Highsnobiety Magazine 16 - Summer 2018

16 S P R I NG /S UMME R

STONE ISLAND KELELA R E G I N A L D S Y L V E S T E R II METRO BOOMIN FTP

LIL MIQUELA

2 01 8

Bal Harbour

South Coast Plaza

j o h nv a r v a t o s . c o m

Nic k Jon a s New York , N Y 2018

Bal Harbour

South Coast Plaza

j o h nv a r v a t o s . c o m

Nic k Jon a s New York , N Y 2018

WWW.STONEISLAND.COM

WWW.STONEISLAND.COM

Calvin Klein 205W39NYC: Andy Warhol, Sandra Brant, 1971 ©/®/™ The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc.

V ISIT OU R N YC M E N’S STORE O PE NIN G TH IS APRIL AT 2 35 WEST 57T H ST RE ET

SH O P A ND GET M O RE I NFO AT N O R DSTR O M.C O M/ME N

SPRING 2018

Calvin Klein 205W39NYC: Andy Warhol, Sandra Brant, 1971 ©/®/™ The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc.

V ISIT OU R N YC M E N’S STORE O PE NIN G TH IS APRIL AT 2 35 WEST 57T H ST RE ET

SH O P A ND GET M O RE I NFO AT N O R DSTR O M.C O M/ME N

SPRING 2018

Preface Editor-in-Chief

Pete Williams

In the ’90s you’d show up at a skate shop, they’d tell you were a clown for wearing Nike, toss you a Shorty’s tee, some DC Shoes, and a copy of 411VM or Transworld and you’d be set for the year. You’d replay that same VHS tape until it was raw, and obsess over a handful of magazine photos of mythical pros, spots, and gear, probably held up on your bedroom walls with Scotch tape. For anyone outside the epicenter of California, that was essentially the only point of access to the wider world of skateboarding. And that was enough.

or a brilliant artist or designer challenge the norms. The problem is we’re only starting to realize how smartphones are amplifying our anxieties and insecurities, distracting us from meaningful focus, and in many ways, what was built to bring us closer together is beginning to drive us crazy.

Looking to shake ourselves out of this fog and light a path for the future, we chose the theme of “Awakening” for this issue.

In a post “fake news” world, where influencers—and wannabe influencers—curate their lives to appeal to Instagram’s almighty algorithm, Lil Miquela jolts us from our dead-eyed scroll and gives us a one-way ticket to the uncanny valley. At over 782k Instagram followers (and counting), she is the world’s biggest computer-generated influencer. Her mere existence challenges our assumptions of “reality.”

Today, you can see mind-blowing skate clips daily, filmed entirely on iPhones and beamed in from all corners of the globe.

You can also order burritos with a single tap, swipe for a date, or stream the entire history of music and film anywhere, anytime, over LTE. But at the same time, there’s often a sense of “too much.” Trends shift so fast, it’s dizzying to even keep up with whether being a skater is even cool—or if dressing like a goth, or a raver, or a post-dad-core office-core SoundCloud rapper is what’s up—or if looking like a layered-up Joey Tribbiani ready for a game of strip poker (a la Balenciaga FW18) is now the ultimate in “clout.”

As the founding principles of the genre continue to be watered down for the masses, FTP (FUCKTHEPOPULATION) are militantly dedicated to streetwear’s underground, uncomfortable roots.

They’re as far from the Paris runways today as Supreme was in 1995, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. We asked FTP to “hijack” our cover. Their approach? A “rest in power” tribute to the departed Chicago drill pioneer Fredo Santana. A portion of proceeds from this cover (and the sales of an accompanying Highsnobiety/FTP Fredo Santana T-shirt) will go to support Santana’s child.

The internet really is responsible for so many amazing things, but the prerequisites of paying your dues and of understanding subcultural cues have seemingly been overtaken by pure conspicuous consumption—chasing the looks and logos that dominate Instagram’s Explore page in exchange for digital high-fives from people you probably don’t even know. The late, great Gary Warnett put it best, describing the current state of streetwear/sneaker culture as “flipping to flex then onto the next.”

We also profile a range of independent thinkers across fashion, music, and design, including LA-by-way-of-D.C. songstress Kelela, NYC creative studio LQQK, Atlanta music producer Metro Boomin, inimitable Italian clothing brand Stone Island, Canadian street fashion pioneer Raif Adelberg, and many others to share their stories and outlook on the state of our world.

We’re at a crossroads. New York skate shop turned streetwear mega-brand Supreme is now valued at over $1 billion.

Susie-next-door is making six-figures posing in a bikini with some questionable tea. Your 8-year-old cousin is reselling YEEZYs. And now Susie-next-door is wearing Supreme too. Streetwear couldn’t be any less, well, street—but I suppose “internetwear” is much cornier.

To many of you, I probably sound jaded (or just fucking old), but I still love seeing underdogs create something from nothing,

6

carhartt-wip.com

Don’t get me wrong, the future is super exciting, but there’s a lot more going on than what’s online. Algorithms may try to tell us what we want to see; it’s up to us to stand up to the fakes and posers and refuse to accept the status quo. If your phone is stressing you out, turn it off. Social media isn’t real life—and if you’ve made it this far, you’re off to a good start.

Preface Editor-in-Chief

Pete Williams

In the ’90s you’d show up at a skate shop, they’d tell you were a clown for wearing Nike, toss you a Shorty’s tee, some DC Shoes, and a copy of 411VM or Transworld and you’d be set for the year. You’d replay that same VHS tape until it was raw, and obsess over a handful of magazine photos of mythical pros, spots, and gear, probably held up on your bedroom walls with Scotch tape. For anyone outside the epicenter of California, that was essentially the only point of access to the wider world of skateboarding. And that was enough.

or a brilliant artist or designer challenge the norms. The problem is we’re only starting to realize how smartphones are amplifying our anxieties and insecurities, distracting us from meaningful focus, and in many ways, what was built to bring us closer together is beginning to drive us crazy.

Looking to shake ourselves out of this fog and light a path for the future, we chose the theme of “Awakening” for this issue.

In a post “fake news” world, where influencers—and wannabe influencers—curate their lives to appeal to Instagram’s almighty algorithm, Lil Miquela jolts us from our dead-eyed scroll and gives us a one-way ticket to the uncanny valley. At over 782k Instagram followers (and counting), she is the world’s biggest computer-generated influencer. Her mere existence challenges our assumptions of “reality.”

Today, you can see mind-blowing skate clips daily, filmed entirely on iPhones and beamed in from all corners of the globe.

You can also order burritos with a single tap, swipe for a date, or stream the entire history of music and film anywhere, anytime, over LTE. But at the same time, there’s often a sense of “too much.” Trends shift so fast, it’s dizzying to even keep up with whether being a skater is even cool—or if dressing like a goth, or a raver, or a post-dad-core office-core SoundCloud rapper is what’s up—or if looking like a layered-up Joey Tribbiani ready for a game of strip poker (a la Balenciaga FW18) is now the ultimate in “clout.”

As the founding principles of the genre continue to be watered down for the masses, FTP (FUCKTHEPOPULATION) are militantly dedicated to streetwear’s underground, uncomfortable roots.

They’re as far from the Paris runways today as Supreme was in 1995, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. We asked FTP to “hijack” our cover. Their approach? A “rest in power” tribute to the departed Chicago drill pioneer Fredo Santana. A portion of proceeds from this cover (and the sales of an accompanying Highsnobiety/FTP Fredo Santana T-shirt) will go to support Santana’s child.

The internet really is responsible for so many amazing things, but the prerequisites of paying your dues and of understanding subcultural cues have seemingly been overtaken by pure conspicuous consumption—chasing the looks and logos that dominate Instagram’s Explore page in exchange for digital high-fives from people you probably don’t even know. The late, great Gary Warnett put it best, describing the current state of streetwear/sneaker culture as “flipping to flex then onto the next.”

We also profile a range of independent thinkers across fashion, music, and design, including LA-by-way-of-D.C. songstress Kelela, NYC creative studio LQQK, Atlanta music producer Metro Boomin, inimitable Italian clothing brand Stone Island, Canadian street fashion pioneer Raif Adelberg, and many others to share their stories and outlook on the state of our world.

We’re at a crossroads. New York skate shop turned streetwear mega-brand Supreme is now valued at over $1 billion.

Susie-next-door is making six-figures posing in a bikini with some questionable tea. Your 8-year-old cousin is reselling YEEZYs. And now Susie-next-door is wearing Supreme too. Streetwear couldn’t be any less, well, street—but I suppose “internetwear” is much cornier.

To many of you, I probably sound jaded (or just fucking old), but I still love seeing underdogs create something from nothing,

6

carhartt-wip.com

Don’t get me wrong, the future is super exciting, but there’s a lot more going on than what’s online. Algorithms may try to tell us what we want to see; it’s up to us to stand up to the fakes and posers and refuse to accept the status quo. If your phone is stressing you out, turn it off. Social media isn’t real life—and if you’ve made it this far, you’re off to a good start.

Contents 6 Preface

144

Rick Owens

10 Selections

152

Reginald Sylvester II

14

160 Arkitip + Reginald Sylvester II

Raif Adelberg

24 Burberry

166

32 Aries

174 One-Two

46

Raf Simons

182

LQQK Studio

56

CALVIN KLEIN 205W39NYC

194

Benjamin Edgar Gott

72

Lil Miquela

202

Julie Zerbo

Martine Rose

86 Lo-Fi

210 Diversity

92 FTP

220 Kelela

106

Helmut Lang

230

Metro Boomin

114

Blank Mirrors

242

Trevor Jackson

122

Stone Island

250

Supreme Archive

134 Asunder

Covers

Lil Miquela

FTP

Photography by

Photography by

James W Mataitis Bailey

Gilbert Martinez

HIGHSNOBIETY.JP / APRIL 26th, 2018

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RICHARDSON

HIGHSNOBIETY

ACRONYM

A BATHING APE

NOAH CIVILIST

PLEASURES

N.HOOLYWOOD

HIGHSNOBIETY.JP / APRIL 26th, 2018

Selections Photography & Art Direction Benjamin Robinson @ MACHINE17 Styling Atip W

BALENCIAGA LEATHER TRIMMED TOTE BAG @ MRPORTER.COM

PUMA THUNDER SPECTRA

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Selections Photography & Art Direction Benjamin Robinson @ MACHINE17 Styling Atip W

BALENCIAGA LEATHER TRIMMED TOTE BAG @ MRPORTER.COM

PUMA THUNDER SPECTRA

10

11

Selections

GUCCI LEATHER BELT BAG

19-69 KASBAH & LOLA JAMES HARPER 213 RUE SAINT-HONORÉ

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13

Selections

GUCCI LEATHER BELT BAG

19-69 KASBAH & LOLA JAMES HARPER 213 RUE SAINT-HONORÉ

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The Burden of the Early Adopter Raif Adelberg Words Chris Danforth Photography Jeremy Jude Lee

A highly influential figure of Canada’s fashion scene, Raif Adelberg is the foremost member of #teamearly, the type of prescient person who was so ahead of the game that, more often than not, it acted in his detriment.

Streetwear, as it’s often lazily called today, wouldn’t exist without figures like Raif Adelberg, and no amount of flowery language will make that statement more convincing. Over the years, subcultures (including graffiti, hip-hop, skateboarding, and b-boying) have been cross-bred in various ways, and the best resulting descriptor we have to encapsulate that mixture is “streetwear.” We use that word while fully recognizing that is not an apt characterization of what has turned into a complex, cultural layer cake.

They say being early can be just as bad as being late, and Adelberg has made a habit of being really, really early, almost detrimentally ahead of the curve. After hosting a KAWS exhibition in 2002, he didn’t think twice about simply painting over eight original pieces done by the American artist. His store Richard Kidd had the exclusive on Balenciaga handbags for all of Canada, and was one of the rare stockists of Supreme, Rick Owens, and UNDERCOVER in the early 2000s.

“I was a person that was always told I was too far ahead, I was always five years ahead of the curve, and I was like: ‘Well if

I’m five years ahead of the curve, then why am I thinking of it,’” says Adelberg. “I just felt that, I want people to like this, but as soon as it got popular, and people liked it, I found myself running away from it again.”

Some of Adelberg’s most notable projects include curating hand-spun Cowichan knitwear for Stüssy, helping co-found military-inspired Canadian label wings+horns, as well as heading up Vancouver-based clothing label Deadboys Clubhouse and the aforementioned Conde Nast-acclaimed boutique Richard Kidd.

He’s even been likened to originators like Shawn Stüssy, Rick Klotz of Freshjive, and Russ Karablin of SSUR. Around 2001, Adelberg started experimenting with Nike Air Force 1s, cutting off the standard Swoosh and adding a leather Louis Vuitton Swoosh to the low-top basketball silhouette.

These custom Air Force 1 creations started flying off the shelves of UNION LA before he could even figure out a failsafe way to consistently send the shoes across the American border without arousing suspicion from customs agents. More than once, Adelberg has been a victim of his own uncanny foresight.

15

The Burden of the Early Adopter Raif Adelberg Words Chris Danforth Photography Jeremy Jude Lee

A highly influential figure of Canada’s fashion scene, Raif Adelberg is the foremost member of #teamearly, the type of prescient person who was so ahead of the game that, more often than not, it acted in his detriment.

Streetwear, as it’s often lazily called today, wouldn’t exist without figures like Raif Adelberg, and no amount of flowery language will make that statement more convincing. Over the years, subcultures (including graffiti, hip-hop, skateboarding, and b-boying) have been cross-bred in various ways, and the best resulting descriptor we have to encapsulate that mixture is “streetwear.” We use that word while fully recognizing that is not an apt characterization of what has turned into a complex, cultural layer cake.

They say being early can be just as bad as being late, and Adelberg has made a habit of being really, really early, almost detrimentally ahead of the curve. After hosting a KAWS exhibition in 2002, he didn’t think twice about simply painting over eight original pieces done by the American artist. His store Richard Kidd had the exclusive on Balenciaga handbags for all of Canada, and was one of the rare stockists of Supreme, Rick Owens, and UNDERCOVER in the early 2000s.

“I was a person that was always told I was too far ahead, I was always five years ahead of the curve, and I was like: ‘Well if

I’m five years ahead of the curve, then why am I thinking of it,’” says Adelberg. “I just felt that, I want people to like this, but as soon as it got popular, and people liked it, I found myself running away from it again.”

Some of Adelberg’s most notable projects include curating hand-spun Cowichan knitwear for Stüssy, helping co-found military-inspired Canadian label wings+horns, as well as heading up Vancouver-based clothing label Deadboys Clubhouse and the aforementioned Conde Nast-acclaimed boutique Richard Kidd.

He’s even been likened to originators like Shawn Stüssy, Rick Klotz of Freshjive, and Russ Karablin of SSUR. Around 2001, Adelberg started experimenting with Nike Air Force 1s, cutting off the standard Swoosh and adding a leather Louis Vuitton Swoosh to the low-top basketball silhouette.

These custom Air Force 1 creations started flying off the shelves of UNION LA before he could even figure out a failsafe way to consistently send the shoes across the American border without arousing suspicion from customs agents. More than once, Adelberg has been a victim of his own uncanny foresight.

15

17

17

Sitting in his Vancouver home, Adelberg explains how he made them: “I basically took an old [Louis Vuitton] bag, like a real bag, and cut it up. Took the Swooshes off, and took them to a cobbler in the city. “ He sold the shoes in Vancouver’s Twenty4 store, at a retail price of $300. Eddie Cruz, the future founder of Undefeated and longtime employee of influential boutique UNION, convinced Adelberg to send some pairs to UNION’s now-shuttered New York location, which was actually where the shop was founded.

Owned by Mary Ann Fusco and future Supreme founder James Jebbia, the shop’s legacy and off-kilter coolness lives on in its current iteration in Los Angeles, helmed by former shop guy Chris Gibbs.

“ I basically took an old [Louis Vuitton] bag, like a real bag, and cut it up. Took the Swooshes off, and took them to a cobbler in the city.”

Adelberg ended up sending a few pairs to Fusco, and the shoes caught on quickly, selling out fast. They became even more sought after, prompting Cruz to ask him for more pairs. Adelberg made a dozen more, which got stuck in customs. The situation led to UNION taking matters into their own hands making a few pairs themselves.

“I remember Greg Johnson [of Snafu and Supreme] calling me one time, he was on Staten Island visiting his family,” recalls Adelberg. “He was at a mall and he was like: ‘Dude, a kid just walked by me wearing a pair.’ I was like: ‘The shoes?’ He’s like: ‘This thing is huge, it’s big.’”

This story was first told by Stüssy in a video that you can still find on the web. The video also explains how Adelberg obtained the Air Force 1s at a discount from a sporting goods store in Vancouver, under the guise that he was coaching a youth basketball team. While he is clear about not laying claim to the trend, the custom sneaker fad quickly escalated beyond the point that Adelberg could even directly observe.

“I don’t claim to be the first, Dapper Dan and all those guys were the first, they influenced me and I just kind of brought it back,” he says.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, Dapper Dan reworked luxury items into unique, one-of-one creations for the period’s hip-hop elite like Rakim and LL Cool J, but his storefront was shut down by the likes of Gucci, who litigated against Dapper Dan with the intention of permanently shuttering his business. Decades later, Gucci validated Dapper Dan’s work by collaborating with him under Gucci’s current Creative Director Alessandro Michele, and even reopened his Harlem atelier, where he continues to create one-of-a-kind pieces utilizing official Gucci fabrics.

Similarly, Nike introduced customization service NIKEiD around 2001, allowing consumers to customize a pair of Nikes with a pre-established set of colors and materials. They upped the ante in 2009 with the introduction of Nike Bespoke, a program run out of their store on 21 Mercer Street in New York that enables people to craft a fully custom Air Force 1 at the steep price of $800 a pair. More recently, Nike has embraced a DIY attitude at a mass level, offering a whole slew of customization workshops largely based around the Air Force 1. In 2018, they released a pack of shoes (including an Air Force 1) that includes a bundle of interchangeable Swooshes in different colors.

Released at the same time, the Nike “90/10” pack reimagines silhouettes like the Vandal, Air More Money, Huarache, and Air Force 1 with uppers made from industrial Tyvek. The idea behind it is the shoes are 90% finished by Nike, with the remaining 10% left up to the final wearer. As Victor Hugo famously said: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.”

Now, a customized Air Force 1 featuring a Louis Vuitton Swoosh wouldn’t make most sneakerheads look twice, especially in this post-Louis Vuitton × Supreme world. In fact, today most sneaker brands are offering customization services of their own, just like NIKEiD, miadidas, or similar services offered by Vans, New Balance, and others. But Adelberg’s custom creations went beyond just personalization, or the desire to make something that stood out from the crowd. Surely, Adelberg’s message was about context and subverting expectations. But his body of work extends beyond footwear or even things you can wear.

His Vancouver home is a memory bank of trinkets, Supreme accessories, books, catalogs, and references that he seems to have obsessively collected over the decades.

“I can always pull references,” he mentions, looking towards a jam-packed bookcase in the front room of his house.

18

Sitting in his Vancouver home, Adelberg explains how he made them: “I basically took an old [Louis Vuitton] bag, like a real bag, and cut it up. Took the Swooshes off, and took them to a cobbler in the city. “ He sold the shoes in Vancouver’s Twenty4 store, at a retail price of $300. Eddie Cruz, the future founder of Undefeated and longtime employee of influential boutique UNION, convinced Adelberg to send some pairs to UNION’s now-shuttered New York location, which was actually where the shop was founded.

Owned by Mary Ann Fusco and future Supreme founder James Jebbia, the shop’s legacy and off-kilter coolness lives on in its current iteration in Los Angeles, helmed by former shop guy Chris Gibbs.

“ I basically took an old [Louis Vuitton] bag, like a real bag, and cut it up. Took the Swooshes off, and took them to a cobbler in the city.”

Adelberg ended up sending a few pairs to Fusco, and the shoes caught on quickly, selling out fast. They became even more sought after, prompting Cruz to ask him for more pairs. Adelberg made a dozen more, which got stuck in customs. The situation led to UNION taking matters into their own hands making a few pairs themselves.

“I remember Greg Johnson [of Snafu and Supreme] calling me one time, he was on Staten Island visiting his family,” recalls Adelberg. “He was at a mall and he was like: ‘Dude, a kid just walked by me wearing a pair.’ I was like: ‘The shoes?’ He’s like: ‘This thing is huge, it’s big.’”

This story was first told by Stüssy in a video that you can still find on the web. The video also explains how Adelberg obtained the Air Force 1s at a discount from a sporting goods store in Vancouver, under the guise that he was coaching a youth basketball team. While he is clear about not laying claim to the trend, the custom sneaker fad quickly escalated beyond the point that Adelberg could even directly observe.

“I don’t claim to be the first, Dapper Dan and all those guys were the first, they influenced me and I just kind of brought it back,” he says.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, Dapper Dan reworked luxury items into unique, one-of-one creations for the period’s hip-hop elite like Rakim and LL Cool J, but his storefront was shut down by the likes of Gucci, who litigated against Dapper Dan with the intention of permanently shuttering his business. Decades later, Gucci validated Dapper Dan’s work by collaborating with him under Gucci’s current Creative Director Alessandro Michele, and even reopened his Harlem atelier, where he continues to create one-of-a-kind pieces utilizing official Gucci fabrics.

Similarly, Nike introduced customization service NIKEiD around 2001, allowing consumers to customize a pair of Nikes with a pre-established set of colors and materials. They upped the ante in 2009 with the introduction of Nike Bespoke, a program run out of their store on 21 Mercer Street in New York that enables people to craft a fully custom Air Force 1 at the steep price of $800 a pair. More recently, Nike has embraced a DIY attitude at a mass level, offering a whole slew of customization workshops largely based around the Air Force 1. In 2018, they released a pack of shoes (including an Air Force 1) that includes a bundle of interchangeable Swooshes in different colors.

Released at the same time, the Nike “90/10” pack reimagines silhouettes like the Vandal, Air More Money, Huarache, and Air Force 1 with uppers made from industrial Tyvek. The idea behind it is the shoes are 90% finished by Nike, with the remaining 10% left up to the final wearer. As Victor Hugo famously said: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.”

Now, a customized Air Force 1 featuring a Louis Vuitton Swoosh wouldn’t make most sneakerheads look twice, especially in this post-Louis Vuitton × Supreme world. In fact, today most sneaker brands are offering customization services of their own, just like NIKEiD, miadidas, or similar services offered by Vans, New Balance, and others. But Adelberg’s custom creations went beyond just personalization, or the desire to make something that stood out from the crowd. Surely, Adelberg’s message was about context and subverting expectations. But his body of work extends beyond footwear or even things you can wear.

His Vancouver home is a memory bank of trinkets, Supreme accessories, books, catalogs, and references that he seems to have obsessively collected over the decades.

“I can always pull references,” he mentions, looking towards a jam-packed bookcase in the front room of his house.

18

20

20

But as much as mainstream tastes have adopted streetwear—a once-niche culture—Adelberg doesn’t seem to think the industry has changed all that much. Younger generations today identify with clothing brands, and see them as status symbols in the same way that people used to make strong connections over music, which was at one point a hunting game to find vinyl—and then cassettes. It’s a good parallel with the early days of streetwear, which before the internet, demanded going so far as getting on a plane to find certain pieces or visit certain stores. While shared interests in groups like Led Zeppelin or Nirvana used to create bonds between music fans, important connections today are now made in the cult groups that follow brands like Supreme. Streetwear used to be about discovering the cool shit that no one else was on to yet, but is it valid to lament how the culture has blown up?

“ W hen we started out doing it, there wasn’t as big of an audience. It’s gotten broader, the audience has become bigger, and there’s more product being generated because of that. But I think that there’s a lack of knowledge.”

“I don’t think it’s changed, I think the audience has gotten bigger,” says Adelberg. “When we started out doing it, there wasn’t as big of an audience. It’s gotten broader, the audience has become bigger, and there’s more product being generated because of that. But I think that there’s a lack of knowledge.”

Adelberg’s sentiments ring true in the contemporary climate.

There is certainly a saturation of product in the market, but perhaps less of an understanding of the stones that were laid to open a space for that product to exist, or for that product to make sense. Handfuls of new brands are started every day, but few make an impact.

“I feel now that, looking at everything that’s in the marketplace, there’s a million jackets, there’s a million shirts, there’s a million pairs of pants,” he comments.

Adelberg, and creatives of his ilk, created the all-important context for today’s streetwear scene to thrive. A sneakerhead today might rotate between athletic shoes, skateboarding shoes, work boots like Timberlands, and basketball shoes, without any sense of irony. Subcultures have merged into one, a “streetwear singularity” if you will.

“There was so much into it, when you got into something it was the graphics, it was the lifestyle, it was just the style of clothing, the music—it was this whole thing that you put together and it was this romance,” he laments. “I feel like the romance is

gone now. When I first heard that there were skate shoes, I was like, what, there are skate shoes? We just wore shoes. We had Converse or Nikes or Vans, that’s what we skated in. We didn’t go out and buy a specific skate shoe. A style of clothing was geared toward rock or hip-hop. There were different styles that went with different genres.“ Adelberg certainly has a lot to share, having watched (and most definitely aided) the streetwear and sneaker industry explode from the inside out. But why have Stüssy and Supreme lasted, while countless other brands and startups have fallen by the wayside?

“They listen to the youth. They stay current with pop culture. They have a point of view, a lifestyle, and I think that they stay true to it. It’s like a good director or a good musician.

They have more to say than the one song or the one recipe or the one outfit. They’ve got stories to tell, but they stay true to their story, and they keep doing it,” comments Adelberg. “Like a Rick Owens T-shirt, how many brands knock that T-shirt off, or tried to knock the T-shirt off? He’ll continue making that T-shirt because that’s true to who he is. That’s what makes it authentic, and that’s why people will continue to buy it, because it’s real. It’s not a trend, it’s a real part of what he does. Stüssy, they do what they do. They don’t chase. They create what they’ve done and that has longevity, because it is authentic.”

These days, Adelberg is fully dedicated to his latest project, HERMAN MARKET, designed and made in Vancouver.

It’s a portmanteau that started as a reference to the brand’s androgynous designs, Her + Man. Early on, the brand has received cosigns from the likes of Kendall Jenner and Future and is sold at top global retailers including Ron Herman, Barneys, and Raif’s long-term stockist UNION (in both LA and Tokyo). One aspect of Adelberg’s design prerogative that doesn’t seem to have changed is his love of DIY. With the same attitude as when he was cutting up Louis Vuitton bags, Adelberg is still creating in his own way, pausing the conversation as he screen prints sweaters in his studio, working through crunch time for an upcoming New York Fashion Week pop-up. He is clearly comfortable taking projects into his own hands, cutting, sewing, printing, and truly dedicating himself to making cool stuff across mediums. The quality of the product remains as important as ever, but Adelberg has learned that an equally compelling story is what makes it relevant for a modern audience.

“I stay focused on the story that I’m telling. There are a lot of times where you look at what’s popular in the youth market, and you feel like: ‘Oh my god, I got to get on that,’ but you have to apply it in your own way,” he says. “Just as a dictionary holds all the words, it matters how you apply those and create a story in your own way. It’s the same way with clothing. I find that if it’s authentic to who you are, people will see the clothing and see you, and understand the point of view, and understand your story.”

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But as much as mainstream tastes have adopted streetwear—a once-niche culture—Adelberg doesn’t seem to think the industry has changed all that much. Younger generations today identify with clothing brands, and see them as status symbols in the same way that people used to make strong connections over music, which was at one point a hunting game to find vinyl—and then cassettes. It’s a good parallel with the early days of streetwear, which before the internet, demanded going so far as getting on a plane to find certain pieces or visit certain stores. While shared interests in groups like Led Zeppelin or Nirvana used to create bonds between music fans, important connections today are now made in the cult groups that follow brands like Supreme. Streetwear used to be about discovering the cool shit that no one else was on to yet, but is it valid to lament how the culture has blown up?

“ W hen we started out doing it, there wasn’t as big of an audience. It’s gotten broader, the audience has become bigger, and there’s more product being generated because of that. But I think that there’s a lack of knowledge.”

“I don’t think it’s changed, I think the audience has gotten bigger,” says Adelberg. “When we started out doing it, there wasn’t as big of an audience. It’s gotten broader, the audience has become bigger, and there’s more product being generated because of that. But I think that there’s a lack of knowledge.”

Adelberg’s sentiments ring true in the contemporary climate.

There is certainly a saturation of product in the market, but perhaps less of an understanding of the stones that were laid to open a space for that product to exist, or for that product to make sense. Handfuls of new brands are started every day, but few make an impact.

“I feel now that, looking at everything that’s in the marketplace, there’s a million jackets, there’s a million shirts, there’s a million pairs of pants,” he comments.

Adelberg, and creatives of his ilk, created the all-important context for today’s streetwear scene to thrive. A sneakerhead today might rotate between athletic shoes, skateboarding shoes, work boots like Timberlands, and basketball shoes, without any sense of irony. Subcultures have merged into one, a “streetwear singularity” if you will.

“There was so much into it, when you got into something it was the graphics, it was the lifestyle, it was just the style of clothing, the music—it was this whole thing that you put together and it was this romance,” he laments. “I feel like the romance is

gone now. When I first heard that there were skate shoes, I was like, what, there are skate shoes? We just wore shoes. We had Converse or Nikes or Vans, that’s what we skated in. We didn’t go out and buy a specific skate shoe. A style of clothing was geared toward rock or hip-hop. There were different styles that went with different genres.“ Adelberg certainly has a lot to share, having watched (and most definitely aided) the streetwear and sneaker industry explode from the inside out. But why have Stüssy and Supreme lasted, while countless other brands and startups have fallen by the wayside?

“They listen to the youth. They stay current with pop culture. They have a point of view, a lifestyle, and I think that they stay true to it. It’s like a good director or a good musician.

They have more to say than the one song or the one recipe or the one outfit. They’ve got stories to tell, but they stay true to their story, and they keep doing it,” comments Adelberg. “Like a Rick Owens T-shirt, how many brands knock that T-shirt off, or tried to knock the T-shirt off? He’ll continue making that T-shirt because that’s true to who he is. That’s what makes it authentic, and that’s why people will continue to buy it, because it’s real. It’s not a trend, it’s a real part of what he does. Stüssy, they do what they do. They don’t chase. They create what they’ve done and that has longevity, because it is authentic.”

These days, Adelberg is fully dedicated to his latest project, HERMAN MARKET, designed and made in Vancouver.

It’s a portmanteau that started as a reference to the brand’s androgynous designs, Her + Man. Early on, the brand has received cosigns from the likes of Kendall Jenner and Future and is sold at top global retailers including Ron Herman, Barneys, and Raif’s long-term stockist UNION (in both LA and Tokyo). One aspect of Adelberg’s design prerogative that doesn’t seem to have changed is his love of DIY. With the same attitude as when he was cutting up Louis Vuitton bags, Adelberg is still creating in his own way, pausing the conversation as he screen prints sweaters in his studio, working through crunch time for an upcoming New York Fashion Week pop-up. He is clearly comfortable taking projects into his own hands, cutting, sewing, printing, and truly dedicating himself to making cool stuff across mediums. The quality of the product remains as important as ever, but Adelberg has learned that an equally compelling story is what makes it relevant for a modern audience.

“I stay focused on the story that I’m telling. There are a lot of times where you look at what’s popular in the youth market, and you feel like: ‘Oh my god, I got to get on that,’ but you have to apply it in your own way,” he says. “Just as a dictionary holds all the words, it matters how you apply those and create a story in your own way. It’s the same way with clothing. I find that if it’s authentic to who you are, people will see the clothing and see you, and understand the point of view, and understand your story.”

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Burberry

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Photography Takahito Sasaki Styling Atip W Hair Thomas Silverman using R +Co Make-up Andjelka using MAC Cosmetics Digital Operator Jennifer Mika Photography Assistant Kazuki Takahashi Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Models Wisdom @ AMCK & Sophie K @ Premier Models

2018

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Burberry

See now

Photography Takahito Sasaki Styling Atip W Hair Thomas Silverman using R +Co Make-up Andjelka using MAC Cosmetics Digital Operator Jennifer Mika Photography Assistant Kazuki Takahashi Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Models Wisdom @ AMCK & Sophie K @ Premier Models

2018

In Fashion the Future Has Already Passed Aries Words Angelo Flaccavento Photography Clare Shilland Styling Eliza Conlon Art Direction Jake Bisley Hair Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble & bumble Make-up Andjelka Matic using MAC Cosmetics Photography Assistant Jodie Herbage Hair Assistant Miho Assistants Sofia Baiocco & Yasmine Regisford Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Producer Letizia Guarino Models Charlie & Sofia M @ PRM Models, Codie @ First Model Management, Edson James & Kasper Kapica

In Fashion the Future Has Already Passed Aries Words Angelo Flaccavento Photography Clare Shilland Styling Eliza Conlon Art Direction Jake Bisley Hair Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble & bumble Make-up Andjelka Matic using MAC Cosmetics Photography Assistant Jodie Herbage Hair Assistant Miho Assistants Sofia Baiocco & Yasmine Regisford Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Producer Letizia Guarino Models Charlie & Sofia M @ PRM Models, Codie @ First Model Management, Edson James & Kasper Kapica

Fashion is about creation just as much as it is about destruction.

