gave out today.
WLB: Do you think the Balaton feeling is encapsulated more by the sticky, oily lángos served in lakeside food stands or the urban milieu of hip Füred establishments? What is there to love about Balaton?
T.H.: If it was only one of the two, demand for Lake Balaton would naturally be half as intense. It is attractive exactly because everyone finds something to love about it, often within a single beach or stretch of shore. We tried to show every segment of Balaton in our collection, and to put a spin on things to achieve a trendy result, be it a typographic design or a colourful pattern. The products are your pass to the Balcsi Original club, whose members can put on pieces with the kind of vibe best representing the essence of the place for them.
WLB: Would you want to live by Balaton, or do you think it is a specifically summertime destination you can start pining after come 1 September?
T.H.: This is obviously a subjective and age-dependent thing. If you were to ask me in a couple of decades, I’d say I couldn’t imagine spending my old days anywhere else. What I can tell you now is that I love going down and coming back, so that I have something to look forward to again. I believe in motion. And I believe that Balcsi is as exciting in September, December or March as in the summer, even if the number of bikini-clad chicks plummets around these months…