Promoting endless renewal comes with a constant attack to the status quo; with the urge to catch the future before it becomes passé. Which is, in a nanosecond.

Fashion feeds on the future but moves faster than time, turning the future into past in a never-ending cycle, like Sisyphus pushing boulders to the top of the mountain, then rolling them down and pushing them back up again and again.

In this world of continuous, occasionally meaningless reinvention, Sofia Prantera’s career seems an anomaly. With three successful brands to her name, Prantera has straddled the thin line between fashion and streetwear, where sportswear and high fashion keep flirting with each other, for over two decades— quietly forging her own independent path regardless of passing fads.

From co-creating the first British skatewear label Holmes in 1996, to ’00s cult brand Silas and now with her new project Aries, Prantera now finds herself part of a new vanguard in fashion; strong on ideas but grounded in reality.

Sofia Prantera’s design career started in the mid-’90s in-house at London’s Slam City Skates, working alongside now legendary artists like James Jarvis, Fergus Purcell, and Ben Sansbury, creating logos and slogan T-shirts.

These were among the beginnings of the skateboard-influenced anti-fashion movement. Characterized by its rebellious misuse and appropriation of corporate branding, slogans, and symbols, in a deliberately misinformed way, the work predated fashion’s current obsession with “borrowing” each other’s ideas by decades. This obsession that today is so amplified by the nefarious visibility of our online existence, it has lead us to share everything—even our creative processes.

Here Prantera speaks with critic Angelo Flaccavento about the cyclicality and continuous reinvention of fashion and its possible consequent loss of relevance; of being part of a subculture and her anti-fashion stance.

34

35

Fashion is about creation just as much as it is about destruction.

Promoting endless renewal comes with a constant attack to the status quo; with the urge to catch the future before it becomes passé. Which is, in a nanosecond.

Fashion feeds on the future but moves faster than time, turning the future into past in a never-ending cycle, like Sisyphus pushing boulders to the top of the mountain, then rolling them down and pushing them back up again and again.

In this world of continuous, occasionally meaningless reinvention, Sofia Prantera’s career seems an anomaly. With three successful brands to her name, Prantera has straddled the thin line between fashion and streetwear, where sportswear and high fashion keep flirting with each other, for over two decades— quietly forging her own independent path regardless of passing fads.

From co-creating the first British skatewear label Holmes in 1996, to ’00s cult brand Silas and now with her new project Aries, Prantera now finds herself part of a new vanguard in fashion; strong on ideas but grounded in reality.

Sofia Prantera’s design career started in the mid-’90s in-house at London’s Slam City Skates, working alongside now legendary artists like James Jarvis, Fergus Purcell, and Ben Sansbury, creating logos and slogan T-shirts.

These were among the beginnings of the skateboard-influenced anti-fashion movement. Characterized by its rebellious misuse and appropriation of corporate branding, slogans, and symbols, in a deliberately misinformed way, the work predated fashion’s current obsession with “borrowing” each other’s ideas by decades. This obsession that today is so amplified by the nefarious visibility of our online existence, it has lead us to share everything—even our creative processes.

Here Prantera speaks with critic Angelo Flaccavento about the cyclicality and continuous reinvention of fashion and its possible consequent loss of relevance; of being part of a subculture and her anti-fashion stance.

34

35

The ’90s are all the rage all over again. Why, in your opinion?

Fashion is cyclical, and we are always looking at past decades for inspiration.

Equally, those were the formative years of the designers and tastemakers who are shaping fashion now; therefore an obvious point of reference.

Alarmingly it is the ’00s that are rearing their ugly head right now, and that for me is harder to take.

A decade of shallowness and lack of content; the ironic take on this epoch by the younger generation is much more difficult to digest and make sense of.

I am looking at my archives for this shoot. Silas was really a ’00s brand, and I wonder what were my influences while I was designing.

You were creatively active in both eras. What are the similarities, and what are the differences?

Sometimes I feel déjà vu: Images, themes, inspiration are reoccurring, but I am conscious of moving forward and not revisiting.

It’s difficult to compare with earlier times because my own point of view has changed; I am a “proper adult” now and I have a lot more responsibilities.

The main difference for me is that everything was so slow then, life just hung, things took forever to evolve; now it feels like everything has been pushed into fast-forward. Communication is never-ending, push notifications bombard our screens with new information every second—it’s exciting but also exhausting.

I’d say the challenge for me is to keep a fresh outlook and avoid obvious comparisons and a general feeling of being jaded when things are reused and reappropriated.

I have a definite nostalgia for that time of freedom and fun, when we felt part of a counterculture and underground.

The downside was that you felt you never fit in—there were a lot of rules you had to adhere to and boxes you had to tick when marketing your projects—and the real difference now is that most of those boundaries and preconceptions have been demolished, and everything is allowed creatively as long as you can be heard and have a following.

This is scary, but also empowering and liberating. It’s like some sort of validation that we were right all along to fight against those conventions, which have now been demolished.

What happened to the underground in the meantime? Does it still exist?

Our classic notion of a slow-building underground movement and its subsequent, unavoidable commercial exploitation and promotion to mainstream has ceased to exist because of the power of social media.

Everything burns too fast.

It exists not as fashion but as counterculture. Interestingly, it isn’t generational, and to survive in its original form it has to insulate itself against exploitation by being truly underground, and therefore by necessity, unattractive to potential mainstream audiences. So maybe, this makes it more underground than ever before.

Did you ever feel part of an underground?

I think I did, although I never felt like I was shaping it in any way.

What does it take today to create a subculture?

I was reading about fake grassroots movements in politics, created by big multinationals and political parties to resemble a public uprising. Is it something similar in fashion? Are the days of a “real” slow-building underground movement behind us?

We live in the time of demagogues and extremely sophisticated marketing. Has the essence of an underground movement been distilled and recreated over and over, therefore destroyed by its own unique marketing power?

As I said, counterculture still exists, but it is purposely extremely un-commercial and niche in order to keep its true underground status.

38

39

The ’90s are all the rage all over again. Why, in your opinion?

Fashion is cyclical, and we are always looking at past decades for inspiration.

Equally, those were the formative years of the designers and tastemakers who are shaping fashion now; therefore an obvious point of reference.

Alarmingly it is the ’00s that are rearing their ugly head right now, and that for me is harder to take.

A decade of shallowness and lack of content; the ironic take on this epoch by the younger generation is much more difficult to digest and make sense of.

I am looking at my archives for this shoot. Silas was really a ’00s brand, and I wonder what were my influences while I was designing.

You were creatively active in both eras. What are the similarities, and what are the differences?

Sometimes I feel déjà vu: Images, themes, inspiration are reoccurring, but I am conscious of moving forward and not revisiting.

It’s difficult to compare with earlier times because my own point of view has changed; I am a “proper adult” now and I have a lot more responsibilities.

The main difference for me is that everything was so slow then, life just hung, things took forever to evolve; now it feels like everything has been pushed into fast-forward. Communication is never-ending, push notifications bombard our screens with new information every second—it’s exciting but also exhausting.

I’d say the challenge for me is to keep a fresh outlook and avoid obvious comparisons and a general feeling of being jaded when things are reused and reappropriated.

I have a definite nostalgia for that time of freedom and fun, when we felt part of a counterculture and underground.

The downside was that you felt you never fit in—there were a lot of rules you had to adhere to and boxes you had to tick when marketing your projects—and the real difference now is that most of those boundaries and preconceptions have been demolished, and everything is allowed creatively as long as you can be heard and have a following.

This is scary, but also empowering and liberating. It’s like some sort of validation that we were right all along to fight against those conventions, which have now been demolished.

What happened to the underground in the meantime? Does it still exist?

Our classic notion of a slow-building underground movement and its subsequent, unavoidable commercial exploitation and promotion to mainstream has ceased to exist because of the power of social media.

Everything burns too fast.

It exists not as fashion but as counterculture. Interestingly, it isn’t generational, and to survive in its original form it has to insulate itself against exploitation by being truly underground, and therefore by necessity, unattractive to potential mainstream audiences. So maybe, this makes it more underground than ever before.

Did you ever feel part of an underground?

I think I did, although I never felt like I was shaping it in any way.

What does it take today to create a subculture?

I was reading about fake grassroots movements in politics, created by big multinationals and political parties to resemble a public uprising. Is it something similar in fashion? Are the days of a “real” slow-building underground movement behind us?

We live in the time of demagogues and extremely sophisticated marketing. Has the essence of an underground movement been distilled and recreated over and over, therefore destroyed by its own unique marketing power?

As I said, counterculture still exists, but it is purposely extremely un-commercial and niche in order to keep its true underground status.

38

39

Is your aim to create one? Was it ever in the past?

I don’t think it ever was. I am very independent and feel uncomfortable in the limelight. I also get bored with concepts too quickly; there is a certain “evangelical” quality you have to have which I most definitely don’t possess.

Is “glorified streetwear” a label you would accept for your work?

I hate labels and try to eschew them whenever I can. I think this is apparent in my work: I strive to avoid classification. This attitude stems mainly from my ADD approach to coherence.

What are the origins of the names Aries and Silas?

The names have different origins. The first is biblical, the second is astrological. While working at Slam City I started my first label called Holmes with Paul [Sunman] and Russell [Waterman], who later became my business partner in Silas. It was menswear and I was designing it.

That was the time of X-LARGE and FUCT—cool, rebellious American skatewear brands—and ours was coming from England. I didn’t think anyone would believe it coming from this small Italian fashion girl. I didn’t believe I could be the face of it, so we invented this 50-year-old drifter and charismatic figure called “Silas Holmes.” When Russell and I left to start the new brand, we thought we should take his first name with us.

On the other hand, Ferg and I chose the name Aries because we liked the slightly unfashionable connotations of naming a brand after a star sign. The Aries iconography is based on esotericism and classicism, where symbols are used incorrectly, randomly, and reappropriated in a deliberately misleading and garbled way.

The common thread is that they are both alter egos. Empty creative vessels, they allow collaborations and different associations; they can live beyond me and my own persona. Such is the power of a brand.

How would you describe the ethos of the new project?

We wished to reconcile our generation’s predicament of wanting to create and consume while keeping a light carbon footprint on the planet. Our garments are not throwaway and are built to have a certain timelessness and to improve with wear.

Each season is a continuation of my development as a designer rather than being a complete ex novo invention. We produce ethically, and we keep a lithe production ethos which strives to eliminate waste by reusing and reinventing existing products.

Is anti-fashion a fashionable pose or something that still has value today?

Again, this is a dynamic affected by time and generational stance. My generation is still very attached to the concept of anti-fashion, but I feel this is less valid with younger generations.

With social media and continuous feeds, it’s impossible to have a clear idea of what is fashionable, and I think style has overridden fashion.

I see you as being at the forefront of a new movement in fashion: Strong on ideas, but firmly grounded in reality. Do you agree? Is realism a quality you actively strive for? And how do you balance it with the need to create?

The configuration of the market has changed so rapidly in recent years that it is impossible to run a successful business without some anchorage in the world of reality.

Everything is more transparent, competition is much stronger, and commercial success has become a prerequisite for creative independence. Hence, reality supports creativity.

40

Is your aim to create one? Was it ever in the past?

I don’t think it ever was. I am very independent and feel uncomfortable in the limelight. I also get bored with concepts too quickly; there is a certain “evangelical” quality you have to have which I most definitely don’t possess.

Is “glorified streetwear” a label you would accept for your work?

I hate labels and try to eschew them whenever I can. I think this is apparent in my work: I strive to avoid classification. This attitude stems mainly from my ADD approach to coherence.

What are the origins of the names Aries and Silas?

The names have different origins. The first is biblical, the second is astrological. While working at Slam City I started my first label called Holmes with Paul [Sunman] and Russell [Waterman], who later became my business partner in Silas. It was menswear and I was designing it.

That was the time of X-LARGE and FUCT—cool, rebellious American skatewear brands—and ours was coming from England. I didn’t think anyone would believe it coming from this small Italian fashion girl. I didn’t believe I could be the face of it, so we invented this 50-year-old drifter and charismatic figure called “Silas Holmes.” When Russell and I left to start the new brand, we thought we should take his first name with us.

On the other hand, Ferg and I chose the name Aries because we liked the slightly unfashionable connotations of naming a brand after a star sign. The Aries iconography is based on esotericism and classicism, where symbols are used incorrectly, randomly, and reappropriated in a deliberately misleading and garbled way.

The common thread is that they are both alter egos. Empty creative vessels, they allow collaborations and different associations; they can live beyond me and my own persona. Such is the power of a brand.

How would you describe the ethos of the new project?

We wished to reconcile our generation’s predicament of wanting to create and consume while keeping a light carbon footprint on the planet. Our garments are not throwaway and are built to have a certain timelessness and to improve with wear.

Each season is a continuation of my development as a designer rather than being a complete ex novo invention. We produce ethically, and we keep a lithe production ethos which strives to eliminate waste by reusing and reinventing existing products.

Is anti-fashion a fashionable pose or something that still has value today?

Again, this is a dynamic affected by time and generational stance. My generation is still very attached to the concept of anti-fashion, but I feel this is less valid with younger generations.

With social media and continuous feeds, it’s impossible to have a clear idea of what is fashionable, and I think style has overridden fashion.

I see you as being at the forefront of a new movement in fashion: Strong on ideas, but firmly grounded in reality. Do you agree? Is realism a quality you actively strive for? And how do you balance it with the need to create?

The configuration of the market has changed so rapidly in recent years that it is impossible to run a successful business without some anchorage in the world of reality.

Everything is more transparent, competition is much stronger, and commercial success has become a prerequisite for creative independence. Hence, reality supports creativity.

40

With realism comes also a sense of belonging. Are you aware of that? Do you enjoy the power of fashion to gather people?

Belonging to a subculture is what initially attracted me to fashion. Therefore, I am strongly aware of such power. It’s the excitement of discovering a new subculture and being an integral part of the movement.

I remember when I first moved to London during the Acid House movement. It changed me overnight; I felt part of this new movement and fashion was a big component.

What audience do you think you are speaking to?

I hope I have been addressing a young, strong, female independent character. Helping her build a new sense of style far from the stereotypes of traditional female beauty. By adding menswear, I am hoping to make this message stronger. Gender division is outdated, and hopefully becoming increasingly redundant.

Are the notions of streetwear and street style still valid, or have they been diluted forever?

Streetwear has been my biggest inspiration ever since the first time I looked at a copy of i-D and The Face when I was a teenager living in Rome. In more recent years, it has become a sort of dirty word, especially when we started Aries in 2012. I feel that now its meaning has slightly changed, but it’s also stronger than ever. Fashion is in a state of chaos, and in a way its mainstream is defined by street style pictures on blogs and social media.

What does fashion mean to you, as a medium?

I think fashion has the power to change the way we see things and can be a very powerful medium. Fashion is at the avant-garde of change, its effect can be very subtle and therefore insidious. I am not talking about bold political statements and obvious appropriation, but the more subtle and sophisticated way in which fashion at its best can be a catalyst of change just by the nature of its imagery being so ubiquitous and widely consumed.

Is fashion still in fashion?

When I started working in fashion, my main directive was to run counter to fashion and to subvert current trends. I think things have changed now and fashion is very much in fashion. The younger generations are attracted by mainstream trends; in this way they are subverting our subversion. Although recently I have started to notice small signs of rebellion, it’s too early to say though.

You’re Italian, but have always worked in England. Do you still feel some Italian traits in your work?

I’m half Italian, but percentage-wise it is far my biggest half, so yes. There is a certain amount of deliberate “bad taste” in my work which, according to my British friends, comes from my Italian side.

What being Italian brings to my work—apart from this element of bad taste—is that growing up in Italy, this distinction between fashion/formalwear and streetwear didn’t really exist, or at least not in the way we have in the UK. In Italy, the distinction between fashion and streetwear is very blurred, and it is more of a question of price points and manufacturing quality. In my opinion, streetwear has always informed fashion—ever since those early photos of real people in magazines like i-D. Then at some point in the 2000s, it somehow was hijacked and became synonymous with casual clothing and sportswear. So it’s possible that the term “streetwear,” with all its different connotations, is finally becoming obsolete.

44

45

With realism comes also a sense of belonging. Are you aware of that? Do you enjoy the power of fashion to gather people?

Belonging to a subculture is what initially attracted me to fashion. Therefore, I am strongly aware of such power. It’s the excitement of discovering a new subculture and being an integral part of the movement.

I remember when I first moved to London during the Acid House movement. It changed me overnight; I felt part of this new movement and fashion was a big component.

What audience do you think you are speaking to?

I hope I have been addressing a young, strong, female independent character. Helping her build a new sense of style far from the stereotypes of traditional female beauty. By adding menswear, I am hoping to make this message stronger. Gender division is outdated, and hopefully becoming increasingly redundant.

Are the notions of streetwear and street style still valid, or have they been diluted forever?

Streetwear has been my biggest inspiration ever since the first time I looked at a copy of i-D and The Face when I was a teenager living in Rome. In more recent years, it has become a sort of dirty word, especially when we started Aries in 2012. I feel that now its meaning has slightly changed, but it’s also stronger than ever. Fashion is in a state of chaos, and in a way its mainstream is defined by street style pictures on blogs and social media.

What does fashion mean to you, as a medium?

I think fashion has the power to change the way we see things and can be a very powerful medium. Fashion is at the avant-garde of change, its effect can be very subtle and therefore insidious. I am not talking about bold political statements and obvious appropriation, but the more subtle and sophisticated way in which fashion at its best can be a catalyst of change just by the nature of its imagery being so ubiquitous and widely consumed.

Is fashion still in fashion?

When I started working in fashion, my main directive was to run counter to fashion and to subvert current trends. I think things have changed now and fashion is very much in fashion. The younger generations are attracted by mainstream trends; in this way they are subverting our subversion. Although recently I have started to notice small signs of rebellion, it’s too early to say though.

You’re Italian, but have always worked in England. Do you still feel some Italian traits in your work?

I’m half Italian, but percentage-wise it is far my biggest half, so yes. There is a certain amount of deliberate “bad taste” in my work which, according to my British friends, comes from my Italian side.

What being Italian brings to my work—apart from this element of bad taste—is that growing up in Italy, this distinction between fashion/formalwear and streetwear didn’t really exist, or at least not in the way we have in the UK. In Italy, the distinction between fashion and streetwear is very blurred, and it is more of a question of price points and manufacturing quality. In my opinion, streetwear has always informed fashion—ever since those early photos of real people in magazines like i-D. Then at some point in the 2000s, it somehow was hijacked and became synonymous with casual clothing and sportswear. So it’s possible that the term “streetwear,” with all its different connotations, is finally becoming obsolete.

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S/S

Raf Simons

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Photography Sean Alexander Geraghty Styling Atip W Grooming Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble and bumble Styling Assistant Sophie Casha Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Producer Charlotte Simpson @ KO Productions Model Haris K @ Tomorrow Is Another Day

2018

S/S

Raf Simons

SE1

Photography Sean Alexander Geraghty Styling Atip W Grooming Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble and bumble Styling Assistant Sophie Casha Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Producer Charlotte Simpson @ KO Productions Model Haris K @ Tomorrow Is Another Day

2018

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CALVIN KLEIN 205W39NYC

Redhook

Photography Adrian Mesko Styling Mac Heulster Hair & Make-up Tsukii Models Jabali, Sarah Fraser, Dylan Christiansen & Tyler Blue Golden

2018

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CALVIN KLEIN 205W39NYC

Redhook

Photography Adrian Mesko Styling Mac Heulster Hair & Make-up Tsukii Models Jabali, Sarah Fraser, Dylan Christiansen & Tyler Blue Golden

2018

[Un]real Talk — Lil Miquela

Words Aleks Eror Photography James W Mataitis Bailey Photography Assistant Anthony Casillas Special Thanks DEPARTAMENTO

TRACKSUIT BLACKEYEPATCH

SHOES MONCLER

[Un]real Talk — Lil Miquela

Words Aleks Eror Photography James W Mataitis Bailey Photography Assistant Anthony Casillas Special Thanks DEPARTAMENTO

TRACKSUIT BLACKEYEPATCH

SHOES MONCLER

HOODIE & PANTS MARTINE ROSE SLIDES BALENCIAGA

Miquela Sousa, better known as ‘Lil Miquela’, is the first computer-generated social media influencer. In less than two years of existence, she has amassed well over half a million Instagram followers and sparked a debate about what makes a persona “real” online. In an era of fake news, AI, Russian troll farms, catfishing, and deceptive selfies, Miquela highlights how technology is estranging us from reality.

If you were to glance at Lil Miquela’s Instagram profile with the sort of dead-eyed gaze that sweeps over most people’s faces as they scroll aimlessly through the endless carousel of content uploaded onto social media every day, she could easily pass as just another influencer: the same template pouts and poses; the usual standardized displays of curated joy that are specifically designed to project an image of a youth well-spent “living it up”; a trite shoutout to Black Lives Matter in her bio–you get the picture. But what sets Miquela apart from the Kendall Jenners of the world is that she isn’t real. Or, at least not in the traditional, flesh-and-blood sense of the term.

Miquela is a computer generated image–or, perhaps less drastically, a computer modified image– that’s superimposed into Instagram snaps taken out in the real world. Browse through her feed and you’ll see her in the open air gallery of Miami’s Design District posing next to a contorted sculpture of Kate Moss. In another, she sits flanked by two run-of-the-mill human influencers, Maddi Bragg and Sydney Carlson. Posing with people who don’t look like they’ve stumbled out of a Final Fantasy cutscene is central to Miquela’s Instagram strategy, as is referencing current affairs. She even releases music with ghostly, electronically-distorted vocals that we implicitly associate with “her.” This is done to root Miquela in our physical reality and make her seem realer than the unconvincing 3D rendering that she is. Bizarrely enough it seems to be working: Click on one of her posts and you’ll walk straight into a raging debate over whether she is or isn’t real.

“Yes she’s real, she’s a student in visual arts and such so she works on her pictures she takes of herself,” comments one gushing fan. Judging from the realism of her body gestures and some of her outfits, they’re probably right: it’s likely that Miquela’s photos feature a human model whose head and limbs are digitally distorted before being uploaded online.

Other users mash out abusive messages, channeling their inner trolls as they viciously “out” her as a fake: “You are so fucking irrelevant. If it weren’t for Shane Dawson you wouldn’t be this popular and nobody would care about your fake ass. That brings me to my next point. YOU’RE AS FAKE AS THEY COME. Why can’t you show your real face? I mean, you talked about not being ashamed of your body but your [sic] obviously ashamed of your face because what other reason would you do this?... Also, why won’t you answer any of our questions about who you really are? Even a blind person can tell you’re fake so it’s obvious you’re not real. I love how you’re acting like a real person and like you have feelings, it’s fucking weird and incredibly stupid ... No, I’m not done with my fucking rant but I honestly cba to write anymore points about how shitty of a ‘thing’ you are.” Many can’t decide either way: “God wtf are you real?” they ask.

It’s fascinating that this is even a matter of contention. Even if Miquela is a digitally-altered image of a normal human being, this doesn’t make her “real.” Actor Andy Serkis went through a similar process to become Gollum in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and yet his “realness” was never up for debate. But maybe that’s because the imaginary Gollum was never framed as real, unlike Miquela. Moviegoers were well aware that film, in this instance, is a fictive medium. Social media, on the other hand, is framed as a documental one. But in recent years it has become abundantly clear that rather than recording the world as it is, social media is far more prone to distorting it–as anybody that has ever gone on a disappointing Tinder date can attest. The fact that Lil Miquela is discussed with such finesse just goes to show how warped our perception of reality has become after a decade of social media misuse.

In an era of post-truth and fake news, where news reports tell us that automation and AI threaten to render 800 million jobs obsolete by the year 2030, the question of “what is real?” is one that we will ask ourselves with increasing regularity over the coming decades.

HOODIE & PANTS MARTINE ROSE SLIDES BALENCIAGA

Miquela Sousa, better known as ‘Lil Miquela’, is the first computer-generated social media influencer. In less than two years of existence, she has amassed well over half a million Instagram followers and sparked a debate about what makes a persona “real” online. In an era of fake news, AI, Russian troll farms, catfishing, and deceptive selfies, Miquela highlights how technology is estranging us from reality.

If you were to glance at Lil Miquela’s Instagram profile with the sort of dead-eyed gaze that sweeps over most people’s faces as they scroll aimlessly through the endless carousel of content uploaded onto social media every day, she could easily pass as just another influencer: the same template pouts and poses; the usual standardized displays of curated joy that are specifically designed to project an image of a youth well-spent “living it up”; a trite shoutout to Black Lives Matter in her bio–you get the picture. But what sets Miquela apart from the Kendall Jenners of the world is that she isn’t real. Or, at least not in the traditional, flesh-and-blood sense of the term.

Miquela is a computer generated image–or, perhaps less drastically, a computer modified image– that’s superimposed into Instagram snaps taken out in the real world. Browse through her feed and you’ll see her in the open air gallery of Miami’s Design District posing next to a contorted sculpture of Kate Moss. In another, she sits flanked by two run-of-the-mill human influencers, Maddi Bragg and Sydney Carlson. Posing with people who don’t look like they’ve stumbled out of a Final Fantasy cutscene is central to Miquela’s Instagram strategy, as is referencing current affairs. She even releases music with ghostly, electronically-distorted vocals that we implicitly associate with “her.” This is done to root Miquela in our physical reality and make her seem realer than the unconvincing 3D rendering that she is. Bizarrely enough it seems to be working: Click on one of her posts and you’ll walk straight into a raging debate over whether she is or isn’t real.

“Yes she’s real, she’s a student in visual arts and such so she works on her pictures she takes of herself,” comments one gushing fan. Judging from the realism of her body gestures and some of her outfits, they’re probably right: it’s likely that Miquela’s photos feature a human model whose head and limbs are digitally distorted before being uploaded online.

Other users mash out abusive messages, channeling their inner trolls as they viciously “out” her as a fake: “You are so fucking irrelevant. If it weren’t for Shane Dawson you wouldn’t be this popular and nobody would care about your fake ass. That brings me to my next point. YOU’RE AS FAKE AS THEY COME. Why can’t you show your real face? I mean, you talked about not being ashamed of your body but your [sic] obviously ashamed of your face because what other reason would you do this?... Also, why won’t you answer any of our questions about who you really are? Even a blind person can tell you’re fake so it’s obvious you’re not real. I love how you’re acting like a real person and like you have feelings, it’s fucking weird and incredibly stupid ... No, I’m not done with my fucking rant but I honestly cba to write anymore points about how shitty of a ‘thing’ you are.” Many can’t decide either way: “God wtf are you real?” they ask.

It’s fascinating that this is even a matter of contention. Even if Miquela is a digitally-altered image of a normal human being, this doesn’t make her “real.” Actor Andy Serkis went through a similar process to become Gollum in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and yet his “realness” was never up for debate. But maybe that’s because the imaginary Gollum was never framed as real, unlike Miquela. Moviegoers were well aware that film, in this instance, is a fictive medium. Social media, on the other hand, is framed as a documental one. But in recent years it has become abundantly clear that rather than recording the world as it is, social media is far more prone to distorting it–as anybody that has ever gone on a disappointing Tinder date can attest. The fact that Lil Miquela is discussed with such finesse just goes to show how warped our perception of reality has become after a decade of social media misuse.

In an era of post-truth and fake news, where news reports tell us that automation and AI threaten to render 800 million jobs obsolete by the year 2030, the question of “what is real?” is one that we will ask ourselves with increasing regularity over the coming decades.

For a lot of people, the initial impulse is to dismiss Lil Miquela as unreal. But in many ways she is only marginally less real than the living, breathing influencers that she sometimes uses as Instagram props. It’s often said that not even supermodels look like supermodels, and this statement certainly rings true for social media stars: With the right lighting and a high enough camera angle, anybody can make themselves look like an entirely different person online.

Notice how we only ever seem to see shots of Kim Kardashian from a handful of carefully selected angles. Fitness bloggers have a tendency to stand up on their toes because it tightens up their legs, abs, and ass, making them look more toned than they really are. The Internet is full of guides to taking “better” selfies–and “better” inevitably means less realistic, because the purpose of these guides is to mask our flaws by inflating and magnifying our assets until they dominate the image, muscling out any blemishes or imperfections. If reality is an unflattering paparazzi photo, then Instagram is a highly-doctored lookbook shot that projects an unachievable ideal out into the world. The human influencers that litter various social media platforms are just as distorted as Lil Miquela; the main difference is that those distortions aren’t quite so explicit.

In his career-defining work, Simulacra and Simulation, the late French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, argues that human beings are no longer able to see the world as it really is because technology and the media have blurred our perception of the real and the imagined to such an extent that we can no longer separate the two. This state where reality and illusion fold into one is called “hyperreality.” Hyperreality is created by simulacra (singular: simulacrum), which are images that serve as a representation or imitation of a person or thing. Simulacra can come in the shape of symbols, signs, photographs, videos, paintings, and every other visual form. In the age of mass media, much of our perception of the world comes indirectly via simulacra rather than through direct firsthand experience. When you watch events unfold on the news, you’re not observing reality, you’re observing a simulacrum of reality. Your understanding of what happened in reality is filtered through the simulacrum, but as we all know, media images can be deceiving.

If you’re struggling to keep up with all this theoretical jargon, here’s a simple analogy: McDonald’s menus are a perfect example of simulacra because they show thick, juicy burgers rather than the soggy disappointments that eventually make their way into your mouth. If you’ve never eaten at McDonald’s before, you’re likely to believe that a Big Mac really does look as it’s depicted on the menu or in a TV advert, and that McDonald’s is a quality dining establishment. In this scenario, the Big Mac is hyperreal because the perception is shaped by simulacra rather than the consumption of the burger itself. Piercing through the veil of hyperreality in a theoretical example as banal as this one is easy enough: You simply go to McDonald’s, order a burger, and allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into disillusion with every bite. But what about when the circumstances aren’t so clear cut? Often, we aren’t able to see the reality behind the simulacra–indeed, most of us are so blinded by these images that we mistake them for reality, completely unaware that objective truth lies hidden and distorted beneath them.

Take Donald Trump as an illustrative example: Many U.S. voters claim to have cast their ballots for the Republican candidate because of his reputation as a steely business tycoon. According to his son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, running the country like a business is a central pillar of the Trumpian agenda: “We should have excellence in government,” says Kushner. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

But Trump’s business nous is about as sharp as his intellect: His companies have filed for bankruptcy protection six times, much of his wealth is inherited, and his fame stems from his tabloid marriages to socialite wives. His reputation as a businessman is a simulacrum that he nurtured over 14 seasons of The Apprentice. Vanity Fair’s Fran Lebowitz famously commented that “he’s a poor person’s idea of a rich person. They see him they think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that. Why are my ties not made of 400 acres of polyester?’ All that stuff he shows you in his house—the gold faucets—if you won the lottery, that’s what you’d buy.” To America’s uninformed masses, he’s the living embodiment of success and sophistication, but for an anonymous Manhattan media mogul quoted by The New York Times, “Donald is a bridge-and-tunnel person. He’s always been a poseur in New York.”

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

For a lot of people, the initial impulse is to dismiss Lil Miquela as unreal. But in many ways she is only marginally less real than the living, breathing influencers that she sometimes uses as Instagram props. It’s often said that not even supermodels look like supermodels, and this statement certainly rings true for social media stars: With the right lighting and a high enough camera angle, anybody can make themselves look like an entirely different person online.

Notice how we only ever seem to see shots of Kim Kardashian from a handful of carefully selected angles. Fitness bloggers have a tendency to stand up on their toes because it tightens up their legs, abs, and ass, making them look more toned than they really are. The Internet is full of guides to taking “better” selfies–and “better” inevitably means less realistic, because the purpose of these guides is to mask our flaws by inflating and magnifying our assets until they dominate the image, muscling out any blemishes or imperfections. If reality is an unflattering paparazzi photo, then Instagram is a highly-doctored lookbook shot that projects an unachievable ideal out into the world. The human influencers that litter various social media platforms are just as distorted as Lil Miquela; the main difference is that those distortions aren’t quite so explicit.

In his career-defining work, Simulacra and Simulation, the late French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, argues that human beings are no longer able to see the world as it really is because technology and the media have blurred our perception of the real and the imagined to such an extent that we can no longer separate the two. This state where reality and illusion fold into one is called “hyperreality.” Hyperreality is created by simulacra (singular: simulacrum), which are images that serve as a representation or imitation of a person or thing. Simulacra can come in the shape of symbols, signs, photographs, videos, paintings, and every other visual form. In the age of mass media, much of our perception of the world comes indirectly via simulacra rather than through direct firsthand experience. When you watch events unfold on the news, you’re not observing reality, you’re observing a simulacrum of reality. Your understanding of what happened in reality is filtered through the simulacrum, but as we all know, media images can be deceiving.

If you’re struggling to keep up with all this theoretical jargon, here’s a simple analogy: McDonald’s menus are a perfect example of simulacra because they show thick, juicy burgers rather than the soggy disappointments that eventually make their way into your mouth. If you’ve never eaten at McDonald’s before, you’re likely to believe that a Big Mac really does look as it’s depicted on the menu or in a TV advert, and that McDonald’s is a quality dining establishment. In this scenario, the Big Mac is hyperreal because the perception is shaped by simulacra rather than the consumption of the burger itself. Piercing through the veil of hyperreality in a theoretical example as banal as this one is easy enough: You simply go to McDonald’s, order a burger, and allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into disillusion with every bite. But what about when the circumstances aren’t so clear cut? Often, we aren’t able to see the reality behind the simulacra–indeed, most of us are so blinded by these images that we mistake them for reality, completely unaware that objective truth lies hidden and distorted beneath them.

Take Donald Trump as an illustrative example: Many U.S. voters claim to have cast their ballots for the Republican candidate because of his reputation as a steely business tycoon. According to his son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, running the country like a business is a central pillar of the Trumpian agenda: “We should have excellence in government,” says Kushner. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”

But Trump’s business nous is about as sharp as his intellect: His companies have filed for bankruptcy protection six times, much of his wealth is inherited, and his fame stems from his tabloid marriages to socialite wives. His reputation as a businessman is a simulacrum that he nurtured over 14 seasons of The Apprentice. Vanity Fair’s Fran Lebowitz famously commented that “he’s a poor person’s idea of a rich person. They see him they think, ‘If I were rich, I’d have a fabulous tie like that. Why are my ties not made of 400 acres of polyester?’ All that stuff he shows you in his house—the gold faucets—if you won the lottery, that’s what you’d buy.” To America’s uninformed masses, he’s the living embodiment of success and sophistication, but for an anonymous Manhattan media mogul quoted by The New York Times, “Donald is a bridge-and-tunnel person. He’s always been a poseur in New York.”

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

“The internet is endlessly powerful, and that power has been wielded in many ways... I think the only chance we’ve got is to collectively teach our loved ones how to think critically and how to spot misinformation.”

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

“The internet is endlessly powerful, and that power has been wielded in many ways... I think the only chance we’ve got is to collectively teach our loved ones how to think critically and how to spot misinformation.”

JACKET OUR LEGACY PANTS MONCLER

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

Trump’s diamond-encrusted toilet seats might be repellant to high society, but in the hyperreality of middle America they’re the mark of a bonafide winner. It’s forgotten that Trump made an unsuccessful presidential run in 2000, four years before launching The Apprentice. America voted for The Donald depicted on TV rather than the one that exists in reality. Without his simulacrum, he may not have been elected president.

The rise of fake news over the past year or so has compromised the validity of what we once assumed to be objective fact. We’re now acutely aware that disinformation can be weaponized on the web to devastating effect and many people are either unable or, in some instances, unwilling to tell the difference.

Many have started to wonder: How can we be sure of anything that we haven’t experienced directly?

Baudrillard says we can’t. Yet all of this predates the internet and social media–in 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first ever televised presidential debate. In the preceding decade, TV ownership in America had grown eightfold, from 11% of households to 88%. Radio’s influence was on the wane whereas television was entering a period of dominance that would last well into the new millennium.

On the day of the debate, Nixon, who had only recently returned to the campaign trail after a brief hospitalization, was looking pale and sickly. Kennedy’s boyish good looks and all-American charm, on the other hand, made him a natural fit for a visual medium like television. Polling showed that people’s perception of the winner was shaded by the medium through which they followed the debate: Most of those who listened in on the radio were convinced that Nixon had come out victorious, while the 74 millionstrong TV audience were sure that Kennedy was the clear winner. In a closely fought election, where a mere 113,000 votes–0.17% of the total tally–separated the two candidates, many historians now believe that it was the televised image that nudged JFK to victory. Even Kennedy himself admitted as much: “It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide,” he told the press four days after triumphing at the ballot box.

The fact that two sets of people can come to two completely contradictory conclusions from the same set of information points towards the existence of hyperreality. Kennedy’s televised simulacrum shaded the audience’s view of the world even though what he said was no different to what people heard on the radio.

If a medium has the power to shape the truth, then we have to wonder if anything is actually true at all.

The power of medium over message might explain why some people regard Lil Miquela as “real.” There is something fundamentally unnatural about the modern multimedia image. Even the most realistic paintings are clearly distinguishable from the physical world. Unlike video and photography, they’re unable to record movement or give as convincing of an impression of three-dimensional depth. Video and photography have no natural precedent. They’re created by technology rather than the human hand. You can draw a line backwards through history, from anatomical drawings to cave paintings, but photos and video mark a radical leap forward in visual communication. There’s reason to believe that our animal brains struggle to compute that sort of multi-sensory stimulation, which causes a glitch in our perception of reality. Rather than representing a horrible new precedent, CGI influencers like Lil Miquela are merely the latest addition to a long and winding hall of mirrors that stretches from the Nixon-Kennedy debates to the social media era.

In fact, Miquela’s diminished realism makes her less hyperreal than human influencers because her animated features remind us that she’s a 3D model straining to be as inconspicuously human as possible.

This cannot escape scrutiny–it forces us to ask ourselves whether she is or isn’t real. She makes us question what is real and examine its parameters, unlike human influencers who quietly contribute to our hyperreality with deceptive Instagram snaps that sneak beyond the reaches of our sensory radar. In Miquela’s view, this is precisely why some Instagram users get so frustrated by her existence.

“I’m really not out here trying to anger or upset anyone with my art,” says “Lil Miquela” in an email mediated through her publicist. “I think people feel a little vulnerable in general right now. They have a lot of frustration and need something to target it at, usually it’s something that they don’t understand. So, I try not to let it get to me too much, because it’s a symptom of people trying to digest all of the change happening every day.”

JACKET OUR LEGACY PANTS MONCLER

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

Trump’s diamond-encrusted toilet seats might be repellant to high society, but in the hyperreality of middle America they’re the mark of a bonafide winner. It’s forgotten that Trump made an unsuccessful presidential run in 2000, four years before launching The Apprentice. America voted for The Donald depicted on TV rather than the one that exists in reality. Without his simulacrum, he may not have been elected president.

The rise of fake news over the past year or so has compromised the validity of what we once assumed to be objective fact. We’re now acutely aware that disinformation can be weaponized on the web to devastating effect and many people are either unable or, in some instances, unwilling to tell the difference.

Many have started to wonder: How can we be sure of anything that we haven’t experienced directly?

Baudrillard says we can’t. Yet all of this predates the internet and social media–in 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first ever televised presidential debate. In the preceding decade, TV ownership in America had grown eightfold, from 11% of households to 88%. Radio’s influence was on the wane whereas television was entering a period of dominance that would last well into the new millennium.

On the day of the debate, Nixon, who had only recently returned to the campaign trail after a brief hospitalization, was looking pale and sickly. Kennedy’s boyish good looks and all-American charm, on the other hand, made him a natural fit for a visual medium like television. Polling showed that people’s perception of the winner was shaded by the medium through which they followed the debate: Most of those who listened in on the radio were convinced that Nixon had come out victorious, while the 74 millionstrong TV audience were sure that Kennedy was the clear winner. In a closely fought election, where a mere 113,000 votes–0.17% of the total tally–separated the two candidates, many historians now believe that it was the televised image that nudged JFK to victory. Even Kennedy himself admitted as much: “It was the TV more than anything else that turned the tide,” he told the press four days after triumphing at the ballot box.

The fact that two sets of people can come to two completely contradictory conclusions from the same set of information points towards the existence of hyperreality. Kennedy’s televised simulacrum shaded the audience’s view of the world even though what he said was no different to what people heard on the radio.

If a medium has the power to shape the truth, then we have to wonder if anything is actually true at all.

The power of medium over message might explain why some people regard Lil Miquela as “real.” There is something fundamentally unnatural about the modern multimedia image. Even the most realistic paintings are clearly distinguishable from the physical world. Unlike video and photography, they’re unable to record movement or give as convincing of an impression of three-dimensional depth. Video and photography have no natural precedent. They’re created by technology rather than the human hand. You can draw a line backwards through history, from anatomical drawings to cave paintings, but photos and video mark a radical leap forward in visual communication. There’s reason to believe that our animal brains struggle to compute that sort of multi-sensory stimulation, which causes a glitch in our perception of reality. Rather than representing a horrible new precedent, CGI influencers like Lil Miquela are merely the latest addition to a long and winding hall of mirrors that stretches from the Nixon-Kennedy debates to the social media era.

In fact, Miquela’s diminished realism makes her less hyperreal than human influencers because her animated features remind us that she’s a 3D model straining to be as inconspicuously human as possible.

This cannot escape scrutiny–it forces us to ask ourselves whether she is or isn’t real. She makes us question what is real and examine its parameters, unlike human influencers who quietly contribute to our hyperreality with deceptive Instagram snaps that sneak beyond the reaches of our sensory radar. In Miquela’s view, this is precisely why some Instagram users get so frustrated by her existence.

“I’m really not out here trying to anger or upset anyone with my art,” says “Lil Miquela” in an email mediated through her publicist. “I think people feel a little vulnerable in general right now. They have a lot of frustration and need something to target it at, usually it’s something that they don’t understand. So, I try not to let it get to me too much, because it’s a symptom of people trying to digest all of the change happening every day.”

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

Since first appearing on Instagram two years ago, Miquela has, at time of publication, amassed over 782,000 followers. When emailed about the impetus for this project, Miquela replies: “Thinking back, it’s really crazy how much has changed since April 2016. Trump wasn’t even president yet but there was a tension or uneasiness in the world that was palpable. I started my Instagram almost as a response to that cultural anxiety. I’ve always had this desire to make beautiful impactful things and @LilMiquela came to be as a result of that desire. I wanted to share beautiful things that could hopefully inform a more tolerant world.”

It’s interesting that Lil Miquela came into being right around the same time when many of us began to realize how social media can be gamed to subvert the democratic process and could no longer ignore the damage that the internet was doing to our lives. Like fake news, influencers have the ability to muddy our perception of reality, so it can be argued that Miquela risks being part of the problem, if she isn’t already.

When this question is posited to her human creator, the response is an unflinchingly optimistic reply: “The internet is endlessly powerful, and that power has been wielded in many ways. It feels like we’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle, so we’ve got to learn how to leverage these tools in positive ways.

I’ve used my platform to raise real money for important organizations throughout LA and I’ve seen lives changed as a result. I think the only chance we’ve got is to collectively teach our loved ones how to think critically and how to spot misinformation. I know that we can manifest the change we want to see, and the internet can be a part of that.”

“I’ve used my platform to raise real money for important organizations throughout LA and I’ve seen lives changed as a result.”

Miquela is right, in a sense. The power of the Internet has been wielded in many ways, the main one being commercially. In recent months, Lil Miquela has begun the process of monetizing her influence.

She does make money from her music, which is available on iTunes and Spotify, and she has modeled gear for Diesel’s bootleg inspired “DEISEL” campaign. Her biggest break happened recently, when she was tapped by Italian luxury fashion house Prada for an Instagram takeover during their Fall/Winter 2018 womenswear show at Milan Fashion Week. Clad in hyperreal renditions of Prada’s ready-to-buy Spring/ Summer 2018 collection, she posted a series of 3D-generated Instagram stories at the show venue, designed by renowned architect Rem Koolhaas. She even gave Prada’s Instagram audience a tour of the show space, courtesy of an iPhone-controlled drone.

Miquela recently told Business of Fashion, “I’ll be doing a lot more modeling work. I probably shouldn’t name them but some of the biggest agencies in the world have reached out [to me]”. And who can blame her? Monetization is, after all, the end game of all the biggest social media platforms.

Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram might have their own individual hooks and gimmicks, but their ultimate purpose is to attract enough regular users to eventually charge brands for access to their audience in the form of advertising space. We might be told that the user is king, but the web’s various social media platforms are ultimately designed to harvest data, which is then sold on to brands so they can assault us with targeted ads, or to create a space for brands to market themselves to prospective consumers. Without this dynamic, influencers wouldn’t even exist because their “influence” is directly derived from their ability to sway people into buying stuff.

JACKET MARTINE ROSE

SNEAKERS BALENCIAGA

Since first appearing on Instagram two years ago, Miquela has, at time of publication, amassed over 782,000 followers. When emailed about the impetus for this project, Miquela replies: “Thinking back, it’s really crazy how much has changed since April 2016. Trump wasn’t even president yet but there was a tension or uneasiness in the world that was palpable. I started my Instagram almost as a response to that cultural anxiety. I’ve always had this desire to make beautiful impactful things and @LilMiquela came to be as a result of that desire. I wanted to share beautiful things that could hopefully inform a more tolerant world.”

It’s interesting that Lil Miquela came into being right around the same time when many of us began to realize how social media can be gamed to subvert the democratic process and could no longer ignore the damage that the internet was doing to our lives. Like fake news, influencers have the ability to muddy our perception of reality, so it can be argued that Miquela risks being part of the problem, if she isn’t already.

When this question is posited to her human creator, the response is an unflinchingly optimistic reply: “The internet is endlessly powerful, and that power has been wielded in many ways. It feels like we’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle, so we’ve got to learn how to leverage these tools in positive ways.

I’ve used my platform to raise real money for important organizations throughout LA and I’ve seen lives changed as a result. I think the only chance we’ve got is to collectively teach our loved ones how to think critically and how to spot misinformation. I know that we can manifest the change we want to see, and the internet can be a part of that.”

“I’ve used my platform to raise real money for important organizations throughout LA and I’ve seen lives changed as a result.”

Miquela is right, in a sense. The power of the Internet has been wielded in many ways, the main one being commercially. In recent months, Lil Miquela has begun the process of monetizing her influence.

She does make money from her music, which is available on iTunes and Spotify, and she has modeled gear for Diesel’s bootleg inspired “DEISEL” campaign. Her biggest break happened recently, when she was tapped by Italian luxury fashion house Prada for an Instagram takeover during their Fall/Winter 2018 womenswear show at Milan Fashion Week. Clad in hyperreal renditions of Prada’s ready-to-buy Spring/ Summer 2018 collection, she posted a series of 3D-generated Instagram stories at the show venue, designed by renowned architect Rem Koolhaas. She even gave Prada’s Instagram audience a tour of the show space, courtesy of an iPhone-controlled drone.

Miquela recently told Business of Fashion, “I’ll be doing a lot more modeling work. I probably shouldn’t name them but some of the biggest agencies in the world have reached out [to me]”. And who can blame her? Monetization is, after all, the end game of all the biggest social media platforms.

Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram might have their own individual hooks and gimmicks, but their ultimate purpose is to attract enough regular users to eventually charge brands for access to their audience in the form of advertising space. We might be told that the user is king, but the web’s various social media platforms are ultimately designed to harvest data, which is then sold on to brands so they can assault us with targeted ads, or to create a space for brands to market themselves to prospective consumers. Without this dynamic, influencers wouldn’t even exist because their “influence” is directly derived from their ability to sway people into buying stuff.

ALL MARTINE ROSE

The term “influencer” can be traced back to a 1944 report by sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld titled The People’s Choice, which studied how voters make up their mind during a presidential election. It identified the importance of “opinion leaders” who draw their views from the media then use their “personal influence” to diffuse media messages across their personal networks, shaping opinions across the wider mass. This process is called the “two-step flow of communication.” The concepts of the opinion leader and personal influence eventually fused together and gave rise to influencer marketing, which uses opinion leaders– or influencers, rather–to sell products. The social media influencer might start as regular network user, but as their profile grows, they too become potential advertising space for brands looking to utilize their personal influence to reach prospective consumers. Lil Miquela might not have been created with the explicit intention of one day charging brands for Instagram endorsements, but the inherently commercial nature of social media means that there will come a point in every influencer’s life that they are offered money for access to their audience.

This process is nothing new—celebrities have pimped themselves out to brands for decades. In his seminal work of critical theory, The Society of the Spectacle, Marxist theorist Guy Debord argued that “stars–spectacular representations of living human beings–project this general banality into images of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with.” To banalize Debord’s dense theory down to its simplest form, the “spectacle” that he refers to is advertising and mass media-driven consumer capitalism that creates “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images” and shares many similarities with Baudrillard’s hyperreality. The “general law of obedience to the succession of things,” as he puts it, is consumerism. Celebrities and modern influencers are an example of these images.

Here’s another example: When athletes sign exclusive contracts with sportswear manufacturers, they allow those brands to dictate what they wear. Even in the absence of an explicit agreement between brand and celeb, certain public figures will modify their behavior to boost their commercial appeal. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they allow brands to shape their personalities, thus relinquishing their individuality and becoming vessels for brand messages. While the stars of Debord’s era usually owed their celebrity status to their talents, be they sporting, artistic, or otherwise, modern day influencers are only remarkable for their marketability and reach. Tiger Woods became famous for his golfing skills rather than his ability to sell Gillette razors. The fashion influencers and Instagram stars that Lil Miquela imitates, on the other hand, gain followers by posing for photos, wearing desirable brands and mimicking lookbook shots. Rather than bowing down to the whims of brands once they achieve a certain level of influence, they actively turn themselves into adverts from the get-go. Where commercialization was once a byproduct of fame, now it opens a path to it.

Take British teenager Leo Mandella, aka Gully Guy Leo, for instance: His 587,000-plus Instagram followers aren’t specifically interested in him–they want to see his vast collection of hyped streetwear. At face value, there is nothing more to Leo, the influencer, than the commodities that he owns. So unlike Tiger Woods, the pro golfer, who adopted a wholesome, family guy image to boost his commercial appeal while quietly hiding that he was cheating on his wife (a scandal that cost him $22 million in lost sponsorships in 2010 alone for straying from his brand image), Gully Guy Leo never had any “autonomous qualities,” as Debord puts it, to begin with. He always styled himself as an online streetwear mannequin. The way that he presents himself to the world was always the way that Supreme, BAPE, or Nike would have packaged him to promote their products, anyway. Influencers are now shaped by brands even before they become influential. This is true for Leo, it’s true for makeup vloggers, the influencers that pose alongside Lil Miquela, and, of course, for Miquela herself.

Guy Debord would argue that, although Miquela might be a computer-generated image, she’s no less real than flesh-and-blood human influencers like Gully Guy Leo because influencers, like stars, aren’t “real” themselves. They’re shoppable avatars of consumer avarice, meant to let their audience imagine themselves in the products they’re promoting—and that’s the harsh reality.

ALL MARTINE ROSE

The term “influencer” can be traced back to a 1944 report by sociologist Paul F. Lazarsfeld titled The People’s Choice, which studied how voters make up their mind during a presidential election. It identified the importance of “opinion leaders” who draw their views from the media then use their “personal influence” to diffuse media messages across their personal networks, shaping opinions across the wider mass. This process is called the “two-step flow of communication.” The concepts of the opinion leader and personal influence eventually fused together and gave rise to influencer marketing, which uses opinion leaders– or influencers, rather–to sell products. The social media influencer might start as regular network user, but as their profile grows, they too become potential advertising space for brands looking to utilize their personal influence to reach prospective consumers. Lil Miquela might not have been created with the explicit intention of one day charging brands for Instagram endorsements, but the inherently commercial nature of social media means that there will come a point in every influencer’s life that they are offered money for access to their audience.

This process is nothing new—celebrities have pimped themselves out to brands for decades. In his seminal work of critical theory, The Society of the Spectacle, Marxist theorist Guy Debord argued that “stars–spectacular representations of living human beings–project this general banality into images of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with.” To banalize Debord’s dense theory down to its simplest form, the “spectacle” that he refers to is advertising and mass media-driven consumer capitalism that creates “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images” and shares many similarities with Baudrillard’s hyperreality. The “general law of obedience to the succession of things,” as he puts it, is consumerism. Celebrities and modern influencers are an example of these images.

Here’s another example: When athletes sign exclusive contracts with sportswear manufacturers, they allow those brands to dictate what they wear. Even in the absence of an explicit agreement between brand and celeb, certain public figures will modify their behavior to boost their commercial appeal. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they allow brands to shape their personalities, thus relinquishing their individuality and becoming vessels for brand messages. While the stars of Debord’s era usually owed their celebrity status to their talents, be they sporting, artistic, or otherwise, modern day influencers are only remarkable for their marketability and reach. Tiger Woods became famous for his golfing skills rather than his ability to sell Gillette razors. The fashion influencers and Instagram stars that Lil Miquela imitates, on the other hand, gain followers by posing for photos, wearing desirable brands and mimicking lookbook shots. Rather than bowing down to the whims of brands once they achieve a certain level of influence, they actively turn themselves into adverts from the get-go. Where commercialization was once a byproduct of fame, now it opens a path to it.

Take British teenager Leo Mandella, aka Gully Guy Leo, for instance: His 587,000-plus Instagram followers aren’t specifically interested in him–they want to see his vast collection of hyped streetwear. At face value, there is nothing more to Leo, the influencer, than the commodities that he owns. So unlike Tiger Woods, the pro golfer, who adopted a wholesome, family guy image to boost his commercial appeal while quietly hiding that he was cheating on his wife (a scandal that cost him $22 million in lost sponsorships in 2010 alone for straying from his brand image), Gully Guy Leo never had any “autonomous qualities,” as Debord puts it, to begin with. He always styled himself as an online streetwear mannequin. The way that he presents himself to the world was always the way that Supreme, BAPE, or Nike would have packaged him to promote their products, anyway. Influencers are now shaped by brands even before they become influential. This is true for Leo, it’s true for makeup vloggers, the influencers that pose alongside Lil Miquela, and, of course, for Miquela herself.

Guy Debord would argue that, although Miquela might be a computer-generated image, she’s no less real than flesh-and-blood human influencers like Gully Guy Leo because influencers, like stars, aren’t “real” themselves. They’re shoppable avatars of consumer avarice, meant to let their audience imagine themselves in the products they’re promoting—and that’s the harsh reality.

Lo-Fi Photography Nicolas Robin Hobbs Styling Rogelio F. Burgos Hair Andre Cueto Saavedra @ Open Talent using Massato Paris Make-up Yvane Rocher @ Atomo Management Model Kiyo @ GIRL mgmt

VEST & JACKET DOLCE & GABBANA, SHIRT GROUND ZERO, PANTS BEAUFILLE, SHOES YANG LI

SHIRT SSS WORLD CORP, JACKET & PANTS VERSACE, SHOES YANG LI, SUNGLASSES LOUIS VUITTON

Lo-Fi Photography Nicolas Robin Hobbs Styling Rogelio F. Burgos Hair Andre Cueto Saavedra @ Open Talent using Massato Paris Make-up Yvane Rocher @ Atomo Management Model Kiyo @ GIRL mgmt

VEST & JACKET DOLCE & GABBANA, SHIRT GROUND ZERO, PANTS BEAUFILLE, SHOES YANG LI

SHIRT SSS WORLD CORP, JACKET & PANTS VERSACE, SHOES YANG LI, SUNGLASSES LOUIS VUITTON

SHIRT ISSEY MIYAKE, BLAZER EMPORIO ARMANI, JACKET PALLAS, LEGGINGS REEBOK

ALL LOUIS VUITTON

SHIRT ISSEY MIYAKE, BLAZER EMPORIO ARMANI, JACKET PALLAS, LEGGINGS REEBOK

ALL LOUIS VUITTON

SHIRT ELLERY, VEST & JACKET HAIDER ACKERMANN, SUNGLASSES LOUIS VUITTON

ALL BALENCIAGA

SHIRT ELLERY, VEST & JACKET HAIDER ACKERMANN, SUNGLASSES LOUIS VUITTON

ALL BALENCIAGA

Sinks

Streetwear

Back to Its Roots —

Words Naavin Karimbux

Photography Gilbert Martinez, Vuhlandes & Angel Pham

Sinks

Streetwear

Back to Its Roots —

Words Naavin Karimbux

Photography Gilbert Martinez, Vuhlandes & Angel Pham

Zac Clark’s eight-year-old brand crackles with the same precarious energy that carried streetwear in its heyday.

In 2018, streetwear has become decidedly safe. A counterculture that was once invisible except to those in the know has ballooned into a multimillion-dollar industry, and the clothes that were once worn solely in the streets are now donned on runways in Paris. In the late 1980s, streetwear was born out of activities with a discernible edge: skateboarding, surfing, graffiti, punk rock, and hip-hop were all essential pools that streetwear’s earliest pioneers drew from. At the time of streetwear’s genesis, there was no intention as to what it would become. The clothes were a byproduct of the lifestyles around the aforementioned cultures, and the asperity and sense of danger that was intrinsic in those worlds naturally became a defining characteristic of streetwear.

James Jebbia’s Supreme was known for its prickly employees’ liability to snap at customers who touched clothes in the shop, Erik Brunetti’s FUCT was renowned for its subversively profane graphics, Shawn Stussy’s eponymous Stüssy was imbued with the stoner spirit of the West Coast’s surf scene, and Rick Klotz’s Freshjive was recognized for its provocative political imagery. Becoming a part of early streetwear brands’ inner circles required a knowledge of the surrounding cultures as well as a kind of earn-your-stripes initiation. If you were able to hang around long enough, you would become a part of the family. Through these elements streetwear became a harbor for those that slipped through the cracks of society: outcasts, runaways, and dropouts all gravitated towards the subculture. Importantly, the clothes also served as a visual identifier. A once-over of what someone was wearing could reveal if they understood the mindset and disposition associated with a brand.

At some point in the early 2000s, public perception of the cultures that informed streetwear, once largely reserved for misanthropes, began to shift. Huge corporations such as Nike started wings specifically focused on skateboarding, graffiti began to appear in galleries, and rap became one of the predominant forms of music on Top 40 radio. These subcultures were catapulted into the spotlight, and a side effect of that abrupt spike in popularity was that the associated clothing became highly visible. The original streetwear companies grew, and a new wave of brands were founded in the mid 2000s. The Hundreds, Undefeated, Staple, Diamond Supply Co. and countless others flooded the market, taking cues from streetwear’s OGs but also motivated in part by the financial opportunity presented by a new industry. The do-it-yourself ethos and dicey nature that were the very essence of the first streetwear brands became less necessary as the security of big business fell into place. Streetwear had become a part of the American mainstream, and with millions of dollars at stake was inherently more conservative and less interesting than during its formative years.

Twenty-three-year-old Zac Clark’s brand FUCKTHEPOPULATION (FTP), moves with the same impetuous attitude that was present at streetwear’s dawn. Similar to FUCT, FTP’s name alone manages to rile authoritarian figures of all sorts: teachers, parents, and the police have all vocally taken issue with the brand. Clark has immersed himself in the history of streetwear, looking to the early 1990s for both design and business inspiration. His brand has grown exponentially over the past two years, amassing a cult-like following despite little coverage in the streetwear media and only being stocked on the FTP web shop. While its audience is quickly widening, the brand manages to retain its defiant potency thanks to FTP’s nihilistic disposition, which has remained fully intact through the success that Clark has experienced. Since its inception, FTP has been a social statement before a company, always prioritizing its antagonistic message over financial gain. At a time when streetwear has amalgamated into the cultural mainstream, FTP is one of the last holdouts from what streetwear originally meant and an important refuge for those that feel ostracized by what society has to offer.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, it was the morbid and politically disruptive graphic T-shirts of brands like Rogue Status, Freshjive, and FUCT that first caught Clark’s eye as a high school freshman in 2009.

“Rogue Status’s Gun Show stuff always really stood out to me,” recalls Clark of the brand’s all-over AK-47 assault rifle print pattern. Clark became engrossed in streetwear, camping out on Fairfax Avenue for drops and delving into forums to learn about the culture’s roots. He studied the archives of streetwear’s architects such as FUCT, Stüssy, and PERVERT, and would scour eBay for old pieces.

Zac Clark’s eight-year-old brand crackles with the same precarious energy that carried streetwear in its heyday.

In 2018, streetwear has become decidedly safe. A counterculture that was once invisible except to those in the know has ballooned into a multimillion-dollar industry, and the clothes that were once worn solely in the streets are now donned on runways in Paris. In the late 1980s, streetwear was born out of activities with a discernible edge: skateboarding, surfing, graffiti, punk rock, and hip-hop were all essential pools that streetwear’s earliest pioneers drew from. At the time of streetwear’s genesis, there was no intention as to what it would become. The clothes were a byproduct of the lifestyles around the aforementioned cultures, and the asperity and sense of danger that was intrinsic in those worlds naturally became a defining characteristic of streetwear.

James Jebbia’s Supreme was known for its prickly employees’ liability to snap at customers who touched clothes in the shop, Erik Brunetti’s FUCT was renowned for its subversively profane graphics, Shawn Stussy’s eponymous Stüssy was imbued with the stoner spirit of the West Coast’s surf scene, and Rick Klotz’s Freshjive was recognized for its provocative political imagery. Becoming a part of early streetwear brands’ inner circles required a knowledge of the surrounding cultures as well as a kind of earn-your-stripes initiation. If you were able to hang around long enough, you would become a part of the family. Through these elements streetwear became a harbor for those that slipped through the cracks of society: outcasts, runaways, and dropouts all gravitated towards the subculture. Importantly, the clothes also served as a visual identifier. A once-over of what someone was wearing could reveal if they understood the mindset and disposition associated with a brand.

At some point in the early 2000s, public perception of the cultures that informed streetwear, once largely reserved for misanthropes, began to shift. Huge corporations such as Nike started wings specifically focused on skateboarding, graffiti began to appear in galleries, and rap became one of the predominant forms of music on Top 40 radio. These subcultures were catapulted into the spotlight, and a side effect of that abrupt spike in popularity was that the associated clothing became highly visible. The original streetwear companies grew, and a new wave of brands were founded in the mid 2000s. The Hundreds, Undefeated, Staple, Diamond Supply Co. and countless others flooded the market, taking cues from streetwear’s OGs but also motivated in part by the financial opportunity presented by a new industry. The do-it-yourself ethos and dicey nature that were the very essence of the first streetwear brands became less necessary as the security of big business fell into place. Streetwear had become a part of the American mainstream, and with millions of dollars at stake was inherently more conservative and less interesting than during its formative years.

Twenty-three-year-old Zac Clark’s brand FUCKTHEPOPULATION (FTP), moves with the same impetuous attitude that was present at streetwear’s dawn. Similar to FUCT, FTP’s name alone manages to rile authoritarian figures of all sorts: teachers, parents, and the police have all vocally taken issue with the brand. Clark has immersed himself in the history of streetwear, looking to the early 1990s for both design and business inspiration. His brand has grown exponentially over the past two years, amassing a cult-like following despite little coverage in the streetwear media and only being stocked on the FTP web shop. While its audience is quickly widening, the brand manages to retain its defiant potency thanks to FTP’s nihilistic disposition, which has remained fully intact through the success that Clark has experienced. Since its inception, FTP has been a social statement before a company, always prioritizing its antagonistic message over financial gain. At a time when streetwear has amalgamated into the cultural mainstream, FTP is one of the last holdouts from what streetwear originally meant and an important refuge for those that feel ostracized by what society has to offer.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, it was the morbid and politically disruptive graphic T-shirts of brands like Rogue Status, Freshjive, and FUCT that first caught Clark’s eye as a high school freshman in 2009.

“Rogue Status’s Gun Show stuff always really stood out to me,” recalls Clark of the brand’s all-over AK-47 assault rifle print pattern. Clark became engrossed in streetwear, camping out on Fairfax Avenue for drops and delving into forums to learn about the culture’s roots. He studied the archives of streetwear’s architects such as FUCT, Stüssy, and PERVERT, and would scour eBay for old pieces.

At the same time that Clark was absorbing streetwear’s history, an unruly hiphop collective called Odd Future was gaining traction in Los Angeles. Led by Tyler, The Creator, Odd Future’s music sizzled with a deranged anarchic energy that bucked what was considered normal for hip-hop in 2010. The group rapped about depression, skateboarding, and being young and angry, and constantly preached a do-it-yourself ethos. One of the first musical acts to launch a movement chiefly via the internet, Odd Future pushed their music, photos, and clothes on forums, social media, and their own website.

“Odd Future was a huge influence on me,” Clark says. “Tyler made me realize that I can do whatever I want to do on my own. He made you feel like you could be yourself.”

Having spent a large portion of their childhood loitering on Fairfax Avenue, Odd Future had close ties to streetwear and treated their merchandise like a brand.

They placed an unprecedented amount of importance in the T-shirts, hoodies, and hats that they were creating, and their model forever changed the way that musical acts would regard merch. For Odd Future, the clothes were an integral part of their art rather than ancillary to it.

In addition to their own line and the streetwear behemoths that flowed them gear such as Supreme, the collective visibly supported a young crop of DIY brands. Stray Rats, Freedminds, and Peas & Carrots were all sported by Odd Future in interviews, music videos, and at shows. Two brands in particular, dertbag by Philip Post and Death Precision Inc. by Kobi McLemore, were run out of the bedrooms of teenagers who had taught themselves the logistics needed to launch a brand. Seeing Odd Future’s self-starter mindset as well as other kids his own age running streetwear companies led Clark to the realization that with determination he could head his own brand.

“I just got tired of buying other people’s stuff,” says Clark. “I didn’t have the money, and by 10th grade I was just like, ‘I can do this on my own.’ There was a HYPEBEAST article around that time on Phil and Kobi. They had a huge writeup with the title ‘Children Are the Future.’ That was super cool to see, and then Anwar [Carrots] also had a brand back then. Seeing teenage kids that were making it big, that opened my eyes.”

When it came to the infrastructure needed to establish a brand, Clark had no outside guidance. Instead, he turned to the internet to teach himself the basics needed to start his own company. Digging deep into forums to research T-shirt blanks and finding a screen printer via Google, FTP was born out of Clark’s desire to see his inflammatory message spread as far as possible, rather than aspiration of fame or financial gain. The entire first year of FTP, he gave out free shirts to friends at his high school. Initially, the brand was run under the name “KCUFTHEPOPULATION” to avert scrutiny from the administration, but by the time Clark was in 11th grade, the brand’s profile was already too high to be ignored.

“So many people were wearing FTP in school that they ended up banning the entire brand,” says Clark. “They sent an entire automated phone call to everyone’s home saying that if you wore FTP to school you’d be put in in-school suspension and your shirt would be taken— which was pretty cool to me back then.”

Around the same time that FTP was building momentum, Clark began an internship for Keith Hufnagel’s brand HUF. “Back in 2011 I was camping out for the HUF sales, being the first person in line,” says Clark. “I’ve always been a pretty nervous person so I had one of my buddies pull Keith to the side and ask for his contact information.” In a series of exchanges Clark asked Hufnagel for advice on running a fledgling company. “One of his responses was, ‘You need to get an internship with a brand you really like.’ I replied, ‘Hey I really like HUF so what’s up?’” After interning for a year and a half, HUF hired Clark to work in their warehouse where he would learn about structuring and maintaining a business.

HUF, more than almost any other “streetwear” brand founded in the early 2000s, is grounded in skateboarding. Hufnagel spent around 20 years as a professional skateboarder, and HUF was his way of creating a sustainable business based on his experiences in skateboarding and its needs. Clark is acutely aware of skateboarding’s proximity to streetwear. While at times the line between the two worlds is nonexistent, Clark is careful to not appropriate skate culture or create the image that FTP is a skate brand.

At the same time that Clark was absorbing streetwear’s history, an unruly hiphop collective called Odd Future was gaining traction in Los Angeles. Led by Tyler, The Creator, Odd Future’s music sizzled with a deranged anarchic energy that bucked what was considered normal for hip-hop in 2010. The group rapped about depression, skateboarding, and being young and angry, and constantly preached a do-it-yourself ethos. One of the first musical acts to launch a movement chiefly via the internet, Odd Future pushed their music, photos, and clothes on forums, social media, and their own website.

“Odd Future was a huge influence on me,” Clark says. “Tyler made me realize that I can do whatever I want to do on my own. He made you feel like you could be yourself.”

Having spent a large portion of their childhood loitering on Fairfax Avenue, Odd Future had close ties to streetwear and treated their merchandise like a brand.

They placed an unprecedented amount of importance in the T-shirts, hoodies, and hats that they were creating, and their model forever changed the way that musical acts would regard merch. For Odd Future, the clothes were an integral part of their art rather than ancillary to it.

In addition to their own line and the streetwear behemoths that flowed them gear such as Supreme, the collective visibly supported a young crop of DIY brands. Stray Rats, Freedminds, and Peas & Carrots were all sported by Odd Future in interviews, music videos, and at shows. Two brands in particular, dertbag by Philip Post and Death Precision Inc. by Kobi McLemore, were run out of the bedrooms of teenagers who had taught themselves the logistics needed to launch a brand. Seeing Odd Future’s self-starter mindset as well as other kids his own age running streetwear companies led Clark to the realization that with determination he could head his own brand.

“I just got tired of buying other people’s stuff,” says Clark. “I didn’t have the money, and by 10th grade I was just like, ‘I can do this on my own.’ There was a HYPEBEAST article around that time on Phil and Kobi. They had a huge writeup with the title ‘Children Are the Future.’ That was super cool to see, and then Anwar [Carrots] also had a brand back then. Seeing teenage kids that were making it big, that opened my eyes.”

When it came to the infrastructure needed to establish a brand, Clark had no outside guidance. Instead, he turned to the internet to teach himself the basics needed to start his own company. Digging deep into forums to research T-shirt blanks and finding a screen printer via Google, FTP was born out of Clark’s desire to see his inflammatory message spread as far as possible, rather than aspiration of fame or financial gain. The entire first year of FTP, he gave out free shirts to friends at his high school. Initially, the brand was run under the name “KCUFTHEPOPULATION” to avert scrutiny from the administration, but by the time Clark was in 11th grade, the brand’s profile was already too high to be ignored.

“So many people were wearing FTP in school that they ended up banning the entire brand,” says Clark. “They sent an entire automated phone call to everyone’s home saying that if you wore FTP to school you’d be put in in-school suspension and your shirt would be taken— which was pretty cool to me back then.”

Around the same time that FTP was building momentum, Clark began an internship for Keith Hufnagel’s brand HUF. “Back in 2011 I was camping out for the HUF sales, being the first person in line,” says Clark. “I’ve always been a pretty nervous person so I had one of my buddies pull Keith to the side and ask for his contact information.” In a series of exchanges Clark asked Hufnagel for advice on running a fledgling company. “One of his responses was, ‘You need to get an internship with a brand you really like.’ I replied, ‘Hey I really like HUF so what’s up?’” After interning for a year and a half, HUF hired Clark to work in their warehouse where he would learn about structuring and maintaining a business.

HUF, more than almost any other “streetwear” brand founded in the early 2000s, is grounded in skateboarding. Hufnagel spent around 20 years as a professional skateboarder, and HUF was his way of creating a sustainable business based on his experiences in skateboarding and its needs. Clark is acutely aware of skateboarding’s proximity to streetwear. While at times the line between the two worlds is nonexistent, Clark is careful to not appropriate skate culture or create the image that FTP is a skate brand.

“I was always just a streetwear kid,” says Clark. “I can skateboard, but I’m not a skater. The two go hand-in-hand though; it’s almost the same thing but not quite. I know we’re not a skateboard brand, but I also know a lot of skateboarders buy FTP.” With HUF, Hufnagel looked to give back to the community and culture that he had participated in for what was nearly the entirety of his youth. Rather than simply function as a source of revenue, HUF has served as an important jumping off point for a medley of creatives in street culture. Benny Gold; founder of the eponymous brand, MEGA, who started Black Scale; and Hanni El-Khatib, musician and co-founder of Los Angeles-based record label Innovative Leisure, are all HUF alumni.

“So many people were wearing FTP in school that they ended up banning the entire brand... which was pretty cool to me back then.”

“Keith was fully supportive when it was time for me to leave,” says Clark of his decision to part ways with the company in 2016. “It got to where I was taking my work at HUF home, or sometimes working on Saturdays. I was leaving at 7 or 8 p.m. from HUF and going straight to my tiny FTP office on Skid Row and then not getting home until 1 a.m. Once I started getting a significant amount of online orders was when I realized I couldn’t keep doing HUF and FTP.” FTP has always managed to deftly tread the fine line between creating provocative art and pushing superfluous shock value. The brand finds extraordinarily creative means to execute macabre themes. A T-shirt released in 2015 that reads, “Columbine Physical Education,” on the front in the traditional elementary school P.E. format with the phrase, “Do You Believe In God?” (uttered by Dylan Klebold during the massacre) on the back, was accompanied by photos shot on-location at the high school. FTP’s Spring 2015 lookbook is a video portraying two people having sex while wearing pieces from the collection, posted to Pornhub. Later that year Clark hosted a pop-up shop out of a U-Haul truck on the sidewalk in front of Pink Dolphin’s flagship store on Fairfax Avenue, a place that epitomizes streetwear’s cancerous dilution over the past decade. Through years of persistent guerrilla marketing tactics, FTP garnered an extremely dedicated following and became a selfsustaining business, adeptly avoiding the trend-hopping tactics that other brands resort to. Rather than hire outside help as the brand’s audience grew, Clark turned to family and close friends to create a lean overhead for FTP. “I’ve barely let anyone in this company,” he says. “I’ve just hired my graphic designer Justice, my brother, and a couple friends from high school for customer service and stuff like that.”

FTP’s success is largely due to the palpable integrity that the brand commands.

Rather than moving to maximize profits or popularity, Clark only works with those he is certain he can trust and refuses to compromise FTP’s often-abhorrent nature.

“If my brand didn’t have the word ‘fuck’ in its name, I could be doing shoes with Vans and Nike at this point, but I’m not going to change it,” says Clark.

Ironically, Clark’s aversion to the easier, more lucrative path that other brands in FTP’s position would have taken has led to a kind of stability. FTP has grown an incredibly fervent fanbase who enjoy the connection of buying the brand direct from the source, which allows FTP true independence. There are no longer any stockists outside of FTP’s online store and Clark has no investors to answer to.

For a time, Clark had some shops that carried the brand, but decided to pull out of all of them. “At first I almost had to force my brand through stores’ doors,” says Clark. “Now they’re emailing me all the time to carry FTP, but when I needed help back in high school they wouldn’t respond. It really has nothing to do with me not wanting to sell in stores, it has to do with them not supporting me back then so I’m not going to support them now.” Clark has a sharp distrust for outsiders, an important characteristic for someone who works in an industry where vapid trends and momentary fame are rampant. In order to build a company with longevity in streetwear, retaining a set of trusted partners is essential.

“People reach out all the time offering X amount of money to invest,” says Clark. “But money doesn’t motivate me nor make me move, so I don’t have to let those people in. I’d rather just have the team that I’ve had around me for years help me out. I don’t base my decisions off of business upsides, otherwise I would’ve sold this shit by now.”

“I was always just a streetwear kid,” says Clark. “I can skateboard, but I’m not a skater. The two go hand-in-hand though; it’s almost the same thing but not quite. I know we’re not a skateboard brand, but I also know a lot of skateboarders buy FTP.” With HUF, Hufnagel looked to give back to the community and culture that he had participated in for what was nearly the entirety of his youth. Rather than simply function as a source of revenue, HUF has served as an important jumping off point for a medley of creatives in street culture. Benny Gold; founder of the eponymous brand, MEGA, who started Black Scale; and Hanni El-Khatib, musician and co-founder of Los Angeles-based record label Innovative Leisure, are all HUF alumni.

“So many people were wearing FTP in school that they ended up banning the entire brand... which was pretty cool to me back then.”

“Keith was fully supportive when it was time for me to leave,” says Clark of his decision to part ways with the company in 2016. “It got to where I was taking my work at HUF home, or sometimes working on Saturdays. I was leaving at 7 or 8 p.m. from HUF and going straight to my tiny FTP office on Skid Row and then not getting home until 1 a.m. Once I started getting a significant amount of online orders was when I realized I couldn’t keep doing HUF and FTP.” FTP has always managed to deftly tread the fine line between creating provocative art and pushing superfluous shock value. The brand finds extraordinarily creative means to execute macabre themes. A T-shirt released in 2015 that reads, “Columbine Physical Education,” on the front in the traditional elementary school P.E. format with the phrase, “Do You Believe In God?” (uttered by Dylan Klebold during the massacre) on the back, was accompanied by photos shot on-location at the high school. FTP’s Spring 2015 lookbook is a video portraying two people having sex while wearing pieces from the collection, posted to Pornhub. Later that year Clark hosted a pop-up shop out of a U-Haul truck on the sidewalk in front of Pink Dolphin’s flagship store on Fairfax Avenue, a place that epitomizes streetwear’s cancerous dilution over the past decade. Through years of persistent guerrilla marketing tactics, FTP garnered an extremely dedicated following and became a selfsustaining business, adeptly avoiding the trend-hopping tactics that other brands resort to. Rather than hire outside help as the brand’s audience grew, Clark turned to family and close friends to create a lean overhead for FTP. “I’ve barely let anyone in this company,” he says. “I’ve just hired my graphic designer Justice, my brother, and a couple friends from high school for customer service and stuff like that.”

FTP’s success is largely due to the palpable integrity that the brand commands.

Rather than moving to maximize profits or popularity, Clark only works with those he is certain he can trust and refuses to compromise FTP’s often-abhorrent nature.

“If my brand didn’t have the word ‘fuck’ in its name, I could be doing shoes with Vans and Nike at this point, but I’m not going to change it,” says Clark.

Ironically, Clark’s aversion to the easier, more lucrative path that other brands in FTP’s position would have taken has led to a kind of stability. FTP has grown an incredibly fervent fanbase who enjoy the connection of buying the brand direct from the source, which allows FTP true independence. There are no longer any stockists outside of FTP’s online store and Clark has no investors to answer to.

For a time, Clark had some shops that carried the brand, but decided to pull out of all of them. “At first I almost had to force my brand through stores’ doors,” says Clark. “Now they’re emailing me all the time to carry FTP, but when I needed help back in high school they wouldn’t respond. It really has nothing to do with me not wanting to sell in stores, it has to do with them not supporting me back then so I’m not going to support them now.” Clark has a sharp distrust for outsiders, an important characteristic for someone who works in an industry where vapid trends and momentary fame are rampant. In order to build a company with longevity in streetwear, retaining a set of trusted partners is essential.

“People reach out all the time offering X amount of money to invest,” says Clark. “But money doesn’t motivate me nor make me move, so I don’t have to let those people in. I’d rather just have the team that I’ve had around me for years help me out. I don’t base my decisions off of business upsides, otherwise I would’ve sold this shit by now.”

The probity that Clark has when it comes to doing business directly translates to the way that he collaborates with other brands. Rather than joining forces with companies with the intention of expanding FTP’s fanbase, Clark works with entities that he has both a deep rooted respect for and that he feels are in line with FTP’s values. In 2015, Clark released shirts with both Death Precision Inc. and dertbag.

The collaborations were Clark’s way of acknowledging both Kobi McLemore and Philip Post’s importance in influencing a generation of kids to start their own brands.

“Zac’s approach for the brand is what really stood out to me,” says Post of when he first became aware of the brand in 2011. “What really put me onto the brand was the porno lookbook. I loved the raw energy that he was bringing with his brand.

He’s the ‘fuck you’ to the previous generation of streetwear. People resonate with authentic movements, and Zac has stayed true to himself and the brand from the beginning. Zac’s really for the people, he keeps his pieces affordable so anyone who’s down for the movement can support.”

In Clark’s first email to Keith Hufnagel asking for advice in 2011, Clark ended his message by writing, “HUF × FTP is my dream goal, and I will try my hardest to achieve that.” Five years later, Clark was able to release a shoe with his alma mater, fulfilling that ambition. For the second collaboration, he traveled to New York City for the first time in his life to host a pop-up at HUF’s SoHo store and throw an afterparty that featured a performance by Earl Sweatshirt.

More recently, Clark connected with Erik Brunetti to release a pair of collaborative capsules with FUCT. The two met through a mutual friend, Jordan Hartigan of New Jersey-based brand Burma Mfg, who was designing graphics for FUCT. Brunetti is decidedly cynical when it comes to modern streetwear, and has consistently expressed the opinion that the culture he was instrumental in creating has become the very thing that he originally set out to undermine—a purely capitalist venture fueled by hype and a desire for fame. FUCT rarely collaborates with other brands today, and Brunetti’s cosign is the ultimate signifier of the torch being passed to FTP.

“The moment you’re owned by somebody else, they can control your movements. You cannot have your freedom restricted in this industry.”

— Erik Brunetti “I think that FTP is extremely relevant right now,” says Brunetti. “Especially due to the political climate, besides the obvious shit that’s going on with the government, I think that they’re relevant in a way that’s important. It’s still young, so we’ll see what happens in the future but I like what I see now. The elements are intact. There’re no ulterior motives or big money behind them, it’s just them. And that’s really, really important. The moment you’re owned by somebody else, they can control your movements. You cannot have your freedom restricted in this industry.”

While it was born out of a niche of DIY streetwear brands, FTP’s following quickly eclipsed those of the brands that initially inspired Clark to start the company. Several factors contributed to the viral expansion of FTP’s fanbase: Clark’s nefarious outlook on life, which is apparent across all of the brand’s collections, the extremely creative means that he has used to market FTP, and the people that he selects to be the face of the brand.

One of the first public figures that Clark felt matched FTP’s temperament enough to represent the brand in a lookbook was the late Fredo Santana. Clark could sense the parallel between FTP and the Chicago rapper’s raw style, which would come to influence a generation of artists. After being introduced to Fredo through his friend Yung Gleesh, Clark first chose Fredo to model in FTP’s Summer 2015 lookbook and from that point forth Fredo would be a part of the FTP family, publicly wearing the brand and maintaining a friendship with Clark.

The probity that Clark has when it comes to doing business directly translates to the way that he collaborates with other brands. Rather than joining forces with companies with the intention of expanding FTP’s fanbase, Clark works with entities that he has both a deep rooted respect for and that he feels are in line with FTP’s values. In 2015, Clark released shirts with both Death Precision Inc. and dertbag.

The collaborations were Clark’s way of acknowledging both Kobi McLemore and Philip Post’s importance in influencing a generation of kids to start their own brands.

“Zac’s approach for the brand is what really stood out to me,” says Post of when he first became aware of the brand in 2011. “What really put me onto the brand was the porno lookbook. I loved the raw energy that he was bringing with his brand.

He’s the ‘fuck you’ to the previous generation of streetwear. People resonate with authentic movements, and Zac has stayed true to himself and the brand from the beginning. Zac’s really for the people, he keeps his pieces affordable so anyone who’s down for the movement can support.”

In Clark’s first email to Keith Hufnagel asking for advice in 2011, Clark ended his message by writing, “HUF × FTP is my dream goal, and I will try my hardest to achieve that.” Five years later, Clark was able to release a shoe with his alma mater, fulfilling that ambition. For the second collaboration, he traveled to New York City for the first time in his life to host a pop-up at HUF’s SoHo store and throw an afterparty that featured a performance by Earl Sweatshirt.

More recently, Clark connected with Erik Brunetti to release a pair of collaborative capsules with FUCT. The two met through a mutual friend, Jordan Hartigan of New Jersey-based brand Burma Mfg, who was designing graphics for FUCT. Brunetti is decidedly cynical when it comes to modern streetwear, and has consistently expressed the opinion that the culture he was instrumental in creating has become the very thing that he originally set out to undermine—a purely capitalist venture fueled by hype and a desire for fame. FUCT rarely collaborates with other brands today, and Brunetti’s cosign is the ultimate signifier of the torch being passed to FTP.

“The moment you’re owned by somebody else, they can control your movements. You cannot have your freedom restricted in this industry.”

— Erik Brunetti “I think that FTP is extremely relevant right now,” says Brunetti. “Especially due to the political climate, besides the obvious shit that’s going on with the government, I think that they’re relevant in a way that’s important. It’s still young, so we’ll see what happens in the future but I like what I see now. The elements are intact. There’re no ulterior motives or big money behind them, it’s just them. And that’s really, really important. The moment you’re owned by somebody else, they can control your movements. You cannot have your freedom restricted in this industry.”

While it was born out of a niche of DIY streetwear brands, FTP’s following quickly eclipsed those of the brands that initially inspired Clark to start the company. Several factors contributed to the viral expansion of FTP’s fanbase: Clark’s nefarious outlook on life, which is apparent across all of the brand’s collections, the extremely creative means that he has used to market FTP, and the people that he selects to be the face of the brand.

One of the first public figures that Clark felt matched FTP’s temperament enough to represent the brand in a lookbook was the late Fredo Santana. Clark could sense the parallel between FTP and the Chicago rapper’s raw style, which would come to influence a generation of artists. After being introduced to Fredo through his friend Yung Gleesh, Clark first chose Fredo to model in FTP’s Summer 2015 lookbook and from that point forth Fredo would be a part of the FTP family, publicly wearing the brand and maintaining a friendship with Clark.

“He just connected with FTP,” says Clark. “I wanted my brand to be a more grungy street type, and Fredo captures that in a way that I couldn’t have done without him.

I always liked how grimy his early music sounded and I felt like that went hand in hand with FTP. He was also one of the nicest people I have ever met.”

“I wanted my brand to be a more grungy street type, and Fredo captures that in a way that I couldn’t have done without him.”

— Zac Clark Beyond Fredo Santana, Ron Jeremy, Retch, Antwuan Dixon, and DMX have all appeared in FTP’s lookbooks. Each individual and their profession is extremely mismatched, but Clark is able to pinpoint a similarly warped spirit in each of them that correlates with FTP. “Me and my team sit and think about the meaning of the brand, and then from there we try to pick out people that represent it well,” Clark explains. “It’s all people that have also said ‘fuck you’ to the world.”

Every brand’s owner is perceived differently by the public. Supreme’s James Jebbia is notoriously reclusive, rarely showing his face in public. Erik Brunetti, meanwhile, has been outspoken, never shying away from voicing his opinion about streetwear and its pitfalls. And at the other end of the spectrum entirely is Bobby Hundreds, who has molded himself into a kind of goofy mascot for The Hundreds.

During FTP’s initial years Clark was extremely vocal on social media, calling out other brands and owners for watering down streetwear. “As FTP started getting bigger I didn’t want to put a face to the brand anymore,” says Clark. “I wanted the brand to be its own entity. That’s why I don’t post my face anywhere and I pretty much stopped using social media. I really just want the brand to speak for itself.”

The anger that Clark used to express publicly is now channeled into FTP, adding to the sting that each collection delivers.

Two years ago, an article I wrote on FTP for Highsnobiety was removed from the website shortly after it was posted. Several of the staff were alarmed by the photographs of gun-toting youth taken for the FTP lookbook that accompanied the piece, and requested that the post be taken down. The photos were taken by Vuhlandes, a street photographer from Detroit whose work captures the sordid reality of life in his hometown. He creates striking images of the uninhibited nature of being young, displaying both the highs and sometimes violent lows.

The nature of Vuhlandes’ work is not dissimilar to that of Larry Clark’s through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, in which Clark captured kids, many of whom were his friends, shooting up, having sex, and wielding weapons. Clark’s disturbingly candid imagery was often tapped by streetwear’s first generation, a comparable relationship between brands and a photographer to FTP and Vuhlandes. Whereas most turn away or try to avoid the grimier moments in life that inescapably dog us all, FTP chooses to display, and in some ways celebrate them. Trying to avoid the parts of existence that inspire depression, anxiety, and pessimism is futile, so instead Zac Clark chooses to embrace the times when life is most foul with his brand.

Throughout its existence, FTP has run into obstacles with authority, and in many ways the brand intentionally creates such barriers for itself to prove that it can break through them. Despite having little to no coverage from the streetwear media, only being stocked on its own website, and a refusal to allow in investors to expand the brand, FTP has managed to grow at a rapid pace and provide kids across the world, who feel otherwise shunned by their surroundings, a place of solace.

The brand continues to find success on its own terms.

“It’s been the same motive from when I started in 2010,” says Clark. “Fuck everyone and be yourself.”

“He just connected with FTP,” says Clark. “I wanted my brand to be a more grungy street type, and Fredo captures that in a way that I couldn’t have done without him.

I always liked how grimy his early music sounded and I felt like that went hand in hand with FTP. He was also one of the nicest people I have ever met.”

“I wanted my brand to be a more grungy street type, and Fredo captures that in a way that I couldn’t have done without him.”

— Zac Clark Beyond Fredo Santana, Ron Jeremy, Retch, Antwuan Dixon, and DMX have all appeared in FTP’s lookbooks. Each individual and their profession is extremely mismatched, but Clark is able to pinpoint a similarly warped spirit in each of them that correlates with FTP. “Me and my team sit and think about the meaning of the brand, and then from there we try to pick out people that represent it well,” Clark explains. “It’s all people that have also said ‘fuck you’ to the world.”

Every brand’s owner is perceived differently by the public. Supreme’s James Jebbia is notoriously reclusive, rarely showing his face in public. Erik Brunetti, meanwhile, has been outspoken, never shying away from voicing his opinion about streetwear and its pitfalls. And at the other end of the spectrum entirely is Bobby Hundreds, who has molded himself into a kind of goofy mascot for The Hundreds.

During FTP’s initial years Clark was extremely vocal on social media, calling out other brands and owners for watering down streetwear. “As FTP started getting bigger I didn’t want to put a face to the brand anymore,” says Clark. “I wanted the brand to be its own entity. That’s why I don’t post my face anywhere and I pretty much stopped using social media. I really just want the brand to speak for itself.”

The anger that Clark used to express publicly is now channeled into FTP, adding to the sting that each collection delivers.

Two years ago, an article I wrote on FTP for Highsnobiety was removed from the website shortly after it was posted. Several of the staff were alarmed by the photographs of gun-toting youth taken for the FTP lookbook that accompanied the piece, and requested that the post be taken down. The photos were taken by Vuhlandes, a street photographer from Detroit whose work captures the sordid reality of life in his hometown. He creates striking images of the uninhibited nature of being young, displaying both the highs and sometimes violent lows.

The nature of Vuhlandes’ work is not dissimilar to that of Larry Clark’s through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, in which Clark captured kids, many of whom were his friends, shooting up, having sex, and wielding weapons. Clark’s disturbingly candid imagery was often tapped by streetwear’s first generation, a comparable relationship between brands and a photographer to FTP and Vuhlandes. Whereas most turn away or try to avoid the grimier moments in life that inescapably dog us all, FTP chooses to display, and in some ways celebrate them. Trying to avoid the parts of existence that inspire depression, anxiety, and pessimism is futile, so instead Zac Clark chooses to embrace the times when life is most foul with his brand.

Throughout its existence, FTP has run into obstacles with authority, and in many ways the brand intentionally creates such barriers for itself to prove that it can break through them. Despite having little to no coverage from the streetwear media, only being stocked on its own website, and a refusal to allow in investors to expand the brand, FTP has managed to grow at a rapid pace and provide kids across the world, who feel otherwise shunned by their surroundings, a place of solace.

The brand continues to find success on its own terms.

“It’s been the same motive from when I started in 2010,” says Clark. “Fuck everyone and be yourself.”

S/S

Helmut Lang

2018

I Breathe Your Breath Photography Ash Reynolds Styling Atip W Hair Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble and bumble Make-up Andjelka using ELLIS FAAS Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Models Sarah M @ PRM, Scarlett @ NEVS Models

ZIP DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG RE-EDITIONÂ

HOODED TRENCH COAT HELMUT LANG

S/S

Helmut Lang

2018

I Breathe Your Breath Photography Ash Reynolds Styling Atip W Hair Yoshi Miyazaki using Bumble and bumble Make-up Andjelka using ELLIS FAAS Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Models Sarah M @ PRM, Scarlett @ NEVS Models

ZIP DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG RE-EDITIONÂ

HOODED TRENCH COAT HELMUT LANG

ELBOW CUT-OUT SWEATER HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, TROUSERS HELMUT LANG

HOODED PUFFER VEST HELMUT LANG,

CAMPAIGN PRINT PANEL HOODIE HELMUT LANG SEEN BY SHAYNE OLIVER, JEANS HELMUT LANG

ELBOW CUT-OUT SWEATER HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, TROUSERS HELMUT LANG

HOODED PUFFER VEST HELMUT LANG,

CAMPAIGN PRINT PANEL HOODIE HELMUT LANG SEEN BY SHAYNE OLIVER, JEANS HELMUT LANG

DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG,

PAINTER JEAN HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION

ZIP DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, DENIM CARPENTER PANT HELMUT LANG

DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG,

PAINTER JEAN HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION

ZIP DENIM JACKET HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, DENIM CARPENTER PANT HELMUT LANG

MOTO SUIT BLAZER HELMUT LANG,

COWBOY T-SHIRT HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, TROUSERS HELMUT LANG

HOODED PARKA HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, SHERPA-LINED 87 JACKET HELMUT LANG,

PUPPY PRINT T-SHIRT HELMUT LANG SEEN BY SHAYNE OLIVER

MOTO SUIT BLAZER HELMUT LANG,

COWBOY T-SHIRT HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, TROUSERS HELMUT LANG

HOODED PARKA HELMUT LANG RE-EDITION, SHERPA-LINED 87 JACKET HELMUT LANG,

PUPPY PRINT T-SHIRT HELMUT LANG SEEN BY SHAYNE OLIVER

S/S

MIHARAYASUHIRO

Blank Mirrors Photography Takahito Sasaki Styling Atip W Hair Thomas Silvermann Photography Assistant Kazuki Takahashi Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Model Gaby @ Tomorrow Is Another Day — All clothes MIHARAYASUHIRO Shoes Camper Lab & Shoe Surgeon × Saint Laurent

2018

S/S

MIHARAYASUHIRO

Blank Mirrors Photography Takahito Sasaki Styling Atip W Hair Thomas Silvermann Photography Assistant Kazuki Takahashi Casting Director Sarah Bunter @ Buntercasting Model Gaby @ Tomorrow Is Another Day — All clothes MIHARAYASUHIRO Shoes Camper Lab & Shoe Surgeon × Saint Laurent

2018

How Stone Island Maintains Its Edge Stone Island Words Eugene Rabkin Photography Thomas Welch

For over 35 years, Stone Island has created garments that are weatherproof, experimental, and symbolic of multiple subcultures. But perhaps its greatest achievement is cultivating a brand that is truly trendproof.

When you get to know the people who work at Stone Island, the Italian sportswear company that has changed the way men dress since its inception in 1982, you realize a few things. You geek out with its design team on their attention to functionality, detail, and finishing. You talk to its creative team, refugees from the London fashion world, with whom you share your disdain for all the fussy fashion drama. You get to see an extremely successful company that is still run very much family-style, without the need to squeeze every cent of profit out of it.

But what you realize first and foremost is that it is the almost palpable passion that permeates the company, from its owner and creative director Carlo Rivetti, down to the people who do dyeing experiments in its NASA-level facilities in Ravarino, Italy. Passion is the backbone of Stone Island’s success that has earned them a hardcore following that by now spans over generations and continents, confirming Stone Island’s OG status in the world of covetable sportswear.

In a way, Stone Island is an unclassifiable brand. It’s not exactly fashion—they don’t stage runway shows, and their roots are firmly embedded in the kind of a no-fuss, masculine dressing that shies away from fashion’s self-importance. Yet design-wise, it exceeds a lot of what passes for “high fashion” these days. Nor

is it exactly streetwear, as the company’s focus is different from the streetwear uniform of sneakers, jeans, joggers, and hoodies.

Stone Island occupies a place somewhere in-between—a brand for people who work in fashion but are not of fashion, such as i-D’s Fashion Director Alastair McKimm and the conceptual menswear designer Aitor Throup. Stone Island was there long before the current red-hot intersection of fashion and streetwear took hold.

Fashion and streetwear often take inspiration from the rest of culture. In contrast to say a fashion brand like Raf Simons, or a streetwear brand like Supreme, that actively mine culture for inspiration, Stone Island has played a role in culture creation.

Every subculture has visual cues to differentiate itself, and Stone Island has helped create these early on in its life. The first subculture it helped define were the Paninari, a group of aimless Italian kids who may have cared more about their appearance than politics, and had the money to support their consumption habits (supposedly they once caused a global shortage of Rolex Daytona watches). Along with Moncler, the Paninari’s jackets of choice were Stone Island. In addition to being well-designed, Stone Island had an unmistakable identity in its logo, something the Paninari gravitated to because of its instant signal appeal.

123

How Stone Island Maintains Its Edge Stone Island Words Eugene Rabkin Photography Thomas Welch

For over 35 years, Stone Island has created garments that are weatherproof, experimental, and symbolic of multiple subcultures. But perhaps its greatest achievement is cultivating a brand that is truly trendproof.

When you get to know the people who work at Stone Island, the Italian sportswear company that has changed the way men dress since its inception in 1982, you realize a few things. You geek out with its design team on their attention to functionality, detail, and finishing. You talk to its creative team, refugees from the London fashion world, with whom you share your disdain for all the fussy fashion drama. You get to see an extremely successful company that is still run very much family-style, without the need to squeeze every cent of profit out of it.

But what you realize first and foremost is that it is the almost palpable passion that permeates the company, from its owner and creative director Carlo Rivetti, down to the people who do dyeing experiments in its NASA-level facilities in Ravarino, Italy. Passion is the backbone of Stone Island’s success that has earned them a hardcore following that by now spans over generations and continents, confirming Stone Island’s OG status in the world of covetable sportswear.

In a way, Stone Island is an unclassifiable brand. It’s not exactly fashion—they don’t stage runway shows, and their roots are firmly embedded in the kind of a no-fuss, masculine dressing that shies away from fashion’s self-importance. Yet design-wise, it exceeds a lot of what passes for “high fashion” these days. Nor

is it exactly streetwear, as the company’s focus is different from the streetwear uniform of sneakers, jeans, joggers, and hoodies.

Stone Island occupies a place somewhere in-between—a brand for people who work in fashion but are not of fashion, such as i-D’s Fashion Director Alastair McKimm and the conceptual menswear designer Aitor Throup. Stone Island was there long before the current red-hot intersection of fashion and streetwear took hold.

Fashion and streetwear often take inspiration from the rest of culture. In contrast to say a fashion brand like Raf Simons, or a streetwear brand like Supreme, that actively mine culture for inspiration, Stone Island has played a role in culture creation.

Every subculture has visual cues to differentiate itself, and Stone Island has helped create these early on in its life. The first subculture it helped define were the Paninari, a group of aimless Italian kids who may have cared more about their appearance than politics, and had the money to support their consumption habits (supposedly they once caused a global shortage of Rolex Daytona watches). Along with Moncler, the Paninari’s jackets of choice were Stone Island. In addition to being well-designed, Stone Island had an unmistakable identity in its logo, something the Paninari gravitated to because of its instant signal appeal.

123

Stone Island’s logo was created by Massimo Osti, Stone Island’s legendary founder and its first designer. He adopted the compass rose (sometimes called a wind rose) as the brand’s logo and made the badge removable—a nod to the removable insignia on the uniforms he bought at Italy’s flea markets, which were flooded with military gear in the late ’70s.

And so Stone Island landed smack in the middle of the trend of casualization of men’s dress. From Italy it spread to Germany; from there to the Netherlands, and then to the United Kingdom. In the UK it found its success in the “terrace culture” of the working class football hooligans, who tended to congregate on the football stadiums’ terraces, before all Premier League stadiums became seating only. This may seem strange to the American sports audience, but in the UK, the most rabid football fans, who came to be known as “Casuals,” don’t wear jerseys—that’s reserved for dads and their kids—but differentiate themselves through clothes with clear signifiers.

Casuals, who predominantly came from the English working class, had always had an aspirational streak in them, and dressing well was part of it. In the pre-Internet age, in order to get Stone Island beyond the limited local distribution, one would have to travel to Italy. The hardcore football fans who journeyed in support of their team would make a pit stop at a Stone Island store or a stockist (or sometimes looted one, as one myth goes).

Owning Stone Island would signal two things: one was that you were a fan dedicated enough to support your team internationally; and two was that your team was good enough to compete on the pan-European level, whether in Champion’s League or the UEFA Cup. The rarity of Stone Island and its relatively expensive price tag made it all the more covetable. The clothes were also practical and durable; they protected you from the inclement English weather at an open stadium.

At the same time, Manchester United’s star Erik Cantona began wearing Stone Island, which he bought at a local shop, during post-game televised interviews. Cantona was not only arguably the best player in England at the time, but the most notorious one for his shenanigans on the pitch. And thus Stone Island’s reputation as a tough guy uniform was cemented.

As culture became globalized, so did football culture, of which the English one was the most infectious. As the iron curtain fell, Stone Island became sought after by the Russian football fans, who began to emulate the misbehavior of their English counterparts. At the same time the brand made its way to Japan, and from there to South Korea, and most recently, China.

The story of Stone Island in North America is a bit different.

The brand tried entering the market in the ’90s, but the sales were tepid. There was no terrace culture in North America, nor was soccer taken seriously as a sport, and so the cultural signifiers that made Stone Island popular in Europe never translated to New York, Los Angeles, or Toronto. Besides,

Americans were more fascinated with workwear and sportswear as its own uniform of masculinity. It was not until hip-hop became pop culture’s dominant music form and rappers—most notably Drake and Travis Scott—began to discover Stone Island in the past couple of years that Stone Island became coveted stateside.

One story goes that Drake discovered the brand through “grime,” a strand of British hip-hop. Another involves M5 Showroom, which has represented Stone Island’s North American business since the ’90s, introducing Drake and Travis Scott to the brand, as well as brokering collaborations with hyped labels like Nike and Supreme. Stone Island’s enduring appeal is another thing that sets it beyond fashion, where brands tend to come and go.

“I never wanted Stone Island to be a fashion brand,” says Rivetti in his Milan office. “I come from a clothing manufacturing background, and I have seen how fashion brands come and go, as generations shift. We tried to chase fashion with C.P. Company [a sister brand that Rivetti sold in 2010 in order to concentrate on Stone Island], and we were always late. So, with Stone Island, yes, we know we need to stay relevant, so we can change the design team, the content creation team, the marketing team, and yet our language remains the same.”

“ I never wanted Stone Island to be a fashion brand.” — Carlo Rivetti In 2012 Stone Island celebrated its 30th anniversary with a display of its impressive archive at Pitti Uomo in Florence, and international launch of its accompanying book, Archivio ‘982_‘012. It was a watershed moment for everyone at the company.

“On the opening day of the exhibit at [Stazione] Leopolda, there was an earthquake in our headquarters’ region,” says Rivetti. “We only showed up like an hour before the opening. We brought there the people who actually do the work itself—who cut, sew, and dye. And they were shocked to see what it is we have achieved in 30 years. To see it all in one space, it gave them newfound energy.”

Rivetti speaks with the infectious enthusiasm of a fan, and his light blue eyes literally sparkle when he latches onto a subject that is close to his heart, whether it’s Stone Island, football, or wine (one side of Rivetti’s family are winemakers). At the same time, his demeanor is easygoing, that of a man who has nothing to prove to himself or others. Which makes sense, considering Stone Island is that rare brand that has nothing to prove either.

The proof is in the nylon metal pudding.

The story of Stone Island is incomplete without talking about Massimo Osti, its founder and first designer, who gave the brand its unique DNA of utilitarian design and innovation.

124

Stone Island’s logo was created by Massimo Osti, Stone Island’s legendary founder and its first designer. He adopted the compass rose (sometimes called a wind rose) as the brand’s logo and made the badge removable—a nod to the removable insignia on the uniforms he bought at Italy’s flea markets, which were flooded with military gear in the late ’70s.

And so Stone Island landed smack in the middle of the trend of casualization of men’s dress. From Italy it spread to Germany; from there to the Netherlands, and then to the United Kingdom. In the UK it found its success in the “terrace culture” of the working class football hooligans, who tended to congregate on the football stadiums’ terraces, before all Premier League stadiums became seating only. This may seem strange to the American sports audience, but in the UK, the most rabid football fans, who came to be known as “Casuals,” don’t wear jerseys—that’s reserved for dads and their kids—but differentiate themselves through clothes with clear signifiers.

Casuals, who predominantly came from the English working class, had always had an aspirational streak in them, and dressing well was part of it. In the pre-Internet age, in order to get Stone Island beyond the limited local distribution, one would have to travel to Italy. The hardcore football fans who journeyed in support of their team would make a pit stop at a Stone Island store or a stockist (or sometimes looted one, as one myth goes).

Owning Stone Island would signal two things: one was that you were a fan dedicated enough to support your team internationally; and two was that your team was good enough to compete on the pan-European level, whether in Champion’s League or the UEFA Cup. The rarity of Stone Island and its relatively expensive price tag made it all the more covetable. The clothes were also practical and durable; they protected you from the inclement English weather at an open stadium.

At the same time, Manchester United’s star Erik Cantona began wearing Stone Island, which he bought at a local shop, during post-game televised interviews. Cantona was not only arguably the best player in England at the time, but the most notorious one for his shenanigans on the pitch. And thus Stone Island’s reputation as a tough guy uniform was cemented.

As culture became globalized, so did football culture, of which the English one was the most infectious. As the iron curtain fell, Stone Island became sought after by the Russian football fans, who began to emulate the misbehavior of their English counterparts. At the same time the brand made its way to Japan, and from there to South Korea, and most recently, China.

The story of Stone Island in North America is a bit different.

The brand tried entering the market in the ’90s, but the sales were tepid. There was no terrace culture in North America, nor was soccer taken seriously as a sport, and so the cultural signifiers that made Stone Island popular in Europe never translated to New York, Los Angeles, or Toronto. Besides,

Americans were more fascinated with workwear and sportswear as its own uniform of masculinity. It was not until hip-hop became pop culture’s dominant music form and rappers—most notably Drake and Travis Scott—began to discover Stone Island in the past couple of years that Stone Island became coveted stateside.

One story goes that Drake discovered the brand through “grime,” a strand of British hip-hop. Another involves M5 Showroom, which has represented Stone Island’s North American business since the ’90s, introducing Drake and Travis Scott to the brand, as well as brokering collaborations with hyped labels like Nike and Supreme. Stone Island’s enduring appeal is another thing that sets it beyond fashion, where brands tend to come and go.

“I never wanted Stone Island to be a fashion brand,” says Rivetti in his Milan office. “I come from a clothing manufacturing background, and I have seen how fashion brands come and go, as generations shift. We tried to chase fashion with C.P. Company [a sister brand that Rivetti sold in 2010 in order to concentrate on Stone Island], and we were always late. So, with Stone Island, yes, we know we need to stay relevant, so we can change the design team, the content creation team, the marketing team, and yet our language remains the same.”

“ I never wanted Stone Island to be a fashion brand.” — Carlo Rivetti In 2012 Stone Island celebrated its 30th anniversary with a display of its impressive archive at Pitti Uomo in Florence, and international launch of its accompanying book, Archivio ‘982_‘012. It was a watershed moment for everyone at the company.

“On the opening day of the exhibit at [Stazione] Leopolda, there was an earthquake in our headquarters’ region,” says Rivetti. “We only showed up like an hour before the opening. We brought there the people who actually do the work itself—who cut, sew, and dye. And they were shocked to see what it is we have achieved in 30 years. To see it all in one space, it gave them newfound energy.”

Rivetti speaks with the infectious enthusiasm of a fan, and his light blue eyes literally sparkle when he latches onto a subject that is close to his heart, whether it’s Stone Island, football, or wine (one side of Rivetti’s family are winemakers). At the same time, his demeanor is easygoing, that of a man who has nothing to prove to himself or others. Which makes sense, considering Stone Island is that rare brand that has nothing to prove either.

The proof is in the nylon metal pudding.

The story of Stone Island is incomplete without talking about Massimo Osti, its founder and first designer, who gave the brand its unique DNA of utilitarian design and innovation.

124

“Our particular wish [is] to tell the story of Stone Island through its greatest asset: the product, which, for us, has always been at the centre of everything,” reads the first sentence in the Archivio book. Not fashion design, with its impact on easily recognizable aesthetic codes, but product design, with its painstaking attention to the garment itself.

By 1982 Osti already had his first brand, C.P. Company, which produced clothes that were functional and elegant—the type of stuff that would be a weekend complement to your weekday tailoring, palatable but with an edge. Osti’s most famous C.P. Company garment was the Mille Miglia jacket with a hood that featured a pair of goggles, inspired by military gas masks, that is by now a design icon.

But Osti was also attracted by the worn, washed feeling of those military uniforms he scouted at Italy’s flea markets. At one point he wondered what it would look like if he used the canvas tarps that he saw on military trucks to make jackets.

“It looked terrible,” recalls Rivetti with a laugh. “So, Massimo decided to wash it, and the result was surprisingly strong. Too strong for C.P. Company, in fact, so he created a new brand on the strength of this one fabric, and that’s how Stone Island was born.”

Osti got the name “Stone Island” from the novels of Joseph Conrad. He made seven jackets from the fabric, which he called “Tela Stella.” They looked tough, lived-in, and they were windresistant. They were also an instant hit with the buyers and the end consumer.

Osti knew that he was on the right path, and he plunged headfirst into fabric and dyeing research, coming up with sciencefiction level stuff and making it real. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and pursued his goals with a determination bordering on mania.

One of Stone Island’s earliest icons is the thermo-sensitive fabric of which the brand’s Ice jackets, one of its most covetable, are made. The first jackets were made from polyester coated with liquid crystals. In 2010 this method was changed; the company started to use a polyurethane film impregnated with a special pigment that modifies the passage of light depending on the temperature. The film itself is bonded to a polyester mesh base to create the fabric that changes color if you say, go outside, or put your hand on it.

127

“Our particular wish [is] to tell the story of Stone Island through its greatest asset: the product, which, for us, has always been at the centre of everything,” reads the first sentence in the Archivio book. Not fashion design, with its impact on easily recognizable aesthetic codes, but product design, with its painstaking attention to the garment itself.

By 1982 Osti already had his first brand, C.P. Company, which produced clothes that were functional and elegant—the type of stuff that would be a weekend complement to your weekday tailoring, palatable but with an edge. Osti’s most famous C.P. Company garment was the Mille Miglia jacket with a hood that featured a pair of goggles, inspired by military gas masks, that is by now a design icon.

But Osti was also attracted by the worn, washed feeling of those military uniforms he scouted at Italy’s flea markets. At one point he wondered what it would look like if he used the canvas tarps that he saw on military trucks to make jackets.

“It looked terrible,” recalls Rivetti with a laugh. “So, Massimo decided to wash it, and the result was surprisingly strong. Too strong for C.P. Company, in fact, so he created a new brand on the strength of this one fabric, and that’s how Stone Island was born.”

Osti got the name “Stone Island” from the novels of Joseph Conrad. He made seven jackets from the fabric, which he called “Tela Stella.” They looked tough, lived-in, and they were windresistant. They were also an instant hit with the buyers and the end consumer.

Osti knew that he was on the right path, and he plunged headfirst into fabric and dyeing research, coming up with sciencefiction level stuff and making it real. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and pursued his goals with a determination bordering on mania.

One of Stone Island’s earliest icons is the thermo-sensitive fabric of which the brand’s Ice jackets, one of its most covetable, are made. The first jackets were made from polyester coated with liquid crystals. In 2010 this method was changed; the company started to use a polyurethane film impregnated with a special pigment that modifies the passage of light depending on the temperature. The film itself is bonded to a polyester mesh base to create the fabric that changes color if you say, go outside, or put your hand on it.

127

To demonstrate how the fabric works, Rivetti put on an Ice jacket, for the first time made using leather, and then ran outside of the showroom. He came back two minutes later and the jacket he was wearing changed color in some places. He beamed eagerly at the fabric’s transformation, as if he just performed a magic trick.

It was the kind of enthusiasm that makes Stone Island push the envelope in product design and experimentation further and further. Fashion is often talked about as an art form, and while most of such talk is overrated, there is a certain artistry about Stone Island in the way it experiments for the sake of experimenting. At the end of the day, a jacket changing color depending on the temperature may not mean much to most consumers. But to Stone Island, that sense of achievement is real. That deep passion results in jackets made from stainless steel fibers covered with Teflon®, or “Lasered Reflex Mat,” a matte fabric that’s coated with microscopic glass spheres with a pattern engraved by a laser.

“Sometimes when we are working on a new fabric, we don’t even know what we are going to do with it until it’s done. So, in a way the fabric often dictates the garment,” Rivetti says.

Just like with design, Rivetti leaves nothing to chance at the production level. The company has been known to modify existing machines to achieve the results it wants. Every prototype is made first in the Ravarino headquarters. If Stone Island has to outsource manufacturing, it will install the machines in the manufacturer’s factory and tutor its workforce. Most products that are made elsewhere are made in white fabric, and come back to Italy to be dyed at Stone Island’s facilities.

“ S ometimes when we are working on a new fabric, we don’t even know what we are going to do with it until it’s done. So, in a way the fabric often dictates the garment.” — Carlo Rivetti This level of commitment is why some of the most interesting clothing designers, like Paul Harvey, Aitor Throup, and Errolson Hugh, have designed or still design for Stone Island. Rivetti discovered Harvey in 1994 at an outdoor gear trade show in Munich.

“I entered a stand for a German brand called ‘Sabotage,’ and I took one look at it and realized that whoever designed this would be perfect for us,” says Rivetti. “When I found out that Paul Harvey actually lived in Italy, married to an Italian woman, it was almost too perfect.”

Like Osti, who was a graphic designer, Harvey did not come from a fashion background. He has a degree in textile design from Central Saint Martins in London, which led to his fascination with materials. Once Harvey’s design team wanted to experiment with dyeing a fabric that was notoriously dye-resistant. They came across Kevlar®, a fabric that’s five times stronger than steel, and is usually used in bulletproof vests. Rivetti convinced DuPont, the fabric’s manufacturer, to let them use the Kevlar® name free of charge in exchange for the promise to dye the fabric that hitherto came only in pale yellow. Harvey’s design team came up with the idea to overlay the Kevlar® with a layer of nylon mesh and then coat it with polyurethane film. The combined material responded well to dyeing. More recently, Stone Island conducted a similar experiment with Dyneema®, considered to be the strongest lightweight fiber in the world.

Before the British designer Aitor Throup made waves with his own cerebral menswear collections, he designed for Stone Island’s Shadow Project as well.

“As a teenager in Burnley I was obsessed with Stone Island,” says Throup. “I later realized that the product from that era had been designed by the genius that is Paul Harvey, and directed

by Carlo Rivetti; whom I was honored to work on some very interesting projects with at the beginning of my career. I owe a lot to that brand. They showed me that dreams could become a reality, and that clothing doesn’t have to be just clothing.”

Along with Throup, Rivetti approached the Canadian-born, Berlin-based designer Errolson Hugh, who was already making a name for himself with his own brand, ACRONYM. “I found out about [Stone Island] quite late, after graduating and moving to Germany with Michaela [Sachenbacher, co-founder of ACRONYM] in 1993,” admits Hugh. “Our real introduction to the label was by walking into Studio Osti in 1995. Before that, we hadn’t so much as tried on a Stone Island jacket. I can still clearly remember the wool-lined rubber trench coat that was hanging just past the entrance. Stamped with the word ARCHIVIO boldly across its front, this was the first time we were confronted with the reality—and possibilities—of the world of Stone Island. We had a five-hour drive home to Munich later that day, and we spoke about what we had just seen the entire time.”

Hugh and Sachenbacher subsequently reached out to Osti and worked for his studio for one season in 1998. In 2007 they met Carlo Rivetti and his wife, Sabina, who is also actively involved in the brand, through Marc Buhre, the designer of Stone Island’s flagship interiors, with whom they also worked at ACRONYM.

130

To demonstrate how the fabric works, Rivetti put on an Ice jacket, for the first time made using leather, and then ran outside of the showroom. He came back two minutes later and the jacket he was wearing changed color in some places. He beamed eagerly at the fabric’s transformation, as if he just performed a magic trick.

It was the kind of enthusiasm that makes Stone Island push the envelope in product design and experimentation further and further. Fashion is often talked about as an art form, and while most of such talk is overrated, there is a certain artistry about Stone Island in the way it experiments for the sake of experimenting. At the end of the day, a jacket changing color depending on the temperature may not mean much to most consumers. But to Stone Island, that sense of achievement is real. That deep passion results in jackets made from stainless steel fibers covered with Teflon®, or “Lasered Reflex Mat,” a matte fabric that’s coated with microscopic glass spheres with a pattern engraved by a laser.

“Sometimes when we are working on a new fabric, we don’t even know what we are going to do with it until it’s done. So, in a way the fabric often dictates the garment,” Rivetti says.

Just like with design, Rivetti leaves nothing to chance at the production level. The company has been known to modify existing machines to achieve the results it wants. Every prototype is made first in the Ravarino headquarters. If Stone Island has to outsource manufacturing, it will install the machines in the manufacturer’s factory and tutor its workforce. Most products that are made elsewhere are made in white fabric, and come back to Italy to be dyed at Stone Island’s facilities.

“ S ometimes when we are working on a new fabric, we don’t even know what we are going to do with it until it’s done. So, in a way the fabric often dictates the garment.” — Carlo Rivetti This level of commitment is why some of the most interesting clothing designers, like Paul Harvey, Aitor Throup, and Errolson Hugh, have designed or still design for Stone Island. Rivetti discovered Harvey in 1994 at an outdoor gear trade show in Munich.

“I entered a stand for a German brand called ‘Sabotage,’ and I took one look at it and realized that whoever designed this would be perfect for us,” says Rivetti. “When I found out that Paul Harvey actually lived in Italy, married to an Italian woman, it was almost too perfect.”

Like Osti, who was a graphic designer, Harvey did not come from a fashion background. He has a degree in textile design from Central Saint Martins in London, which led to his fascination with materials. Once Harvey’s design team wanted to experiment with dyeing a fabric that was notoriously dye-resistant. They came across Kevlar®, a fabric that’s five times stronger than steel, and is usually used in bulletproof vests. Rivetti convinced DuPont, the fabric’s manufacturer, to let them use the Kevlar® name free of charge in exchange for the promise to dye the fabric that hitherto came only in pale yellow. Harvey’s design team came up with the idea to overlay the Kevlar® with a layer of nylon mesh and then coat it with polyurethane film. The combined material responded well to dyeing. More recently, Stone Island conducted a similar experiment with Dyneema®, considered to be the strongest lightweight fiber in the world.

Before the British designer Aitor Throup made waves with his own cerebral menswear collections, he designed for Stone Island’s Shadow Project as well.

“As a teenager in Burnley I was obsessed with Stone Island,” says Throup. “I later realized that the product from that era had been designed by the genius that is Paul Harvey, and directed

by Carlo Rivetti; whom I was honored to work on some very interesting projects with at the beginning of my career. I owe a lot to that brand. They showed me that dreams could become a reality, and that clothing doesn’t have to be just clothing.”

Along with Throup, Rivetti approached the Canadian-born, Berlin-based designer Errolson Hugh, who was already making a name for himself with his own brand, ACRONYM. “I found out about [Stone Island] quite late, after graduating and moving to Germany with Michaela [Sachenbacher, co-founder of ACRONYM] in 1993,” admits Hugh. “Our real introduction to the label was by walking into Studio Osti in 1995. Before that, we hadn’t so much as tried on a Stone Island jacket. I can still clearly remember the wool-lined rubber trench coat that was hanging just past the entrance. Stamped with the word ARCHIVIO boldly across its front, this was the first time we were confronted with the reality—and possibilities—of the world of Stone Island. We had a five-hour drive home to Munich later that day, and we spoke about what we had just seen the entire time.”

Hugh and Sachenbacher subsequently reached out to Osti and worked for his studio for one season in 1998. In 2007 they met Carlo Rivetti and his wife, Sabina, who is also actively involved in the brand, through Marc Buhre, the designer of Stone Island’s flagship interiors, with whom they also worked at ACRONYM.

130

“I guess [Buhre] had his ACRONYM bag with him during a few meetings at Sportswear Company [the parent company of Stone Island], and it must have caught Carlo’s perpetually curious eye,” continues Hugh. “When Paul [Harvey] retired from Stone Island, the Rivettis reached out to us through Marc and we flew down to Ravarino to meet them. It was one of those rare meetings when everyone immediately understands one another. We were very serious students of Stone Island by this time, so we were thrilled to have the opportunity to learn and contribute.”

Working with Stone Island’s know-how provides a designer par excellence like Hugh with immense possibilities.

“Almost everything that we do at SI would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to execute anywhere else,” says Hugh.

“To be able to do that type of work regularly, and to be able to deliver it as a real product to the market, season after season, is truly remarkable. Stone Island’s ‘normal’ exceeds the most advanced ‘not for sale/show only’ propositions of other brands on the regular. And it’s always new. Doing very difficult, beautiful things that no one has done before is the everyday situation at Stone Island. It’s the best possible job for a designer really.”

Hugh and his team were at the Stone Island showroom to check up on the final results of the Shadow Project, the experimental line that Hugh designs. Together with his team we went through the racks, trying on the jackets with complicated closures and hidden layers.

“Check out this drop pocket,” says one of the guys, showing off what was essentially a slit in the front of the jacket. He drops his cell phone into the slit and then, like an illusionist, takes it out of the inside pocket of the jacket. I think about the countless times I have had to open my jacket in the frigid New York wind to put something valuable into an inside pocket. Problem solved.

A “first world problem,” one might say, but my mind ventured into the possible application for this in the military, where every split-second counts. After all, few people know that the D-rings on a trench coat were invented to hang grenades on, so a soldier would only need one hand to pull the pin out in order to throw the grenade, without having to let go of his rifle. And while I doubt the many fancy women who strut around SoHo in their Burberrys know this, that detail has nonetheless remained.

I leave the showroom—still in the final stages of preparation, the team working well into the evening—and follow Francesca, the press officer, to see the current collection that just hit the stores. As she walks me through it, my brain strains to keep all the information in—tiger camouflage achieved by applying six layers of paint on a jacket, heat-bonded rain coats, spray-painted knits, hand-brushed sweatshirts, and so on.

immense and fanatical as those of football clubs. For many, collecting Stone Island is a serious endeavor and a lifelong passion. Rivetti is very cognizant of that. His office is flooded with fan mail, and he tries to respond to as many letters as possible. He never snubs those who approach him at airports or in restaurants. He will occasionally engage a customer during store visits, sometimes giving him fit advice. He has drinks with fans. One time Rivetti had a special piece made for a dedicated customer’s birthday and presented it to him during a book signing in London. He sent flowers to another’s family upon his death.

None of this is contrived.

“I think part of our success is that people see the love that goes into our product. Our experimentation is our love,” adds Sabina Rivetti. “There is a life aspect of what we do, in how the wearer perceives himself when he dresses in Stone Island.”

“ I think part of our success is that people see the love that goes into our product. Our experimentation is our love.”

— Sabina Rivetti All of this passion has paid off handsomely for the company, whose business has been booming. In a recent survey done by Business of Fashion and Lyst, the online shopping aggregator, Stone Island came in as the eighth most-searched label in 2017—quite an achievement for a non-fashion brand that caters almost exclusively to men (though Rivetti says that he is seeing more and more women buying Stone Island’s menswear). Stone Island has successfully reentered the American market with two flagship stores, one in New York and another one in Los Angeles.

Its wholesale business has been on the steady rise, and so has i t s e - c o m m e rc e . B u t a t i t s h e a r t , S t o n e I s l a n d re m a i n s a family company.

“There are all these businessmen from China that are now asking me to take the brand there and open all these stores,” says Rivetti. “They tell me we will sell a billion dollars’ worth a year. I don’t want to do that, to just chase money. We will always do what feels right.”

By now, Stone Island possesses the rich narrative brand has accumulated over the years, from design stories to cultural influences. Today, as we drown in of stuff, a brand needs to have a clear message to with people.

“The future of brands is storytelling,” asserts Rivetti. “And we have thousands of stories to tell.”

Stone Island’s fervent embrace by its customers is an indispensable part of the brand’s success. Its fan base is as

132

that the process the sea connect

133

“I guess [Buhre] had his ACRONYM bag with him during a few meetings at Sportswear Company [the parent company of Stone Island], and it must have caught Carlo’s perpetually curious eye,” continues Hugh. “When Paul [Harvey] retired from Stone Island, the Rivettis reached out to us through Marc and we flew down to Ravarino to meet them. It was one of those rare meetings when everyone immediately understands one another. We were very serious students of Stone Island by this time, so we were thrilled to have the opportunity to learn and contribute.”

Working with Stone Island’s know-how provides a designer par excellence like Hugh with immense possibilities.

“Almost everything that we do at SI would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to execute anywhere else,” says Hugh.

“To be able to do that type of work regularly, and to be able to deliver it as a real product to the market, season after season, is truly remarkable. Stone Island’s ‘normal’ exceeds the most advanced ‘not for sale/show only’ propositions of other brands on the regular. And it’s always new. Doing very difficult, beautiful things that no one has done before is the everyday situation at Stone Island. It’s the best possible job for a designer really.”

Hugh and his team were at the Stone Island showroom to check up on the final results of the Shadow Project, the experimental line that Hugh designs. Together with his team we went through the racks, trying on the jackets with complicated closures and hidden layers.

“Check out this drop pocket,” says one of the guys, showing off what was essentially a slit in the front of the jacket. He drops his cell phone into the slit and then, like an illusionist, takes it out of the inside pocket of the jacket. I think about the countless times I have had to open my jacket in the frigid New York wind to put something valuable into an inside pocket. Problem solved.

A “first world problem,” one might say, but my mind ventured into the possible application for this in the military, where every split-second counts. After all, few people know that the D-rings on a trench coat were invented to hang grenades on, so a soldier would only need one hand to pull the pin out in order to throw the grenade, without having to let go of his rifle. And while I doubt the many fancy women who strut around SoHo in their Burberrys know this, that detail has nonetheless remained.

I leave the showroom—still in the final stages of preparation, the team working well into the evening—and follow Francesca, the press officer, to see the current collection that just hit the stores. As she walks me through it, my brain strains to keep all the information in—tiger camouflage achieved by applying six layers of paint on a jacket, heat-bonded rain coats, spray-painted knits, hand-brushed sweatshirts, and so on.

immense and fanatical as those of football clubs. For many, collecting Stone Island is a serious endeavor and a lifelong passion. Rivetti is very cognizant of that. His office is flooded with fan mail, and he tries to respond to as many letters as possible. He never snubs those who approach him at airports or in restaurants. He will occasionally engage a customer during store visits, sometimes giving him fit advice. He has drinks with fans. One time Rivetti had a special piece made for a dedicated customer’s birthday and presented it to him during a book signing in London. He sent flowers to another’s family upon his death.

None of this is contrived.

“I think part of our success is that people see the love that goes into our product. Our experimentation is our love,” adds Sabina Rivetti. “There is a life aspect of what we do, in how the wearer perceives himself when he dresses in Stone Island.”

“ I think part of our success is that people see the love that goes into our product. Our experimentation is our love.”

— Sabina Rivetti All of this passion has paid off handsomely for the company, whose business has been booming. In a recent survey done by Business of Fashion and Lyst, the online shopping aggregator, Stone Island came in as the eighth most-searched label in 2017—quite an achievement for a non-fashion brand that caters almost exclusively to men (though Rivetti says that he is seeing more and more women buying Stone Island’s menswear). Stone Island has successfully reentered the American market with two flagship stores, one in New York and another one in Los Angeles.

Its wholesale business has been on the steady rise, and so has i t s e - c o m m e rc e . B u t a t i t s h e a r t , S t o n e I s l a n d re m a i n s a family company.

“There are all these businessmen from China that are now asking me to take the brand there and open all these stores,” says Rivetti. “They tell me we will sell a billion dollars’ worth a year. I don’t want to do that, to just chase money. We will always do what feels right.”

By now, Stone Island possesses the rich narrative brand has accumulated over the years, from design stories to cultural influences. Today, as we drown in of stuff, a brand needs to have a clear message to with people.

“The future of brands is storytelling,” asserts Rivetti. “And we have thousands of stories to tell.”

Stone Island’s fervent embrace by its customers is an indispensable part of the brand’s success. Its fan base is as

132

that the process the sea connect

133

Asunder Photography Joseph Barrett Styling Jordan Schneider Photography & Styling Assistant Hollie Lillian

Model Harry Power @ MiLK Model Management

PARKA DANIEL W. FLETCHER, JACKET YMC,

HOODED JACKET NANAMICA, TROUSERS STONE ISLAND

Asunder Photography Joseph Barrett Styling Jordan Schneider Photography & Styling Assistant Hollie Lillian

Model Harry Power @ MiLK Model Management

PARKA DANIEL W. FLETCHER, JACKET YMC,

HOODED JACKET NANAMICA, TROUSERS STONE ISLAND

HOODED CARDIGAN PRINGLE OF SCOTLAND, TROUSERS ACNE, HAT CARHARTT

POLO SUNSPEL, SHIRT NANAMICA, COAT JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, DENIM JACKET MARTINE ROSE, TROUSERS CAV EMPT

HOODED CARDIGAN PRINGLE OF SCOTLAND, TROUSERS ACNE, HAT CARHARTT

POLO SUNSPEL, SHIRT NANAMICA, COAT JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, DENIM JACKET MARTINE ROSE, TROUSERS CAV EMPT

TURTLE NECK JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, POLO DANIEL W. FLETCHER, JACKET FENG CHEN WANG, COAT DAMIR DOMA

TURTLE NECK JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, POLO DANIEL W. FLETCHER, JACKET FENG CHEN WANG, COAT DAMIR DOMA

PADDED JACKET STONE ISLAND, JACKET DAMIR DOMA × LOTTO, TROUSERS UNDERCOVER × NIKE GYAKUSOU

HOODIE & SHIRT DAMIR DOMA,

COAT FAUSTINE STEINMETZ, BAG ALEX MULLINS

PADDED JACKET STONE ISLAND, JACKET DAMIR DOMA × LOTTO, TROUSERS UNDERCOVER × NIKE GYAKUSOU

HOODIE & SHIRT DAMIR DOMA,

COAT FAUSTINE STEINMETZ, BAG ALEX MULLINS

JACKET & SHIRT OUR LEGACY, LEATHER JACKET A.SAUVAGE, TROUSERS UNUSED

JACKET & SHIRT OUR LEGACY, LEATHER JACKET A.SAUVAGE, TROUSERS UNUSED

S/ S

Rick Owens

2018

Strange Statues Photography Andrew Jacobs Styling Corey Stokes Grooming Sade Hazard Photography Assistant Jackie Kursel Styling Assistant David Marshall Models Lucas Bin @ DNA Models & Oscar Scott @ Heroes

S/ S

Rick Owens

2018

Strange Statues Photography Andrew Jacobs Styling Corey Stokes Grooming Sade Hazard Photography Assistant Jackie Kursel Styling Assistant David Marshall Models Lucas Bin @ DNA Models & Oscar Scott @ Heroes

Off the M train at the border of Brooklyn’s Bushwick and Bed-Stuy neighborhoods, the scent of artisanal coffee that signals a ‘hood on the cusp of gentrification, slithers up a flight of stairs, seeps through a crack-opened door, and meets the sound waves of jazz crooning to the beat of an active paintbrush. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is on repeat, and the tunes of “Blue in Green” fill the sunlit atelier of 31-year-old artist Reginald Sylvester II. On one side of the studio, a massive canvas hangs off a 10-foot-tall wall, hovering over a neatly arranged lineup of iconic footwear models—amidst them are Air Jordans, Converse 1970s Chucks, Vans, Doc Martens, Nike Air Force 1s, and a couple other prototypes from sneaker history’s masters. On the other side of the room, a stacked collection of books, revealing titles of art history’s Modern masters:

Figuring Art Out Reginald Sylvester II

Tadao Ando Cy Twombly Picasso’s World Willem De Kooning Sterling Ruby: Chron Big Shots: Phillip Leeds Lee Krasner: A Biography The History of Modern Art Interviews with Francis Bacon Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss Irving Penn: Centennial Exhibition Catalogue The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and a sketch book, opened to a page marked with the word S O L I T U D E Dressed in Levi’s, a vintage army cap, and a pair of powder-blue Japanese house slippers, the artist stands between the wall of kicks and the shelf of books, in a metaphoric meeting point of the ages; in between street culture’s low-key cool and history’s high-brow heritage. The intersection of high-tops and high-art, both conceptually as well as literally, is one that continues to run across contemporary culture—most notably, with today’s unending slew of collaborations that attempt to genetically-modify everyday objects into limited edition works of art. Yet in our perennial, millennial quest to find (and post) something legitimately cool and fresh in our material culture, we are obliged to turn our attention away from the latest drops and brands, and go back to art and the artist. For the very je ne sais-quality that culture seeks to perform with collaborations—a fusion of opposing forces that will lead to new artistic results—is precisely what Sylvester accomplishes alone through painting.

Approaching the work of art in this vein, Sylvester works like a mad scientist without goggles, seeking to strike an ideal balance between various pairs of contrasting bodies: stylistically, between figuration and abstraction; formalistically between sharp lines and organic, sinuous movements; psychologically, between painting for himself and making for a public, and anachronistically; between history and the future of art.

Words Anya Firestone Photography Thomas Welch

Turning his back to the bookshelf, Sylvester looks towards the massive, unstretched canvas, and makes eyes with the lone figure painted on top of it: a compendium of green and black markings offer the painterly suggestion of a shoulder that supports, if only by a few scribbles, a skeletal face with a wide, grid-like grin made from paint as thick as cream. Confrontational like a De Kooning Woman, the figure stares back at the artist through two sketched orbs and a bright case of acrylic red-eye.

In a moment, he breaks the stare-off, picks up a tub of orange acrylic paint and dips a thick-tipped brush inside. First touching the figure’s face, he then starts to make wide, windshield-wiping gestures over it, moving back and forth in a sort of solo ceremonial flick of the wrist until he has covered up and drowned the entire body under a sea of orange.

153

Off the M train at the border of Brooklyn’s Bushwick and Bed-Stuy neighborhoods, the scent of artisanal coffee that signals a ‘hood on the cusp of gentrification, slithers up a flight of stairs, seeps through a crack-opened door, and meets the sound waves of jazz crooning to the beat of an active paintbrush. Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is on repeat, and the tunes of “Blue in Green” fill the sunlit atelier of 31-year-old artist Reginald Sylvester II. On one side of the studio, a massive canvas hangs off a 10-foot-tall wall, hovering over a neatly arranged lineup of iconic footwear models—amidst them are Air Jordans, Converse 1970s Chucks, Vans, Doc Martens, Nike Air Force 1s, and a couple other prototypes from sneaker history’s masters. On the other side of the room, a stacked collection of books, revealing titles of art history’s Modern masters:

Figuring Art Out Reginald Sylvester II

Tadao Ando Cy Twombly Picasso’s World Willem De Kooning Sterling Ruby: Chron Big Shots: Phillip Leeds Lee Krasner: A Biography The History of Modern Art Interviews with Francis Bacon Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss Irving Penn: Centennial Exhibition Catalogue The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and a sketch book, opened to a page marked with the word S O L I T U D E Dressed in Levi’s, a vintage army cap, and a pair of powder-blue Japanese house slippers, the artist stands between the wall of kicks and the shelf of books, in a metaphoric meeting point of the ages; in between street culture’s low-key cool and history’s high-brow heritage. The intersection of high-tops and high-art, both conceptually as well as literally, is one that continues to run across contemporary culture—most notably, with today’s unending slew of collaborations that attempt to genetically-modify everyday objects into limited edition works of art. Yet in our perennial, millennial quest to find (and post) something legitimately cool and fresh in our material culture, we are obliged to turn our attention away from the latest drops and brands, and go back to art and the artist. For the very je ne sais-quality that culture seeks to perform with collaborations—a fusion of opposing forces that will lead to new artistic results—is precisely what Sylvester accomplishes alone through painting.

Approaching the work of art in this vein, Sylvester works like a mad scientist without goggles, seeking to strike an ideal balance between various pairs of contrasting bodies: stylistically, between figuration and abstraction; formalistically between sharp lines and organic, sinuous movements; psychologically, between painting for himself and making for a public, and anachronistically; between history and the future of art.

Words Anya Firestone Photography Thomas Welch

Turning his back to the bookshelf, Sylvester looks towards the massive, unstretched canvas, and makes eyes with the lone figure painted on top of it: a compendium of green and black markings offer the painterly suggestion of a shoulder that supports, if only by a few scribbles, a skeletal face with a wide, grid-like grin made from paint as thick as cream. Confrontational like a De Kooning Woman, the figure stares back at the artist through two sketched orbs and a bright case of acrylic red-eye.

In a moment, he breaks the stare-off, picks up a tub of orange acrylic paint and dips a thick-tipped brush inside. First touching the figure’s face, he then starts to make wide, windshield-wiping gestures over it, moving back and forth in a sort of solo ceremonial flick of the wrist until he has covered up and drowned the entire body under a sea of orange.

153

Wide-eyed guests in the studio don’t say anything, but their dropped jaws suggest the collective thought that Reginald just ruined what was the making of a masterpiece. But the artist is chill as ever, and dipping his dripping brush-head back into the tub, looks back contentedly at the canvas, blinks, and takes the last sip of his almond milk flat-white.

“It wasn’t strong enough,” he comments. This instinctive gesture, expressed through layers of ferocious placements of pure unmixed colors, have turned into a sort of CTRL Z methodology that defines his practice.

“I put stuff down, I take away, I build up again, I take away. It’s not about making a picture, it’s about finding it.”

Unbeknownst to the viewer, any one of his paintings might be the last layer up of what was once one, two, or five more painted characters that now lay dormant as part of an acrylic millefeuille, rendering each canvas like an archeological tell preserving the bones of erased peoples.

“My paintings are never planned,” he explains of the process. “They come with momentum. They come naturally.”

The artist’s career, like his work, mimics the same fierce momentum, and it is still picking up speed. With a mind that works as fast as his hand, Sylvester departed from a career in graphic design and the streetwear scene, to bolt up, and bolt down, the art world’s unstable ladder. The response to his efforts is nothing less than remarkable. In just a three-year period, Sylvester has already exhibited at Art Basel, had a solo show at Pace Prints in New York, took up wall space at Milan’s Fondazione Stelline (who then acquired his art for their permanent collection), and recently stopped traffic of the suit-and-tied Park Avenue passersby with a huge solo show visible through the sparkling glass walls of the Lever House, ran by art mogul Aby Rosen, who is also one of Sylvester’s collectors.

It is perhaps of no surprise that an art tycoon like Rosen would be drawn to the young artist. Rosen’s own impressive collection, rumored to have over 800 works, includes those by art history’s bigshots found on Sylvester’s bookshelf—Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, and Richard Prince, to name a few. For any fan of modern art then, there is something oddly comforting about the painterly agita found in Sylvester’s work. They present a sort of contemporary dreamscape or, an anachronistic collaboration with the 20th century’s creative zeitgeist for abstraction with figuration. For if we dared to imagine what a millennial maker would do if Picasso’s African masks would fall off his 1907 Demoiselles, land beside a sinister George Condo, get picked up by a De Kooning Woman under a sky of Twombly squiggles, then we might find ourselves looking at something like a Reginald Sylvester II. Yet while looking back to the past, both art history’s and even his own, the artist moves forward to create a provocative art of today. His aestheticization of issues concerning race, sexuality, or religion grace us like a contemporary oracle, met with an unprecedented level of self-awareness that most young creatives today lack. Sylvester’s existence as an artist relative to the age of technology he lives in also informs his art further.

A repetitive grid in a drawing may reference our digital culture and its endless possibility, while simultaneously signifying the artist’s entrapment within it. He admits that he tried to get rid of Instagram, adding “I’d rather just be a hashtag”—he was accordingly advised against the departure.

To create anything, he explains: “My energy is transferred onto the surface, while the imagery is streamed from my subconscious, which I believe is the soul.” For Sylvester, painting ensues as a series of oppositional collaborations, layered with introspection thicker than paint, and meaning beyond that which meets the eye.

Accordingly then, even the creation of a zine transgresses being just a collection of printed images, but rather a chance for the artist to create what he sees as a “solid object,” through which to express himself and experiment with composition. Sylvester is making his own visual language. Colors are consonants, doodles becomes verbs, shapes sound like vowels, and lone letters and numbers act as footnotes. The result strikes nothing less than a powerful equilibrium between high and low, old and new, the dope and the didactic.

154

155

Wide-eyed guests in the studio don’t say anything, but their dropped jaws suggest the collective thought that Reginald just ruined what was the making of a masterpiece. But the artist is chill as ever, and dipping his dripping brush-head back into the tub, looks back contentedly at the canvas, blinks, and takes the last sip of his almond milk flat-white.

“It wasn’t strong enough,” he comments. This instinctive gesture, expressed through layers of ferocious placements of pure unmixed colors, have turned into a sort of CTRL Z methodology that defines his practice.

“I put stuff down, I take away, I build up again, I take away. It’s not about making a picture, it’s about finding it.”

Unbeknownst to the viewer, any one of his paintings might be the last layer up of what was once one, two, or five more painted characters that now lay dormant as part of an acrylic millefeuille, rendering each canvas like an archeological tell preserving the bones of erased peoples.

“My paintings are never planned,” he explains of the process. “They come with momentum. They come naturally.”

The artist’s career, like his work, mimics the same fierce momentum, and it is still picking up speed. With a mind that works as fast as his hand, Sylvester departed from a career in graphic design and the streetwear scene, to bolt up, and bolt down, the art world’s unstable ladder. The response to his efforts is nothing less than remarkable. In just a three-year period, Sylvester has already exhibited at Art Basel, had a solo show at Pace Prints in New York, took up wall space at Milan’s Fondazione Stelline (who then acquired his art for their permanent collection), and recently stopped traffic of the suit-and-tied Park Avenue passersby with a huge solo show visible through the sparkling glass walls of the Lever House, ran by art mogul Aby Rosen, who is also one of Sylvester’s collectors.

It is perhaps of no surprise that an art tycoon like Rosen would be drawn to the young artist. Rosen’s own impressive collection, rumored to have over 800 works, includes those by art history’s bigshots found on Sylvester’s bookshelf—Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, and Richard Prince, to name a few. For any fan of modern art then, there is something oddly comforting about the painterly agita found in Sylvester’s work. They present a sort of contemporary dreamscape or, an anachronistic collaboration with the 20th century’s creative zeitgeist for abstraction with figuration. For if we dared to imagine what a millennial maker would do if Picasso’s African masks would fall off his 1907 Demoiselles, land beside a sinister George Condo, get picked up by a De Kooning Woman under a sky of Twombly squiggles, then we might find ourselves looking at something like a Reginald Sylvester II. Yet while looking back to the past, both art history’s and even his own, the artist moves forward to create a provocative art of today. His aestheticization of issues concerning race, sexuality, or religion grace us like a contemporary oracle, met with an unprecedented level of self-awareness that most young creatives today lack. Sylvester’s existence as an artist relative to the age of technology he lives in also informs his art further.

A repetitive grid in a drawing may reference our digital culture and its endless possibility, while simultaneously signifying the artist’s entrapment within it. He admits that he tried to get rid of Instagram, adding “I’d rather just be a hashtag”—he was accordingly advised against the departure.

To create anything, he explains: “My energy is transferred onto the surface, while the imagery is streamed from my subconscious, which I believe is the soul.” For Sylvester, painting ensues as a series of oppositional collaborations, layered with introspection thicker than paint, and meaning beyond that which meets the eye.

Accordingly then, even the creation of a zine transgresses being just a collection of printed images, but rather a chance for the artist to create what he sees as a “solid object,” through which to express himself and experiment with composition. Sylvester is making his own visual language. Colors are consonants, doodles becomes verbs, shapes sound like vowels, and lone letters and numbers act as footnotes. The result strikes nothing less than a powerful equilibrium between high and low, old and new, the dope and the didactic.

154

155

How do you define “artist”?

An artist is a professional risk taker. It’s the job of an artist, or any creative—to take risks that the average person isn’t supposed to.

So if we wanted to apply to be a “professional risk taker,” what skills would be needed on an artist’s “resume”?

List: - Being unafraid - Ability to work without pay or other’s gratification - Extreme mobility - Ability to work in uncomfortable situations and environments - Willing to try things that have and have not been done before Let’s talk about that last point—trying things that have been done before. Your work is often compared to some of history’s greats, but it is more than a healthy Basquiat, just like Sterling Ruby is making more than just “gangsta Rothkos.”

I don’t think you can expect to create the future without having an understanding of what it took to create the past. In any industry or area of creativity, working with any medium, the investigation of what happened before you is a critical point to understanding how to move forward. People don’t always understand that. My art is not just derivative or a carbon copy. In actuality, what I’ve been able to do is to evolve in front of people. This is also what it means to be unafraid, and that is what makes me an artist of today. I have shown everyone this evolution on all platforms—through social media or exhibitions—I have shown the research for you to see.

This is necessary to create art of the future.

Are people educated enough about Basquiat to understand how your work relates to it, but also how it differs?

I don’t think this new generation of individuals is educated on Jean-Michel nor other artists, nor even know why they are so pivotal to art history in its entirety. His image got so popular not only because the work was strong and new but because he was actually invested in the culture and what was going on at that time he made it. The moguls then were so aware of his importance. That doesn’t necessarily exist nowadays as it did.

I get compared to Jean-Michel a lot, sure. He’s the immediate influence people like to call out. I feel that is partly due to the reason that we are both males of color and painting in the vein of abstraction and figuration.

For me, it’s about how automatic he was. Jean-Michel wasn’t classically trained, nor am I. Everything I have done has been my own journey and figuring it out for myself. Getting the comparison pushes me. I think an artist’s job is not only to discover things about themselves but at the same exact time they are supposed to speak to art history and bring it to a new space. I am working to do something different in my own search for truth. These are only starting points for me.

Any reason you’re on a first name basis with Basquiat?

Everyone calls him Basquiat, but he was also a human being. Jean-Michel makes us remember he was once a person and not just a brand. A lot of artists become brands after they die.

A lot of artists today become brands while they are living.

Yes, for those who produce their work instead of create it. In a lot of cases, big artists turn their work into products through licensing or collaborations, or simply by having other artists make it for them. People feel they can stand behind a brand for certain aspects of what they do, be it an aesthetic or quality they admire.

So an artist should strive to be his or her own brand, but by making things, not having people do it for them.

You made a conscious shift from using the name Slvstr©, to use your birth-given name. One seems more like a brand, and the other like an artist.

Exactly. As a designer working for corporations or on freelance projects I used Slvstr©. I wanted to be respected for my creativity—but as a graphic designer I always had clients telling me what to do and I hated that. I gave it up and I made the change, primarily because I wanted to be free from those constrictions and to be acknowledged for my own artistic voice. I was always confined in a sense, whereas with painting, I am not.

157

How do you define “artist”?

An artist is a professional risk taker. It’s the job of an artist, or any creative—to take risks that the average person isn’t supposed to.

So if we wanted to apply to be a “professional risk taker,” what skills would be needed on an artist’s “resume”?

List: - Being unafraid - Ability to work without pay or other’s gratification - Extreme mobility - Ability to work in uncomfortable situations and environments - Willing to try things that have and have not been done before Let’s talk about that last point—trying things that have been done before. Your work is often compared to some of history’s greats, but it is more than a healthy Basquiat, just like Sterling Ruby is making more than just “gangsta Rothkos.”

I don’t think you can expect to create the future without having an understanding of what it took to create the past. In any industry or area of creativity, working with any medium, the investigation of what happened before you is a critical point to understanding how to move forward. People don’t always understand that. My art is not just derivative or a carbon copy. In actuality, what I’ve been able to do is to evolve in front of people. This is also what it means to be unafraid, and that is what makes me an artist of today. I have shown everyone this evolution on all platforms—through social media or exhibitions—I have shown the research for you to see.

This is necessary to create art of the future.

Are people educated enough about Basquiat to understand how your work relates to it, but also how it differs?

I don’t think this new generation of individuals is educated on Jean-Michel nor other artists, nor even know why they are so pivotal to art history in its entirety. His image got so popular not only because the work was strong and new but because he was actually invested in the culture and what was going on at that time he made it. The moguls then were so aware of his importance. That doesn’t necessarily exist nowadays as it did.

I get compared to Jean-Michel a lot, sure. He’s the immediate influence people like to call out. I feel that is partly due to the reason that we are both males of color and painting in the vein of abstraction and figuration.

For me, it’s about how automatic he was. Jean-Michel wasn’t classically trained, nor am I. Everything I have done has been my own journey and figuring it out for myself. Getting the comparison pushes me. I think an artist’s job is not only to discover things about themselves but at the same exact time they are supposed to speak to art history and bring it to a new space. I am working to do something different in my own search for truth. These are only starting points for me.

Any reason you’re on a first name basis with Basquiat?

Everyone calls him Basquiat, but he was also a human being. Jean-Michel makes us remember he was once a person and not just a brand. A lot of artists become brands after they die.

A lot of artists today become brands while they are living.

Yes, for those who produce their work instead of create it. In a lot of cases, big artists turn their work into products through licensing or collaborations, or simply by having other artists make it for them. People feel they can stand behind a brand for certain aspects of what they do, be it an aesthetic or quality they admire.

So an artist should strive to be his or her own brand, but by making things, not having people do it for them.

You made a conscious shift from using the name Slvstr©, to use your birth-given name. One seems more like a brand, and the other like an artist.

Exactly. As a designer working for corporations or on freelance projects I used Slvstr©. I wanted to be respected for my creativity—but as a graphic designer I always had clients telling me what to do and I hated that. I gave it up and I made the change, primarily because I wanted to be free from those constrictions and to be acknowledged for my own artistic voice. I was always confined in a sense, whereas with painting, I am not.

157

How do you balance the need to see what other artists are doing while also remaining in solitude?

It’s exciting to go out and see other people’s work to get inspired, to know what is going on around me, and to know what your contemporaries are doing. But for me, spending time in the studio and pushing my own limits and boundaries is just as important and if not more important than going outside. I spend a lot of time alone—sometimes it’s not about making a painting, but it’s about thinking and understanding what is happening in my own life and the world around me.

So are you painting for yourself, or for a viewer?

The only time it’s for me is in the process of making—to take my relation with figuration and abstractions to the rarest place, and push myself to make the strongest painting that I possibly can. I don’t consider the viewer while making the painting, but only after it is displayed. Once it leaves the studio, it isn’t about me.

How do you define when your painting is “strong”?

It’s not strong if it’s not strong enough for me to not paint over it.

The covering up of images defines more than your practice it seems.

If I don’t feel that it’s strong enough I cover it. The paintings that existed prior were cool but even after making something, I realize certain areas could be stronger. I can get bored easily too, so if I did something similar to what I’ve made before I’ll change it.

So even if it is not a self-portrait, you’re always in the work?

Yes. The process becomes about making what’s most recognizable to me, paintings that scream Reginald.

It’s about finding what feels right, allowing the opportunity to discover new things while asking myself, can I push this further?

You have a profound mastery of color.

I actually learned how to use color by making realist portraits of rappers with color pencils in high school.

As a graphic designer I worked with colors and their transparencies using the swatch palette on Illustrator.

I don’t mix colors before applying them when painting, so the process is very much like the digital one—same relationship, just composed differently.

That’s a very contemporary approach to painting. How else does today’s digital world affect your art?

I use Instagram as a tool more than anything. It’s a place where people can interact with my work and what I am doing. Taking photos of my work with my iPhone and critiquing them is also a part of my editing process.

It sounds weird, but there are things that I see in the work through the phone that I don’t see in person.

Mark Rothko is a great example of an artist who aimed for his paintings to elicit overwhelming responses in his viewer. But he even returned a check after accepting a massive commission for the Seagram Building (now owned by Rosen) when he realized the paintings would not be able to affect the viewers to the degree that he wished. Today, people are missing out on experiencing certain visceral reactions the artist intends—especially because they are looking at art through a phone.

It’s a battle in the day and age we live in. Through media and Instagram we are being fed a lot of things and told what to like—we have an “explore page,” that thinks they know us, but those images are not making us feel anything. Looking at a painting is an experience. That experience is not even a quarter lived when viewing through a phone.

Is there any way to recuperate this loss? In other words, if the viewer loses something from not having an in-person experience, can they ironically gain something else from the digital one?

The only way is for people to come and have the experience in person. We need more of that anyway. I do believe there is something to gain from the digital one and that’s informing the people that something is going on—to move them in a way where they want to get from behind their phones and take part in the moment.

162

163

How do you balance the need to see what other artists are doing while also remaining in solitude?

It’s exciting to go out and see other people’s work to get inspired, to know what is going on around me, and to know what your contemporaries are doing. But for me, spending time in the studio and pushing my own limits and boundaries is just as important and if not more important than going outside. I spend a lot of time alone—sometimes it’s not about making a painting, but it’s about thinking and understanding what is happening in my own life and the world around me.

So are you painting for yourself, or for a viewer?

The only time it’s for me is in the process of making—to take my relation with figuration and abstractions to the rarest place, and push myself to make the strongest painting that I possibly can. I don’t consider the viewer while making the painting, but only after it is displayed. Once it leaves the studio, it isn’t about me.

How do you define when your painting is “strong”?

It’s not strong if it’s not strong enough for me to not paint over it.

The covering up of images defines more than your practice it seems.

If I don’t feel that it’s strong enough I cover it. The paintings that existed prior were cool but even after making something, I realize certain areas could be stronger. I can get bored easily too, so if I did something similar to what I’ve made before I’ll change it.

So even if it is not a self-portrait, you’re always in the work?

Yes. The process becomes about making what’s most recognizable to me, paintings that scream Reginald.

It’s about finding what feels right, allowing the opportunity to discover new things while asking myself, can I push this further?

You have a profound mastery of color.

I actually learned how to use color by making realist portraits of rappers with color pencils in high school.

As a graphic designer I worked with colors and their transparencies using the swatch palette on Illustrator.

I don’t mix colors before applying them when painting, so the process is very much like the digital one—same relationship, just composed differently.

That’s a very contemporary approach to painting. How else does today’s digital world affect your art?

I use Instagram as a tool more than anything. It’s a place where people can interact with my work and what I am doing. Taking photos of my work with my iPhone and critiquing them is also a part of my editing process.

It sounds weird, but there are things that I see in the work through the phone that I don’t see in person.

Mark Rothko is a great example of an artist who aimed for his paintings to elicit overwhelming responses in his viewer. But he even returned a check after accepting a massive commission for the Seagram Building (now owned by Rosen) when he realized the paintings would not be able to affect the viewers to the degree that he wished. Today, people are missing out on experiencing certain visceral reactions the artist intends—especially because they are looking at art through a phone.

It’s a battle in the day and age we live in. Through media and Instagram we are being fed a lot of things and told what to like—we have an “explore page,” that thinks they know us, but those images are not making us feel anything. Looking at a painting is an experience. That experience is not even a quarter lived when viewing through a phone.

Is there any way to recuperate this loss? In other words, if the viewer loses something from not having an in-person experience, can they ironically gain something else from the digital one?

The only way is for people to come and have the experience in person. We need more of that anyway. I do believe there is something to gain from the digital one and that’s informing the people that something is going on—to move them in a way where they want to get from behind their phones and take part in the moment.

162

163

The “Brand × Art” collaboration is a pop culture phenomenon. At times these liaisons can extend an artist’s repertoire as well as the brand’s narrative. But often we find they can undermine an artist’s work and make brands seem like creative posers. What is your take?

Collaborations can give artists a new platform and audience, and it can give viewers a new surface to experience an artist’s work. Seeing a painting or sculpture in a physical space like a museum is a type of engagement that can also teach us why the artist made it in the first place. That is missing I feel in [Brand × Art] collaborations—the educational aspect, the reasoning, the story. A [Brand × Art] collaboration being bought by an audience who understands the significance of the brand yet not the significance of artist I feel is a disconnect. This allows the creation to become less important I feel and more about how much it resells for.

What’s your dream collaboration?

COMME des GARÇONS. You were an apparel designer for the youth-oriented streetwear line Rare Panther, so it’s notable you choose an avant-garde brand like COMME today—a departure from your earlier interests in streetwear.

Is the choice of fashion house parallel to your evolution as an artist?

I’ve always loved and admired COMME. They’ve engaged in streetwear at certain points. I feel that there is a parallel in my work currently and how COMME des GARÇONS composes their garments. They find beautiful ways to use color and I’ve always enjoyed how they strike a balance between fun yet serious and sophisticated compositions. They always play with texture which I love too. My own work has something fun, vibrant, and textural, but it also has such serious undertones. I think Rei Kawakubo has been able to create that balance so well. What’s great is that their retail store is in the heart of Chelsea, beside all the art galleries, rather than in SoHo. How did your relationship with fashion and streetwear begin?

Going to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, my dorm was next door to the HUF stores on Sutter Street. I was being introduced to the brands that thrived in those spaces which increased my interest in them, and especially how they connected back with sneaker culture. I was also drawn to Japanese streetwear brands for their attention to detail. My favorite to a name few: fragment, Uniform Experiment, Vanquish, NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, and BAPE. Today, I’m less into streetwear labels but more so into fashion brands and houses. Besides COMME des GARÇONS, I’ve always loved what Junya Watanabe and visvim do.

How do you balance representational works with abstractions?

Through building and taking away over and over again. It’s more of a feeling than a calculated process.

To master this balance for self is a lifelong journey.

How do you use painting as a tool for personal discovery?

Through the process of making I think about things going on in my life or the world at the moment, and I confront these issues. I get lost in my thoughts and feelings, and then the pictures come out of that. That is why solitude is so important—the best works come from when I’m conflicted or in momentum. ​Painting is me learning about myself.

If creating art is Sylvester’s process of self-exploration, then answering questions about that very practice while painting in his studio, has lead to the creation of a surprising new masterpiece. And we are looking at it. The massive canvas of the lone figure we feared drowned in orange, now shines brightly instead with two men in swirls of pure magentas and greens. One, painted on his profile, looks away beside the number 30. The other, looks forward, smiling greenly beside a 31.

The strength and battle between the figures is palpable—like a scene of brothers, perhaps Cain and Abel, or maybe Isaac and Esau fighting in the womb—or perhaps they are like two muscular male nudes caught in a sporting game on a Greek urn. Sylvester stands in front of them, and the figures start to transcend biblical or historical references, or even styles evocative of some great master. Rather, wavering between abstraction and representation, they ensue as a double portrait of the artist himself, who speaking of his work, paints that very process, looking back if only to move forward. He smiles back at the figure, knowing this time he has created a strong work to be released for the world. Or, himself.

“You’re making by living, you’re not making by making. And that’s best shit ever,” he says. During a recent studio visit, the artist discussed these forces around him, and his own collaborative relationship with the past, the present, and the future of creative practice.

The “Brand × Art” collaboration is a pop culture phenomenon. At times these liaisons can extend an artist’s repertoire as well as the brand’s narrative. But often we find they can undermine an artist’s work and make brands seem like creative posers. What is your take?

Collaborations can give artists a new platform and audience, and it can give viewers a new surface to experience an artist’s work. Seeing a painting or sculpture in a physical space like a museum is a type of engagement that can also teach us why the artist made it in the first place. That is missing I feel in [Brand × Art] collaborations—the educational aspect, the reasoning, the story. A [Brand × Art] collaboration being bought by an audience who understands the significance of the brand yet not the significance of artist I feel is a disconnect. This allows the creation to become less important I feel and more about how much it resells for.

What’s your dream collaboration?

COMME des GARÇONS. You were an apparel designer for the youth-oriented streetwear line Rare Panther, so it’s notable you choose an avant-garde brand like COMME today—a departure from your earlier interests in streetwear.

Is the choice of fashion house parallel to your evolution as an artist?

I’ve always loved and admired COMME. They’ve engaged in streetwear at certain points. I feel that there is a parallel in my work currently and how COMME des GARÇONS composes their garments. They find beautiful ways to use color and I’ve always enjoyed how they strike a balance between fun yet serious and sophisticated compositions. They always play with texture which I love too. My own work has something fun, vibrant, and textural, but it also has such serious undertones. I think Rei Kawakubo has been able to create that balance so well. What’s great is that their retail store is in the heart of Chelsea, beside all the art galleries, rather than in SoHo. How did your relationship with fashion and streetwear begin?

Going to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, my dorm was next door to the HUF stores on Sutter Street. I was being introduced to the brands that thrived in those spaces which increased my interest in them, and especially how they connected back with sneaker culture. I was also drawn to Japanese streetwear brands for their attention to detail. My favorite to a name few: fragment, Uniform Experiment, Vanquish, NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, and BAPE. Today, I’m less into streetwear labels but more so into fashion brands and houses. Besides COMME des GARÇONS, I’ve always loved what Junya Watanabe and visvim do.

How do you balance representational works with abstractions?

Through building and taking away over and over again. It’s more of a feeling than a calculated process.

To master this balance for self is a lifelong journey.

How do you use painting as a tool for personal discovery?

Through the process of making I think about things going on in my life or the world at the moment, and I confront these issues. I get lost in my thoughts and feelings, and then the pictures come out of that. That is why solitude is so important—the best works come from when I’m conflicted or in momentum. ​Painting is me learning about myself.

If creating art is Sylvester’s process of self-exploration, then answering questions about that very practice while painting in his studio, has lead to the creation of a surprising new masterpiece. And we are looking at it. The massive canvas of the lone figure we feared drowned in orange, now shines brightly instead with two men in swirls of pure magentas and greens. One, painted on his profile, looks away beside the number 30. The other, looks forward, smiling greenly beside a 31.

The strength and battle between the figures is palpable—like a scene of brothers, perhaps Cain and Abel, or maybe Isaac and Esau fighting in the womb—or perhaps they are like two muscular male nudes caught in a sporting game on a Greek urn. Sylvester stands in front of them, and the figures start to transcend biblical or historical references, or even styles evocative of some great master. Rather, wavering between abstraction and representation, they ensue as a double portrait of the artist himself, who speaking of his work, paints that very process, looking back if only to move forward. He smiles back at the figure, knowing this time he has created a strong work to be released for the world. Or, himself.

“You’re making by living, you’re not making by making. And that’s best shit ever,” he says. During a recent studio visit, the artist discussed these forces around him, and his own collaborative relationship with the past, the present, and the future of creative practice.

S/S

Martine Rose

The Future Is in the Past Photography Licha Styling Ye Young Kim Hair & Make-up Javier Puga Casting Bert Martirosyan Model Miles Haber @ State Management

2018

S/S

Martine Rose

The Future Is in the Past Photography Licha Styling Ye Young Kim Hair & Make-up Javier Puga Casting Bert Martirosyan Model Miles Haber @ State Management

2018

One-Two Photography Paolo Testa Styling Jenny Haapala Hair Yuhi Kim using Bumble and bumble @ Bridge Artists Make-up Ayaka Nihei using MAC Cosmetics Styling Assistant Delia Socorro Set Design Colin Lytton Production Nastia Fokina @ Sans Creative Model India @ IMG Models Special Thanks Fade Studios

POLO LACOSTE, JERSEY FRANCE BY ADIDAS, JACKET MARNI

JERSEY GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, JACKET & PANTS ELLERY, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES, EARRINGS & EYEBROW PIERCING MODEL’S OWN

One-Two Photography Paolo Testa Styling Jenny Haapala Hair Yuhi Kim using Bumble and bumble @ Bridge Artists Make-up Ayaka Nihei using MAC Cosmetics Styling Assistant Delia Socorro Set Design Colin Lytton Production Nastia Fokina @ Sans Creative Model India @ IMG Models Special Thanks Fade Studios

POLO LACOSTE, JERSEY FRANCE BY ADIDAS, JACKET MARNI

JERSEY GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, JACKET & PANTS ELLERY, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES, EARRINGS & EYEBROW PIERCING MODEL’S OWN

POLO UMBRO, JACKET KENZO, DRESS KOCHE, PANTS ZADIG & VOLTAIRE, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

POLO UMBRO, JERSEY YOKOHAMA F. MARINOS BY ADIDAS, JACKET & WAIST BAG JUUN.J

POLO UMBRO, JACKET KENZO, DRESS KOCHE, PANTS ZADIG & VOLTAIRE, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

POLO UMBRO, JERSEY YOKOHAMA F. MARINOS BY ADIDAS, JACKET & WAIST BAG JUUN.J

TRACK JACKET DIADORA, JACKET CÉLINE, SHORTS & SOCKS GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

JACKET, JERSEY & PANTS KOCHE, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

TRACK JACKET DIADORA, JACKET CÉLINE, SHORTS & SOCKS GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

JACKET, JERSEY & PANTS KOCHE, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES

JERSEY GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, TRENCH COAT 3.1 PHILLIP LIM

JERSEY FC NÃœRNBERG BY UMBRO, JACKET & SHORTS KENZO, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES, SOCKS PRADA

JERSEY GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, TRENCH COAT 3.1 PHILLIP LIM

JERSEY FC NÃœRNBERG BY UMBRO, JACKET & SHORTS KENZO, SNEAKERS FILLING PIECES, SOCKS PRADA

LQQK, a studio-slash-brand helmed by a collective of New York artists, DJs, and DIY types, are using age-old print techniques to carve out fresh paths in fashion.

With the door flung wide open, passersby are invited to poke their heads through tassel curtains into the world of LQQK. Founded by Alex Dondero, the Bushwick print studio is where the ideas of New York’s art community and fledgling brands come to fruition. Printing machines sit atop oriental rugs, while turntables and shelves filled with records host the studio’s impromptu parties and a weekly community radio show on KNOW WAVE.

Accessing Authenticity LQQK Studio

LQQK was launched in 2011, primarily as a T-shirt printing workshop catering to the city’s brand owners.

Yet in recent times, its in-house apparel line has gained notoriety in the street fashion landscape both locally and in Japan, collaborating with the likes of N.HOOLYWOOD, Vans Vault (the California sneaker purveyor’s premium label), and pop-ups at world-renowned retailer Dover Street Market. Disregarding seasonal release schedules, LQQK drops products at a whim with each run capped at 250 units, all of which sell out upon release.

This approach of controlled supply and scarcity feels akin to the format set by streetwear patrons like Supreme or Palace. Yet Dondero notes that this system is simply driven by the practicality of not having to sit on product—every retailer and brand’s worst fear. The workspace may seem chaotic at first glance, yet Dondero’s mastered a workflow that’s earned his business an impressive client list.

“Andrew Richardson asked Belladonna to sign this bat for me when A6 came out,” says Dondero, pointing out various memorabilia passed on by friends and mentors.

LQQK’s client portfolio includes some of art and fashion’s most revered (from Tom Sachs to Kanye West’s YEEZY label), yet Dondero is adamant that these should not be confused as collaborations.

“They’re hiring us for a service,” he explains. “I don’t want to dilute their brand image even if some of the clients are on our list of dream collabs.”

Ensuring each project lives in its own lane is a calculated discernment, especially rare when brand cosigns have become a swift currency for success in the fashion industry. A self-proclaimed control freak, Dondero’s knack for detail and efficiency has fueled work in a fierce market held up by a friend-of-a-friend referral system. Through word of mouth, LQQK’s commercial work has allowed the team to create apparel without financial pressure, along with other ventures such as their record label, 369.

Words Arthur Bray

Photography Takeshi Matsumi

“The commercial printing provides the opportunity to create different mediums to express ourselves, whether that’s radio, a brand, or parties,” says Dondero. “These things add to our identity and speak to an audience that might not be into screen printing or graphics.”

The studio’s rejection of automated digital printing in favor of hand-printed silk-screen work exemplifies Dondero’s core approach to create on his own accord. With DIY ideologies running deep, the crew adheres to authenticity irrespective of trend forecasts.

Alex Dondero and production manager Paul Bryant took some time off their day to speak on building brand longevity, and how LQQK purposely lives in its own world, hoping to avoid the bad decisions that can come from outside influence.

183

LQQK, a studio-slash-brand helmed by a collective of New York artists, DJs, and DIY types, are using age-old print techniques to carve out fresh paths in fashion.

With the door flung wide open, passersby are invited to poke their heads through tassel curtains into the world of LQQK. Founded by Alex Dondero, the Bushwick print studio is where the ideas of New York’s art community and fledgling brands come to fruition. Printing machines sit atop oriental rugs, while turntables and shelves filled with records host the studio’s impromptu parties and a weekly community radio show on KNOW WAVE.

Accessing Authenticity LQQK Studio

LQQK was launched in 2011, primarily as a T-shirt printing workshop catering to the city’s brand owners.

Yet in recent times, its in-house apparel line has gained notoriety in the street fashion landscape both locally and in Japan, collaborating with the likes of N.HOOLYWOOD, Vans Vault (the California sneaker purveyor’s premium label), and pop-ups at world-renowned retailer Dover Street Market. Disregarding seasonal release schedules, LQQK drops products at a whim with each run capped at 250 units, all of which sell out upon release.

This approach of controlled supply and scarcity feels akin to the format set by streetwear patrons like Supreme or Palace. Yet Dondero notes that this system is simply driven by the practicality of not having to sit on product—every retailer and brand’s worst fear. The workspace may seem chaotic at first glance, yet Dondero’s mastered a workflow that’s earned his business an impressive client list.

“Andrew Richardson asked Belladonna to sign this bat for me when A6 came out,” says Dondero, pointing out various memorabilia passed on by friends and mentors.

LQQK’s client portfolio includes some of art and fashion’s most revered (from Tom Sachs to Kanye West’s YEEZY label), yet Dondero is adamant that these should not be confused as collaborations.

“They’re hiring us for a service,” he explains. “I don’t want to dilute their brand image even if some of the clients are on our list of dream collabs.”

Ensuring each project lives in its own lane is a calculated discernment, especially rare when brand cosigns have become a swift currency for success in the fashion industry. A self-proclaimed control freak, Dondero’s knack for detail and efficiency has fueled work in a fierce market held up by a friend-of-a-friend referral system. Through word of mouth, LQQK’s commercial work has allowed the team to create apparel without financial pressure, along with other ventures such as their record label, 369.

Words Arthur Bray

Photography Takeshi Matsumi

“The commercial printing provides the opportunity to create different mediums to express ourselves, whether that’s radio, a brand, or parties,” says Dondero. “These things add to our identity and speak to an audience that might not be into screen printing or graphics.”

The studio’s rejection of automated digital printing in favor of hand-printed silk-screen work exemplifies Dondero’s core approach to create on his own accord. With DIY ideologies running deep, the crew adheres to authenticity irrespective of trend forecasts.

Alex Dondero and production manager Paul Bryant took some time off their day to speak on building brand longevity, and how LQQK purposely lives in its own world, hoping to avoid the bad decisions that can come from outside influence.

183

When did you get into screen printing?

[Alex Dondero] I was printing through college, then I set up a shop in Baltimore before moving to New York.

I was going back and forth between both cities printing. Eventually, I moved all the equipment to New York and settled in with a bunch of friends in 2010/11. We outgrew that space then moved to this Brooklyn location and have been here for five years. Things started to shape up here.

How did you two first meet?

[AD] Paul and I first bonded over clothes. Paul was working for Patrik Ervell and I was doing prints for him at my studio. Patrik was a dream client to work for because I looked up to his work. He really helped me find an appreciation for menswear. He knows how to make classic styles feel accessible. That shirt that I learned to love, I know he’s going to make that again in a different way next season, and I know I’ll love it because it’s the same pattern but modernized.

I was tripping when I got patched to do work with him. I was so eager to be involved, I personally brought stuff to their studio. We did some wild projects together, experimenting with dye techniques and prints. Paul was his production guy. When we met, I immediately knew we were on a similar wavelength.

How did that manifest into LQQK Studio?

[AD] What connected us was Patrik, but my good friend Martin Davis helped lock things tighter. Martin’s an integral part of LQQK and helped keep the lights on and ensured the rent was paid. He was also the manager at Supreme. I introduced Paul to Martin, and when Paul left Patrik Ervell, Martin introduced him to the guys at Supreme, and he ended up working in production there. Martin is a huge part of LQQK’s construction. I’m pretty sure it was actually his idea for us to launch more T-shirts and make a brand. We were just doing a few shop shirts for friends before that.

I founded the studio as a screen printing shop, and through that I met a lot of like-minded people. I’m the sole printer. I print 80% of the stuff that comes out of the studio. Paul is a huge creative force that helps with the brand. He’s not tied to any commercial printing. He oversees the production, from sourcing fabric to coming up with inspirations. Paul is obsessed with techniques and textures. Joe Garvey helps runs the operations.

He’s also got an active art career, so he also does the graphics with help from Toya Horiuchi.

[Paul Bryant] There’s no defined crew or employee, LQQK Studio is this ever-changing situation.

[AD] The service that we offer continues to change. But it’s not just one person’s energy, it’s a collective energy. It’s not like everyone’s on payroll but hopefully everyone gets what they want out of this ongoing project.

What prompted you to turn the studio into a brand?

[PB] To have a clothing brand for us makes as much sense as ’90s music label Nervous Records having a clothing brand. Launching the brand came from our ability to pivot. Nervous made dance records that had commercial success, but also made random and wild merch that didn’t outlive the record label. The merch still has relevance. You see vintage Nervous Records garments, and the two entities complement each other.

This print shop represents a community and certain people, and so does Nervous Records.

The term “merch” has a different connotation in streetwear today. Do you think it’s a dirty word?

[PB] No, in fact we embrace it. It’s an opportunity to showcase our abilities in another medium. A lot of “merch

brands” have appeared in recent years, like the publication 032c and its recent brand extension. Everyone needs an access point that speaks to them. As long as both mediums are genuine, then neither side suffers.

AD: We’re a studio that provides screen printing services. The apparel showcases our ideas, and our KNOW WAVE show is like the soundtrack to the studio. We might not be selling our shirt to every store that asks, but we’re diverse in what we do—commercial printing, we’re DJs with a radio show, and we’re a brand. All these other things help create an identity to what we are through the eyes of different audiences.

184

When did you get into screen printing?

[Alex Dondero] I was printing through college, then I set up a shop in Baltimore before moving to New York.

I was going back and forth between both cities printing. Eventually, I moved all the equipment to New York and settled in with a bunch of friends in 2010/11. We outgrew that space then moved to this Brooklyn location and have been here for five years. Things started to shape up here.

How did you two first meet?

[AD] Paul and I first bonded over clothes. Paul was working for Patrik Ervell and I was doing prints for him at my studio. Patrik was a dream client to work for because I looked up to his work. He really helped me find an appreciation for menswear. He knows how to make classic styles feel accessible. That shirt that I learned to love, I know he’s going to make that again in a different way next season, and I know I’ll love it because it’s the same pattern but modernized.

I was tripping when I got patched to do work with him. I was so eager to be involved, I personally brought stuff to their studio. We did some wild projects together, experimenting with dye techniques and prints. Paul was his production guy. When we met, I immediately knew we were on a similar wavelength.

How did that manifest into LQQK Studio?

[AD] What connected us was Patrik, but my good friend Martin Davis helped lock things tighter. Martin’s an integral part of LQQK and helped keep the lights on and ensured the rent was paid. He was also the manager at Supreme. I introduced Paul to Martin, and when Paul left Patrik Ervell, Martin introduced him to the guys at Supreme, and he ended up working in production there. Martin is a huge part of LQQK’s construction. I’m pretty sure it was actually his idea for us to launch more T-shirts and make a brand. We were just doing a few shop shirts for friends before that.

I founded the studio as a screen printing shop, and through that I met a lot of like-minded people. I’m the sole printer. I print 80% of the stuff that comes out of the studio. Paul is a huge creative force that helps with the brand. He’s not tied to any commercial printing. He oversees the production, from sourcing fabric to coming up with inspirations. Paul is obsessed with techniques and textures. Joe Garvey helps runs the operations.

He’s also got an active art career, so he also does the graphics with help from Toya Horiuchi.

[Paul Bryant] There’s no defined crew or employee, LQQK Studio is this ever-changing situation.

[AD] The service that we offer continues to change. But it’s not just one person’s energy, it’s a collective energy. It’s not like everyone’s on payroll but hopefully everyone gets what they want out of this ongoing project.

What prompted you to turn the studio into a brand?

[PB] To have a clothing brand for us makes as much sense as ’90s music label Nervous Records having a clothing brand. Launching the brand came from our ability to pivot. Nervous made dance records that had commercial success, but also made random and wild merch that didn’t outlive the record label. The merch still has relevance. You see vintage Nervous Records garments, and the two entities complement each other.

This print shop represents a community and certain people, and so does Nervous Records.

The term “merch” has a different connotation in streetwear today. Do you think it’s a dirty word?

[PB] No, in fact we embrace it. It’s an opportunity to showcase our abilities in another medium. A lot of “merch

brands” have appeared in recent years, like the publication 032c and its recent brand extension. Everyone needs an access point that speaks to them. As long as both mediums are genuine, then neither side suffers.

AD: We’re a studio that provides screen printing services. The apparel showcases our ideas, and our KNOW WAVE show is like the soundtrack to the studio. We might not be selling our shirt to every store that asks, but we’re diverse in what we do—commercial printing, we’re DJs with a radio show, and we’re a brand. All these other things help create an identity to what we are through the eyes of different audiences.

184

186

187

186

187

Many brands follow a structured roll-out schedule or ascribe to the weekly drop model. Does this apply to LQQK? [AD] Beside a few scribbles somewhere on the whiteboard, there’s no real roll-out plan. If you’re worried about your market before you worry about what you’re actually making, then you’re in the wrong business. I know people that kill themselves for their artwork but don’t have gallery representation, yet you couldn’t keep them from making their art. They don’t have a market, they’re not selling their shit anyway. My point is, there’s too many people who care too much about the market. Everyone’s got to live but everyone’s got to be flexible.

I’m not worried about what market we fit into, because I’m more worried about what it is that I’m doing. It’s like the whole “I’ve got to make something for the art fair” mentality. No—you need to make shit that you care about, you shouldn’t even know when the art fair is. It shouldn’t even be on your mind. This mindset drives a lot of people. Once you’re really aware of what you’re doing, you end up making conscious decisions.

Does this affect your relationship with retailers?

[PB] We want to work with people who respect our approach and aren’t necessarily concerned with a sixmonth or one-year release schedule. We’ll come up with an idea and see if they’ll buy it. Sometimes, we have designs that make it onto print and we’ll get a batch done, then we find that we don’t really like the way it looks. There have been times when we’ve shown stores a design that we’re going to make and they buy it, but when it comes to delivery, we’ve altered the design.

[AD] Because I’m actually printing the tees on the press, I can make snap decisions and change the way certain things are printed.

Why is it important to have control versus pandering to the norms set by the fashion industry?

[AD] I find the wholesale system fraudulent. You end up making more products than you feel comfortable

making. For example, I might not want to make 100 T-shirts but the store has a minimum order, and we’re in five accounts so suddenly I have to make 500 T-shirts. Immediately I’ve already lost a bit of control by making an amount I’m not comfortable with and selling it cheaply.

The minute stores have your brand, they can do whatever they want. They can style it on a clown, they can light it on fire, or sell it for cheap. Immediately, you’ve lost control on something you’ve worked hard to build.

To me, that’s problematic. I think all you can do is trial and error. You can sell to a store, see how it moves or is styled, then revisit the idea next season. I see us in the long game, so having the control early is important.

We’re opening up to more retailers now, but online stores and pop-ups are the best ways for us to tell our story.

You guys also have some cut-and-sew pieces. Does LQQK eventually want to launch a full collection?

[PB] We want to do more cut-and-sew, but we also want to grow the brand organically. We’re not trying to pressure ourselves to do seasonal drops.

[AD] Another main principle is: “Just because you can print on something doesn’t mean you should.” We try to be as design-focused as possible, not print-focused. We want to make the best-designed garments and have come to terms with using embroidery on fleece and sweatshirts. We can save money by printing, but it won’t look that good, so cut-and-sew or embroidery serve a purpose in helping us create quality designs.

You guys have worked with many high-profile clients. How do these relationships develop?

[AD] It’s New York. Everyone fuels clients, and we have to make sure we don’t get out-priced and that our output is on point. I can beat myself up over our shit not getting printed on time, but I can’t let other people’s stuff come out late. If you commit to a print job, you really have to do your best to deliver on time. We don’t have a client list online or boast what we print for people, so word of mouth is all we’re relying on.

189

Many brands follow a structured roll-out schedule or ascribe to the weekly drop model. Does this apply to LQQK? [AD] Beside a few scribbles somewhere on the whiteboard, there’s no real roll-out plan. If you’re worried about your market before you worry about what you’re actually making, then you’re in the wrong business. I know people that kill themselves for their artwork but don’t have gallery representation, yet you couldn’t keep them from making their art. They don’t have a market, they’re not selling their shit anyway. My point is, there’s too many people who care too much about the market. Everyone’s got to live but everyone’s got to be flexible.

I’m not worried about what market we fit into, because I’m more worried about what it is that I’m doing. It’s like the whole “I’ve got to make something for the art fair” mentality. No—you need to make shit that you care about, you shouldn’t even know when the art fair is. It shouldn’t even be on your mind. This mindset drives a lot of people. Once you’re really aware of what you’re doing, you end up making conscious decisions.

Does this affect your relationship with retailers?

[PB] We want to work with people who respect our approach and aren’t necessarily concerned with a sixmonth or one-year release schedule. We’ll come up with an idea and see if they’ll buy it. Sometimes, we have designs that make it onto print and we’ll get a batch done, then we find that we don’t really like the way it looks. There have been times when we’ve shown stores a design that we’re going to make and they buy it, but when it comes to delivery, we’ve altered the design.

[AD] Because I’m actually printing the tees on the press, I can make snap decisions and change the way certain things are printed.

Why is it important to have control versus pandering to the norms set by the fashion industry?

[AD] I find the wholesale system fraudulent. You end up making more products than you feel comfortable

making. For example, I might not want to make 100 T-shirts but the store has a minimum order, and we’re in five accounts so suddenly I have to make 500 T-shirts. Immediately I’ve already lost a bit of control by making an amount I’m not comfortable with and selling it cheaply.

The minute stores have your brand, they can do whatever they want. They can style it on a clown, they can light it on fire, or sell it for cheap. Immediately, you’ve lost control on something you’ve worked hard to build.

To me, that’s problematic. I think all you can do is trial and error. You can sell to a store, see how it moves or is styled, then revisit the idea next season. I see us in the long game, so having the control early is important.

We’re opening up to more retailers now, but online stores and pop-ups are the best ways for us to tell our story.

You guys also have some cut-and-sew pieces. Does LQQK eventually want to launch a full collection?

[PB] We want to do more cut-and-sew, but we also want to grow the brand organically. We’re not trying to pressure ourselves to do seasonal drops.

[AD] Another main principle is: “Just because you can print on something doesn’t mean you should.” We try to be as design-focused as possible, not print-focused. We want to make the best-designed garments and have come to terms with using embroidery on fleece and sweatshirts. We can save money by printing, but it won’t look that good, so cut-and-sew or embroidery serve a purpose in helping us create quality designs.

You guys have worked with many high-profile clients. How do these relationships develop?

[AD] It’s New York. Everyone fuels clients, and we have to make sure we don’t get out-priced and that our output is on point. I can beat myself up over our shit not getting printed on time, but I can’t let other people’s stuff come out late. If you commit to a print job, you really have to do your best to deliver on time. We don’t have a client list online or boast what we print for people, so word of mouth is all we’re relying on.

189

A lot of your clients are also your peers. Do people ever misconstrue work you’ve done for them as collaborations?

[AD] When people name-drop projects we’ve worked on, it makes me cringe a little because I didn’t tell you that—it’s a rumor. We printed for Richardson, but it’s not like we’re collaborating with Richardson. There’s a difference. And he may tell you we’ve worked together, but it’s not openly advertised because he’s paying for a service. There are certain projects where clients don’t want to share too much information. I’ve fully come to terms with the fact that just because I printed on a T-shirt doesn’t mean it’s a collaboration. You don’t want people to feel exposed or that you’re unprofessional.

Staying authentic is important to LQQK. How do you ensure things stay true to the brand?

[AD] We flesh ideas out and say “no” to a lot of things. Most ideas don’t see the light of day. In three hours of talking, you might only see one idea come to fruition. We have limited time and limited budget. If we want to make something, it needs to be money well spent. There needs to be enough self-confidence where I can shoot down an idea Paul has and vice versa. It’s important to put our egos aside when brainstorming.

[PB] I think a lot of it really comes down to: “Would I wear that?”

You’ve done legitimate collaborations with labels like Vans Vault and N.HOOLYWOOD. What drives these shared projects?

[AD] The collaboration has to provide a product that we can’t produce ourselves. Vans is a perfect example, because we can’t make sneakers. When Vans reached out, we were 100% down. Our collection was inspired by sneakers that we would wear ourselves. The bright colors pay homage to loud street style from yesteryears.

Judging by the wall of records, there’s no doubt music plays a formative role in LQQK Studio.

[AD] Yeah, but I don’t associate myself as a DJ. I like playing records but that title is so loaded. If I had the option of either having a record collection or be a successful DJ, I’d buy records. My passion for music comes from collecting records and Doing is a perfect channel for me to play them out. I’m buying records that I would like to share versus I want to be a DJ, hence I’m buying records.

How did you get your show on KNOW WAVE? [PB] Aaron [Bondaroff] came to Alex to put on a weekly show. Then that became another outlet in terms of how others can experience us. We tend to put together the flyers last minute. Music-wise, everyone goes off on their own direction but there are some overlaps.

I was going through a phase regarding Tina Turner records, and Alex wasn’t feeling it. Meanwhile, Max Feur is out buying ambient trance compilations.

[AD] KNOW WAVE is family. LQQK and KNOW WAVE are mutually beneficial. We legitimize each other.

They’re not corny; we’re not corny. I don’t have time to run a SoundCloud that’s dialed-in. They do. KNOW WAVE can be our outlet for our audio. They need legitimate and active people in the scene to share music, and we can do that.

191

A lot of your clients are also your peers. Do people ever misconstrue work you’ve done for them as collaborations?

[AD] When people name-drop projects we’ve worked on, it makes me cringe a little because I didn’t tell you that—it’s a rumor. We printed for Richardson, but it’s not like we’re collaborating with Richardson. There’s a difference. And he may tell you we’ve worked together, but it’s not openly advertised because he’s paying for a service. There are certain projects where clients don’t want to share too much information. I’ve fully come to terms with the fact that just because I printed on a T-shirt doesn’t mean it’s a collaboration. You don’t want people to feel exposed or that you’re unprofessional.

Staying authentic is important to LQQK. How do you ensure things stay true to the brand?

[AD] We flesh ideas out and say “no” to a lot of things. Most ideas don’t see the light of day. In three hours of talking, you might only see one idea come to fruition. We have limited time and limited budget. If we want to make something, it needs to be money well spent. There needs to be enough self-confidence where I can shoot down an idea Paul has and vice versa. It’s important to put our egos aside when brainstorming.

[PB] I think a lot of it really comes down to: “Would I wear that?”

You’ve done legitimate collaborations with labels like Vans Vault and N.HOOLYWOOD. What drives these shared projects?

[AD] The collaboration has to provide a product that we can’t produce ourselves. Vans is a perfect example, because we can’t make sneakers. When Vans reached out, we were 100% down. Our collection was inspired by sneakers that we would wear ourselves. The bright colors pay homage to loud street style from yesteryears.

Judging by the wall of records, there’s no doubt music plays a formative role in LQQK Studio.

[AD] Yeah, but I don’t associate myself as a DJ. I like playing records but that title is so loaded. If I had the option of either having a record collection or be a successful DJ, I’d buy records. My passion for music comes from collecting records and Doing is a perfect channel for me to play them out. I’m buying records that I would like to share versus I want to be a DJ, hence I’m buying records.

How did you get your show on KNOW WAVE? [PB] Aaron [Bondaroff] came to Alex to put on a weekly show. Then that became another outlet in terms of how others can experience us. We tend to put together the flyers last minute. Music-wise, everyone goes off on their own direction but there are some overlaps.

I was going through a phase regarding Tina Turner records, and Alex wasn’t feeling it. Meanwhile, Max Feur is out buying ambient trance compilations.

[AD] KNOW WAVE is family. LQQK and KNOW WAVE are mutually beneficial. We legitimize each other.

They’re not corny; we’re not corny. I don’t have time to run a SoundCloud that’s dialed-in. They do. KNOW WAVE can be our outlet for our audio. They need legitimate and active people in the scene to share music, and we can do that.

191

Both of you have apparel brands that represent New York’s creative communities. How much crossover is there between the two tribes?

[AD] Like other creative communities we work with, we printed KNOW WAVE’s tees in the past. We’ve seen it grow and have been with it in spaces where it either outgrew or got evicted. Aaron Bondaroff doesn’t want to be a babysitter, he wants KNOW WAVE to be organic, but also understands that there needs to be a financial aspect to it, hence the launch of the brand. They walk the tricky line between generating original content and selling T-shirts.

A lot of KNOW WAVE contributors volunteer, and when the brand generates income, then there’s some politics. You have to be courteous and realize that it is a community and people are producing original content on goodwill. KNOW WAVE is an incredible thing that stems from true community. Aaron does a good job at giving back, but when things get hyper-consumed then it becomes tricky. If selling the T-shirts is what allows it to exist, then so be it. But original content must come first.

Outside of the U.S., LQQK Studio has gained traction in Tokyo. How did your fanbase there develop?

[PB] Japan has been really receptive to the brand from the moment we posted Aaron wearing one of our LQQK hats. Outside of New York, Tokyo is our second largest audience. Last year, we did a project called “Gateway” where we brought our world to Tokyo. It was a pop-up that exhibited the capsule, then we had a party afterwards where all our friends DJ’ed. We took over the whole club with Person of Interest, J. Albert, NGLY, and Max McFerren. We couldn’t have done it without Shin Nishigaki. He might not be the creative drive at LQQK, but he helps package a lot of the image. He gives brutally honest advice and that’s crucial.

The “Gateway” event featured artists signed to your record label 369. Why did you choose to launch a label separate to LQQK Studio’s moniker?

[AD] We’re surrounded by a lot of talented musicians that have tracks that will never see the light of day. 369 is an additional outlet and our network is strong enough so that we can start pressing some records. The whole reason why it’s under a different name is so that artists don’t feel like we’re trying to stamp our name on their music. Hence, we wanted to start from scratch. We A&R it so people’s musical efforts don’t get overshadowed by a brand. It needs to exist in its own realm but also have a loose association. Max McFerren has released on 1080P and Allergy Season but he has so much great music that’s unreleased. We want to help get it out to the world.

Pressing vinyl isn’t the cheapest. Why is it important to create physical releases?

[PB] Creating physical releases feels authentic to us. We want it to come from a place of appreciation and originality. As far as costs, luckily our friend Anthony Naples linked us up with Rubadub Records’ distribution.

We’re able to break even and not hemorrhage money. This is done purely off our network. We’re surrounded by creative people that want to help each other.

What do you think has been the key success to LQQK Studio?

[AD] Staying true to our beliefs. We’re about a slow burn, and would rather have people come ride with us and see how the brand evolves than to cash out. For us, it’s relevant to produce the cash cushion to records.

We’re here for the long run.

193

Both of you have apparel brands that represent New York’s creative communities. How much crossover is there between the two tribes?

[AD] Like other creative communities we work with, we printed KNOW WAVE’s tees in the past. We’ve seen it grow and have been with it in spaces where it either outgrew or got evicted. Aaron Bondaroff doesn’t want to be a babysitter, he wants KNOW WAVE to be organic, but also understands that there needs to be a financial aspect to it, hence the launch of the brand. They walk the tricky line between generating original content and selling T-shirts.

A lot of KNOW WAVE contributors volunteer, and when the brand generates income, then there’s some politics. You have to be courteous and realize that it is a community and people are producing original content on goodwill. KNOW WAVE is an incredible thing that stems from true community. Aaron does a good job at giving back, but when things get hyper-consumed then it becomes tricky. If selling the T-shirts is what allows it to exist, then so be it. But original content must come first.

Outside of the U.S., LQQK Studio has gained traction in Tokyo. How did your fanbase there develop?

[PB] Japan has been really receptive to the brand from the moment we posted Aaron wearing one of our LQQK hats. Outside of New York, Tokyo is our second largest audience. Last year, we did a project called “Gateway” where we brought our world to Tokyo. It was a pop-up that exhibited the capsule, then we had a party afterwards where all our friends DJ’ed. We took over the whole club with Person of Interest, J. Albert, NGLY, and Max McFerren. We couldn’t have done it without Shin Nishigaki. He might not be the creative drive at LQQK, but he helps package a lot of the image. He gives brutally honest advice and that’s crucial.

The “Gateway” event featured artists signed to your record label 369. Why did you choose to launch a label separate to LQQK Studio’s moniker?

[AD] We’re surrounded by a lot of talented musicians that have tracks that will never see the light of day. 369 is an additional outlet and our network is strong enough so that we can start pressing some records. The whole reason why it’s under a different name is so that artists don’t feel like we’re trying to stamp our name on their music. Hence, we wanted to start from scratch. We A&R it so people’s musical efforts don’t get overshadowed by a brand. It needs to exist in its own realm but also have a loose association. Max McFerren has released on 1080P and Allergy Season but he has so much great music that’s unreleased. We want to help get it out to the world.

Pressing vinyl isn’t the cheapest. Why is it important to create physical releases?

[PB] Creating physical releases feels authentic to us. We want it to come from a place of appreciation and originality. As far as costs, luckily our friend Anthony Naples linked us up with Rubadub Records’ distribution.

We’re able to break even and not hemorrhage money. This is done purely off our network. We’re surrounded by creative people that want to help each other.

What do you think has been the key success to LQQK Studio?

[AD] Staying true to our beliefs. We’re about a slow burn, and would rather have people come ride with us and see how the brand evolves than to cash out. For us, it’s relevant to produce the cash cushion to records.

We’re here for the long run.

193

As the future of academic institutions is unclear, Benjamin Gott is utilizing social platforms and an interconnected world in a way that brings it back to its intended roots: Freedom of sharing knowledge from peer-to-peer.

It might be cliché to say “it’s an interesting time to be alive,” but it could easily be argued that today; that is an understatement. The internet was meant to bring us together, to exchange knowledge in an open forum and only now, almost 30 years into its expansion are we really learning what that means. We’re living in a time where a truth can be called into question. Yes, challenging truth has been one of the ways we’ve been able to evolve our knowledge as a species, but that’s not what’s going on here.

The New School Benjamin Edgar Gott

Words Zach Macklovitch Photography Rupert LaMontagne

The North American education system is hurting. Schools are underfunded on the public level and the prices of American Universities are reaching levels where students are truly questioning if higher education is worth it. Many believe that the current social climate of the Western world is influenced in large part by the inaccessibility to good education and the reliance on the internet to fill that void.

Parallel universes exist between the Democrat listening to NPR and the Republican watching Fox News.

We’re watching the same story unfold with narratives so different that the two sides can barely communicate.

That question today is not whether good education needs to evolve and embrace the internet on a deeper level. The question is: How exactly will education’s evolution play out?

Enter Benjamin Gott. Based in Chicago, Benjamin Gott aka Benjamin Edgar is a serial entrepreneur who first came onto the Highsnobiety radar way back in 2005, while cutting his teeth as co-founder of THE BRILLIANCE, one the internet’s earliest “culture”-focused platforms. Designer Chuck Anderson was the other co-founder, and the two later brought on a third partner, fellow Chicagoan and budding aesthete Virgil Abloh.

Gott also went on to found global beverage brand Boxed Water, the experimental product label Benjamin Edgar: An Object Company, and is also a venture capitalist. His latest endeavor is Th-oughts, a digital payas-you-go education platform that allows anyone to access a curated selection of the world’s top creatives in various fields.

Fellow serial entrepreneur, Zach Macklovitch of creative agency and lifestyle brand Saintwoods and the hospitality projects Apt.200 Montreal and Toronto, École Privée, and Suwu Neighbourhood Bar, sat down with Benjamin to discuss the evolution of the education system, what Th-oughts is all about, and the value of a good question.

195

As the future of academic institutions is unclear, Benjamin Gott is utilizing social platforms and an interconnected world in a way that brings it back to its intended roots: Freedom of sharing knowledge from peer-to-peer.

It might be cliché to say “it’s an interesting time to be alive,” but it could easily be argued that today; that is an understatement. The internet was meant to bring us together, to exchange knowledge in an open forum and only now, almost 30 years into its expansion are we really learning what that means. We’re living in a time where a truth can be called into question. Yes, challenging truth has been one of the ways we’ve been able to evolve our knowledge as a species, but that’s not what’s going on here.

The New School Benjamin Edgar Gott

Words Zach Macklovitch Photography Rupert LaMontagne

The North American education system is hurting. Schools are underfunded on the public level and the prices of American Universities are reaching levels where students are truly questioning if higher education is worth it. Many believe that the current social climate of the Western world is influenced in large part by the inaccessibility to good education and the reliance on the internet to fill that void.

Parallel universes exist between the Democrat listening to NPR and the Republican watching Fox News.

We’re watching the same story unfold with narratives so different that the two sides can barely communicate.

That question today is not whether good education needs to evolve and embrace the internet on a deeper level. The question is: How exactly will education’s evolution play out?

Enter Benjamin Gott. Based in Chicago, Benjamin Gott aka Benjamin Edgar is a serial entrepreneur who first came onto the Highsnobiety radar way back in 2005, while cutting his teeth as co-founder of THE BRILLIANCE, one the internet’s earliest “culture”-focused platforms. Designer Chuck Anderson was the other co-founder, and the two later brought on a third partner, fellow Chicagoan and budding aesthete Virgil Abloh.

Gott also went on to found global beverage brand Boxed Water, the experimental product label Benjamin Edgar: An Object Company, and is also a venture capitalist. His latest endeavor is Th-oughts, a digital payas-you-go education platform that allows anyone to access a curated selection of the world’s top creatives in various fields.

Fellow serial entrepreneur, Zach Macklovitch of creative agency and lifestyle brand Saintwoods and the hospitality projects Apt.200 Montreal and Toronto, École Privée, and Suwu Neighbourhood Bar, sat down with Benjamin to discuss the evolution of the education system, what Th-oughts is all about, and the value of a good question.

195

You’re someone who puts a lot of weight on the importance of education, or at least, the access to education. Did you go to school yourself?

High school. Nothing beyond that.

That’s interesting. I always thought—based on your design acumen or the other projects you’ve been working on—that you’d had some form of post-high school education.

I’m 36 now, so I think it appears as though I have. Trust me, it wasn’t like this when I was 18 graduating high school. My first foray into augmenting traditional education was the library. I mean, I’m pre-internet and that period of time was teaching yourself how to program with a library book; I learned QBasic which is a really simple language that shipped with all Windows computers back in the day. That was the first time where I read a book on my own. I wrote some software that made the screen do something, and felt that. I joked that learning how to program is just like having unlimited LEGOs, so that sets you on an interesting course pretty early on to say, “I just learn stuff on my own.”

Having found success with a nontraditional education, what weight do you put on a traditional education for the people you’re working with, hiring, or even just for the next generation? Do you think that people will still go after an MBA or CFA, or are we looking at a generation more geared towards self-learning?

I may not have a traditional education, but we’ve hired people with MBAs and some have worked out really well, and some haven’t. It’s almost funny. You could skip traditional university or college with their classic fouryear programs and go right to your MBA if you feel so inspired about business. We’ve got these sort of train tracks you’re supposed to get on and ride the whole way. Rethinking that concept wouldn’t be a bad move.

Education has been associated with rigidity for a long time, while the new trend is to go and get the specified knowledge you need from the source. Traditional education seems to be lacking a lot of the basic skills kids want these days. Where do you think we should be drawing the bar for base knowledge offered to everyone, and where would you restructure?

It is a big question. The one that is often brought up is the “do your taxes” thing. Or simple stuff like “how do credit cards work?” You hear these stories of kids who are offered a credit card in college and $10,000 later they don’t quite understand what an APR is. A lot of people don’t understand what an APR is. I think it’s a little odd that we don’t teach them more than we do, or that we don’t even like gamify them in a way that makes these things common knowledge. I don’t think it’s bad to learn algebra, I don’t think it’s bad to focus on social studies, history, and art or things like that. I just think there’s room to expand.

Because if we remove basic art knowledge in school, then that’s obviously not a good thing either.

What’s that artist quote? “Everyone is an artist until they’re 5” or something like that? Sometimes, I think everyone is an artist until your teacher tells you to stop drawing in social studies because “art is two hours from now.” I like the idea of presenting children with a lot of different opportunities and seeing which ones they naturally gravitate towards and letting them explore that. I know there’s a lot of education styles that are popping up around that—I think they’re almost exclusively private, I could be wrong.

It would make sense.

An interesting thing we didn’t mention is that my mother is a teacher.

Oh, I didn’t know that!

Yeah, [grades] 6 through 8. We probably should’ve talked about that before. So, my mother was a cleaning lady most of my life, and she graduated college to become a teacher when I graduated junior high.

Do you think that allowed you to look at knowledge or education as less of a strict timeline?

My mom was entrepreneurial at her approach to her own education. She wasn’t trying to get her MBA, but instead what I would call a fairly traditional job of being a teacher. She kind of took her life into her own hands and did her own thing with it.

196

You’re someone who puts a lot of weight on the importance of education, or at least, the access to education. Did you go to school yourself?

High school. Nothing beyond that.

That’s interesting. I always thought—based on your design acumen or the other projects you’ve been working on—that you’d had some form of post-high school education.

I’m 36 now, so I think it appears as though I have. Trust me, it wasn’t like this when I was 18 graduating high school. My first foray into augmenting traditional education was the library. I mean, I’m pre-internet and that period of time was teaching yourself how to program with a library book; I learned QBasic which is a really simple language that shipped with all Windows computers back in the day. That was the first time where I read a book on my own. I wrote some software that made the screen do something, and felt that. I joked that learning how to program is just like having unlimited LEGOs, so that sets you on an interesting course pretty early on to say, “I just learn stuff on my own.”

Having found success with a nontraditional education, what weight do you put on a traditional education for the people you’re working with, hiring, or even just for the next generation? Do you think that people will still go after an MBA or CFA, or are we looking at a generation more geared towards self-learning?

I may not have a traditional education, but we’ve hired people with MBAs and some have worked out really well, and some haven’t. It’s almost funny. You could skip traditional university or college with their classic fouryear programs and go right to your MBA if you feel so inspired about business. We’ve got these sort of train tracks you’re supposed to get on and ride the whole way. Rethinking that concept wouldn’t be a bad move.

Education has been associated with rigidity for a long time, while the new trend is to go and get the specified knowledge you need from the source. Traditional education seems to be lacking a lot of the basic skills kids want these days. Where do you think we should be drawing the bar for base knowledge offered to everyone, and where would you restructure?

It is a big question. The one that is often brought up is the “do your taxes” thing. Or simple stuff like “how do credit cards work?” You hear these stories of kids who are offered a credit card in college and $10,000 later they don’t quite understand what an APR is. A lot of people don’t understand what an APR is. I think it’s a little odd that we don’t teach them more than we do, or that we don’t even like gamify them in a way that makes these things common knowledge. I don’t think it’s bad to learn algebra, I don’t think it’s bad to focus on social studies, history, and art or things like that. I just think there’s room to expand.

Because if we remove basic art knowledge in school, then that’s obviously not a good thing either.

What’s that artist quote? “Everyone is an artist until they’re 5” or something like that? Sometimes, I think everyone is an artist until your teacher tells you to stop drawing in social studies because “art is two hours from now.” I like the idea of presenting children with a lot of different opportunities and seeing which ones they naturally gravitate towards and letting them explore that. I know there’s a lot of education styles that are popping up around that—I think they’re almost exclusively private, I could be wrong.

It would make sense.

An interesting thing we didn’t mention is that my mother is a teacher.

Oh, I didn’t know that!

Yeah, [grades] 6 through 8. We probably should’ve talked about that before. So, my mother was a cleaning lady most of my life, and she graduated college to become a teacher when I graduated junior high.

Do you think that allowed you to look at knowledge or education as less of a strict timeline?

My mom was entrepreneurial at her approach to her own education. She wasn’t trying to get her MBA, but instead what I would call a fairly traditional job of being a teacher. She kind of took her life into her own hands and did her own thing with it.

196

Your career has ranged from graphic design, to education services, to product development, all through learning how to teach yourself. Can we motivate young people about self-education when education has always had this “chore” stigma? How do we brand education differently?

Well, I think it goes back to how everyone is an artist until they’re told not to. I know that’s kind of cliché, but there are very few children who don’t express themselves in some way, shape or form when they’re given crayons at a young age. But I think if you make education a chore, you have a lot of work to do to un-brand that.

I don’t think education has to be a walk in the park, and it doesn’t need to be the most fun thing in the world—because even when you love something, it’s extremely hard. Teaching myself to code was really fun until you’re running into your first bug, or until it turns into a job and you’re really struggling with something that needs to ship in the next hour. I think it starts really, really early and I think it starts with—boy, this might sound really millennial…

I hope so.

Respecting the kids when they’re a little bit younger, and allowing the human mind to find the things that it’s passionate about, and not judging them too early.

Let’s talk about Th-oughts. How do you want your initiative to effect education? Do you see that form of transferring knowledge replacing traditional education?

The first answer is: We don’t know yet. I believe all great things start as an idea, then they go into some sort of weird project experimentation phase, then maybe they turn into a business and if they’re really lucky, evolve into a business that can sustain itself. And we’re very much still in the project and experimentation phase.

I’m not coming out swinging a really big sword or something like that saying college sucks, high school sucks, all forms of traditional education suck, and this new peer-to-peer network is going to solve everything. It’s funny, I didn’t really realize this until after the launch of Th-oughts, but the real profound thing about Th-oughts is that the student for the first time is picking the teacher. I’m sure there’s other instances of that happening.

I’m not sure that there are other instances of that happening.

I hate making really hyperbolic generalizations, but all these kids, you give them Instagram at 14 years old, and they’re like “yo, this sneaker designer is cool”; “This makeup artist is cool”; “This carpenter is cool”; “This scientist is cool.” Those kids are picking people they think are interesting and there’s no one telling them who or what they should pick. You’re actually watching them naturally select what they are personally interested in.

So what, we start “streaming education”?

I think it’s time to start re-thinking different ways of using and leveraging the internet. We don’t completely know what we’re doing with Th-oughts yet, but I think we’re experimenting on a very specific form of peer-topeer education where the student chooses the teacher. Do we want it to replace traditional education?

No, I think it would be really crazy to even consider throwing away what we have right now. I think we should just try to make iterative steps and see which ones work best. This is us throwing our hat into that arena.

I think what you’re saying is that maybe it’s a time for the public sector of education to start offering choices.

I don’t know if Google still does this anymore, but they used to allow you 20% of your time to work on your own projects to benefit the company; I think Gmail came out of it. They let their employees kind of wander and work on their own things. Maybe schooling needs to start doing this too.

When we’re looking at the standardized education and the evolution of education, it brings into question the value that people associate with education. Let’s talk a little bit more about Th-oughts and how Thoughts works, $10 per question?

Yes.

198

That doesn’t seem like much. What do you think the steps are to convince people to invest in self-education in the same way they’re willing to invest in standardized education?

I’ll tell you a story about why we built Th-oughts. Let’s say—this isn’t possible, but let’s say that it is for the sake of the example—that there’s two genetically identical human beings that are applying for the same entry-level creative director role at Nike. They have the same resume, the same education, the whole thing.

The only deviation is that one of them asked 25 questions to experts on Th-oughts; they asked Christina Paik about photography, they asked you [Zach Macklovitch] about hospitality, or jeffstaple about sneaker design and integration and culture, and they asked Philip [Annand] from Madbury Club about obscurity or branding.

And they attach that to their resume.

If I had to pick, I would probably be interested more in the person who formulated their own questions to specific people who are talented and successful at what they do. Even though the answers may not have been perfect, I think it would be hard to ignore the benefits of the person who had taken a bit of their own skin in the game and said they wanted to go do this.

I mean, that’s only $250 at this point, which is the price of a textbook.

You talk about the competitive advantage of those 25 questions. If you were to say, spend $500 on 50 questions, that’s a shit ton of knowledge. Fifty questions to experts, you’re learning something. You’re learning a lot.

Yeah, both in the question asking process, as well as the answers they perceive.

Your career has ranged from graphic design, to education services, to product development, all through learning how to teach yourself. Can we motivate young people about self-education when education has always had this “chore” stigma? How do we brand education differently?

Well, I think it goes back to how everyone is an artist until they’re told not to. I know that’s kind of cliché, but there are very few children who don’t express themselves in some way, shape or form when they’re given crayons at a young age. But I think if you make education a chore, you have a lot of work to do to un-brand that.

I don’t think education has to be a walk in the park, and it doesn’t need to be the most fun thing in the world—because even when you love something, it’s extremely hard. Teaching myself to code was really fun until you’re running into your first bug, or until it turns into a job and you’re really struggling with something that needs to ship in the next hour. I think it starts really, really early and I think it starts with—boy, this might sound really millennial…

I hope so.

Respecting the kids when they’re a little bit younger, and allowing the human mind to find the things that it’s passionate about, and not judging them too early.

Let’s talk about Th-oughts. How do you want your initiative to effect education? Do you see that form of transferring knowledge replacing traditional education?

The first answer is: We don’t know yet. I believe all great things start as an idea, then they go into some sort of weird project experimentation phase, then maybe they turn into a business and if they’re really lucky, evolve into a business that can sustain itself. And we’re very much still in the project and experimentation phase.

I’m not coming out swinging a really big sword or something like that saying college sucks, high school sucks, all forms of traditional education suck, and this new peer-to-peer network is going to solve everything. It’s funny, I didn’t really realize this until after the launch of Th-oughts, but the real profound thing about Th-oughts is that the student for the first time is picking the teacher. I’m sure there’s other instances of that happening.

I’m not sure that there are other instances of that happening.

I hate making really hyperbolic generalizations, but all these kids, you give them Instagram at 14 years old, and they’re like “yo, this sneaker designer is cool”; “This makeup artist is cool”; “This carpenter is cool”; “This scientist is cool.” Those kids are picking people they think are interesting and there’s no one telling them who or what they should pick. You’re actually watching them naturally select what they are personally interested in.

So what, we start “streaming education”?

I think it’s time to start re-thinking different ways of using and leveraging the internet. We don’t completely know what we’re doing with Th-oughts yet, but I think we’re experimenting on a very specific form of peer-topeer education where the student chooses the teacher. Do we want it to replace traditional education?

No, I think it would be really crazy to even consider throwing away what we have right now. I think we should just try to make iterative steps and see which ones work best. This is us throwing our hat into that arena.

I think what you’re saying is that maybe it’s a time for the public sector of education to start offering choices.

I don’t know if Google still does this anymore, but they used to allow you 20% of your time to work on your own projects to benefit the company; I think Gmail came out of it. They let their employees kind of wander and work on their own things. Maybe schooling needs to start doing this too.

When we’re looking at the standardized education and the evolution of education, it brings into question the value that people associate with education. Let’s talk a little bit more about Th-oughts and how Thoughts works, $10 per question?

Yes.

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That doesn’t seem like much. What do you think the steps are to convince people to invest in self-education in the same way they’re willing to invest in standardized education?

I’ll tell you a story about why we built Th-oughts. Let’s say—this isn’t possible, but let’s say that it is for the sake of the example—that there’s two genetically identical human beings that are applying for the same entry-level creative director role at Nike. They have the same resume, the same education, the whole thing.

The only deviation is that one of them asked 25 questions to experts on Th-oughts; they asked Christina Paik about photography, they asked you [Zach Macklovitch] about hospitality, or jeffstaple about sneaker design and integration and culture, and they asked Philip [Annand] from Madbury Club about obscurity or branding.

And they attach that to their resume.

If I had to pick, I would probably be interested more in the person who formulated their own questions to specific people who are talented and successful at what they do. Even though the answers may not have been perfect, I think it would be hard to ignore the benefits of the person who had taken a bit of their own skin in the game and said they wanted to go do this.

I mean, that’s only $250 at this point, which is the price of a textbook.

You talk about the competitive advantage of those 25 questions. If you were to say, spend $500 on 50 questions, that’s a shit ton of knowledge. Fifty questions to experts, you’re learning something. You’re learning a lot.

Yeah, both in the question asking process, as well as the answers they perceive.

But that $500 investment seems like a lot, why?

Because it’s not accredited.

You think about standardized education and how at the end of it, you get a piece of paper and then it’s like, “What does this piece of paper mean?” You should be able to say “I have the accreditation where I asked 10 questions to Tremaine Emory [of No Vacancy Inn] about music and branding.” Tremaine is going to give you some mean knowledge on that. What do you think are the barriers in reaching that level?

Well, for one we’re a really new concept, and that’s more a brand issue on our end, and we definitely have some work to do on that. The other one is that we often hear, “I don’t know what to ask,” so that’s also on us. We are exploring a couple of ways to do that. We also need people, especially those who are responsible for hiring, to respect what we’ve built.

If Th-oughts in the next 2-4 years can get to the point where people go: “Yep, I’ve heard of that,” on top of your grades, then I think we’ll start making a dent in that. I think employers now are definitely looking at your social media.

Let’s go back to those two genetically identical people. If one of them is followed by Virgil, or Justin [Saunders] from JJJJound, or whoever, and the other one doesn’t really have an active social media following, you would assume the person who does and is followed by all of these interesting people is doing something compelling in the public.

Noel Bronson, who we call our valedictorian, one of the most active users on Th-oughts, is a really compelling person. I don’t know if anyone “famous” follows him, but he’s asked all of these questions and I guarantee that if you present that to an employer they’d be like, “Wow, this person is really interesting.” He would probably make a better version of Th-oughts than we could. Do you know what I mean?

Would you be okay if Th-oughts in itself didn’t hit massively, but instead influenced the next generation to be self-learners?

Would I be bummed if Th-oughts was the Beta and then VHS took over? We don’t have any investors, so I’m allowed to say this: No, I wouldn’t be. I would be happy to have participated in an experiment that moves something forward and I’d be happy that Noel and the handful of people who use this service on a regular basis got answers to their questions.

We think a lot about education as old people teaching the young. I think that Th-oughts throws the grade and age out the window, and that’s interesting. I mean, we don’t know how old Noel is. He could be a 45-year-old executive. With people going back to school, a lack of jobs, and industries changing quickly, is Th-oughts geared towards a certain age?

I hope not. Although, again, I think that there’s a romance, if not almost like a poetic thing with the student picking the teacher, as I said earlier. I think you’re right that I was being stereotypical in saying that the student is younger than the teacher. That’s a good point.

I’ve asked other experts on Th-oughts questions that are at least a decade younger than me. People like Reese Cooper and Jacob Hetzer. The beauty of the internet is that there aren’t any traditional rules. If you’re younger or you’re older, the directional things that we’re used to in education are gone.

What were some of the challenges you had to deal with?

I personally deal with what a lot of other entrepreneurs probably do as well—deep self-doubt and insecurity.

There’s probably someone who’s studied the human condition that can answer why. We quit Th-oughts twice before it was launched. At times I thought it was a really weird idea, I thought there was a culture-vulture element to it where we were charging for access to really interesting people and that I was being an arbiter of taste.

Insecurity is a big thing, so whenever someone asks me something, I say to just do it. Whatever it is that they’re excited about, take the smallest step you can to try it and make it happen. Even the negative feedback is so much better than the anxiety of wondering what the feedback would be. To quote Gucci Mane: “I definitely get lost in the sauce.” I get lost in the concern of creating something interesting.

201

But that $500 investment seems like a lot, why?

Because it’s not accredited.

You think about standardized education and how at the end of it, you get a piece of paper and then it’s like, “What does this piece of paper mean?” You should be able to say “I have the accreditation where I asked 10 questions to Tremaine Emory [of No Vacancy Inn] about music and branding.” Tremaine is going to give you some mean knowledge on that. What do you think are the barriers in reaching that level?

Well, for one we’re a really new concept, and that’s more a brand issue on our end, and we definitely have some work to do on that. The other one is that we often hear, “I don’t know what to ask,” so that’s also on us. We are exploring a couple of ways to do that. We also need people, especially those who are responsible for hiring, to respect what we’ve built.

If Th-oughts in the next 2-4 years can get to the point where people go: “Yep, I’ve heard of that,” on top of your grades, then I think we’ll start making a dent in that. I think employers now are definitely looking at your social media.

Let’s go back to those two genetically identical people. If one of them is followed by Virgil, or Justin [Saunders] from JJJJound, or whoever, and the other one doesn’t really have an active social media following, you would assume the person who does and is followed by all of these interesting people is doing something compelling in the public.

Noel Bronson, who we call our valedictorian, one of the most active users on Th-oughts, is a really compelling person. I don’t know if anyone “famous” follows him, but he’s asked all of these questions and I guarantee that if you present that to an employer they’d be like, “Wow, this person is really interesting.” He would probably make a better version of Th-oughts than we could. Do you know what I mean?

Would you be okay if Th-oughts in itself didn’t hit massively, but instead influenced the next generation to be self-learners?

Would I be bummed if Th-oughts was the Beta and then VHS took over? We don’t have any investors, so I’m allowed to say this: No, I wouldn’t be. I would be happy to have participated in an experiment that moves something forward and I’d be happy that Noel and the handful of people who use this service on a regular basis got answers to their questions.

We think a lot about education as old people teaching the young. I think that Th-oughts throws the grade and age out the window, and that’s interesting. I mean, we don’t know how old Noel is. He could be a 45-year-old executive. With people going back to school, a lack of jobs, and industries changing quickly, is Th-oughts geared towards a certain age?

I hope not. Although, again, I think that there’s a romance, if not almost like a poetic thing with the student picking the teacher, as I said earlier. I think you’re right that I was being stereotypical in saying that the student is younger than the teacher. That’s a good point.

I’ve asked other experts on Th-oughts questions that are at least a decade younger than me. People like Reese Cooper and Jacob Hetzer. The beauty of the internet is that there aren’t any traditional rules. If you’re younger or you’re older, the directional things that we’re used to in education are gone.

What were some of the challenges you had to deal with?

I personally deal with what a lot of other entrepreneurs probably do as well—deep self-doubt and insecurity.

There’s probably someone who’s studied the human condition that can answer why. We quit Th-oughts twice before it was launched. At times I thought it was a really weird idea, I thought there was a culture-vulture element to it where we were charging for access to really interesting people and that I was being an arbiter of taste.

Insecurity is a big thing, so whenever someone asks me something, I say to just do it. Whatever it is that they’re excited about, take the smallest step you can to try it and make it happen. Even the negative feedback is so much better than the anxiety of wondering what the feedback would be. To quote Gucci Mane: “I definitely get lost in the sauce.” I get lost in the concern of creating something interesting.

201

Illegal Business Julie Zerbo

Streetwear’s obsession with cultural sampling means the genre occupies somewhat of a grey area, legally. That can create some difficult situations: What, exactly, is the difference between a homage and straight-up copyright infringement? Julie Zerbo, the fashion industry’s go-to legal expert, explains the legalese in layman’s terms.

Remember those awful designer parody T-shirts that were inescapable a few years back? Around 2011, 2012, the internet was awash with startup brands making quick cash off tongue-in-cheek T-shirt memes.

Hermès became Homies, and A$AP Rocky catapulted Russ Karablin’s OG streetwear label SSUR into the spotlight when he wore the brand’s COMME des FUCKDOWN beanies in the “Goldie” video.

Perhaps the most famous instance of designer parody-wear was What About Yves. A line of novelty tees founded by Jeanine Hellier, What About Yves responded to Hedi Slimane’s controversial 2012 rebranding of Yves Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear line by printing a tee with the slogan, “Ain’t Laurent Without Yves.” The T-shirts enraged Slimane, who pulled Saint Laurent’s collections from colette after the Parisian concept store sold the parody tees (an anecdote that’s even more amusing now that colette has closed and its space is being occupied by—you guessed it—Saint Laurent). Hellier, meanwhile, found herself staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Saint Laurent’s lawyers, who claimed her products were guilty of “trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false designation of origin, and unfair competition.”

You’ll still stumble across the occasional meme tee every now and then, but for the most part, the trend is (finally, mercifully) dead—lowered into the hype graveyard, right next to Been Trill and Hood By Air. It’s easy to look at designer parody tees as an embarrassing footnote in fashion history, but they were actually the first steps in the industry’s ongoing obsession with irony. Today, Gucci is putting “Guccy” on the runway, and Fendi is riffing on the FILA logo with pieces designed by Instagram artist @hey_reilly.

For fashion houses, the craze is a grab for eyeballs, a frantic battle to try and excite the Instagram generation, but for streetwear, a genre that’s built on appropriation, the obsession with logo flips poses an interesting conundrum. Streetwear is all about cultural sampling, and brands have built empires off the back of logo flips and unofficial homages—just take a look at the Instagram account @supreme_copies for proof. Now, when streetwear is the norm and Supreme has been valued at $1 billion, we’ve found ourselves in a giant paradox where a genre built on cultural sampling has become the prime target for counterfeiters, bootleggers, and fast fashion knockoffs. A phony version of Supreme has even been doing business in Italy, complete with its own flagship store. Italian authorities recently confirmed they had seized 120,000 counterfeit Supreme products.

That doesn’t mean fashion has lost its taste for knockoffs, though. Gucci has not only printed its own luxe versions of black market logo tees, it’s legitimized the operations of legendary bootleg tailor Dapper Dan, and even ran “real bootlegs” of its own logo on the runway. This past New York Fashion Week, Diesel went one step further, and produced its own parody “Deisel” pop-up shop on Canal Street, the city’s mecca for counterfeit goods. Streetwear’s cultural eclecticism and appropriation are a big part of what makes it so fascinating, but what exactly is the legal status of all of this bootlegging? Perhaps a lawyer would know.

Words Alec Leach Photography Thomas Welch

202

Julie Zerbo started The Fashion Law in 2011 while she was in law school. She’s been a ballet dancer and an economics major in previous lives, but now she’s an expert on intellectual property—the legal driving force behind so much of the fashion industry. She’s an expert resource for journalists, but also a voice who’s unafraid to call out bullshit when she sees it—whether it’s brands using shady labor practices, or Instagrammers not properly disclosing when a post has been paid for. Zerbo lays down the law around the legal grey area that streetwear occupies.

203

Illegal Business Julie Zerbo

Streetwear’s obsession with cultural sampling means the genre occupies somewhat of a grey area, legally. That can create some difficult situations: What, exactly, is the difference between a homage and straight-up copyright infringement? Julie Zerbo, the fashion industry’s go-to legal expert, explains the legalese in layman’s terms.

Remember those awful designer parody T-shirts that were inescapable a few years back? Around 2011, 2012, the internet was awash with startup brands making quick cash off tongue-in-cheek T-shirt memes.

Hermès became Homies, and A$AP Rocky catapulted Russ Karablin’s OG streetwear label SSUR into the spotlight when he wore the brand’s COMME des FUCKDOWN beanies in the “Goldie” video.

Perhaps the most famous instance of designer parody-wear was What About Yves. A line of novelty tees founded by Jeanine Hellier, What About Yves responded to Hedi Slimane’s controversial 2012 rebranding of Yves Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear line by printing a tee with the slogan, “Ain’t Laurent Without Yves.” The T-shirts enraged Slimane, who pulled Saint Laurent’s collections from colette after the Parisian concept store sold the parody tees (an anecdote that’s even more amusing now that colette has closed and its space is being occupied by—you guessed it—Saint Laurent). Hellier, meanwhile, found herself staring down the barrel of a lawsuit from Saint Laurent’s lawyers, who claimed her products were guilty of “trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false designation of origin, and unfair competition.”

You’ll still stumble across the occasional meme tee every now and then, but for the most part, the trend is (finally, mercifully) dead—lowered into the hype graveyard, right next to Been Trill and Hood By Air. It’s easy to look at designer parody tees as an embarrassing footnote in fashion history, but they were actually the first steps in the industry’s ongoing obsession with irony. Today, Gucci is putting “Guccy” on the runway, and Fendi is riffing on the FILA logo with pieces designed by Instagram artist @hey_reilly.

For fashion houses, the craze is a grab for eyeballs, a frantic battle to try and excite the Instagram generation, but for streetwear, a genre that’s built on appropriation, the obsession with logo flips poses an interesting conundrum. Streetwear is all about cultural sampling, and brands have built empires off the back of logo flips and unofficial homages—just take a look at the Instagram account @supreme_copies for proof. Now, when streetwear is the norm and Supreme has been valued at $1 billion, we’ve found ourselves in a giant paradox where a genre built on cultural sampling has become the prime target for counterfeiters, bootleggers, and fast fashion knockoffs. A phony version of Supreme has even been doing business in Italy, complete with its own flagship store. Italian authorities recently confirmed they had seized 120,000 counterfeit Supreme products.

That doesn’t mean fashion has lost its taste for knockoffs, though. Gucci has not only printed its own luxe versions of black market logo tees, it’s legitimized the operations of legendary bootleg tailor Dapper Dan, and even ran “real bootlegs” of its own logo on the runway. This past New York Fashion Week, Diesel went one step further, and produced its own parody “Deisel” pop-up shop on Canal Street, the city’s mecca for counterfeit goods. Streetwear’s cultural eclecticism and appropriation are a big part of what makes it so fascinating, but what exactly is the legal status of all of this bootlegging? Perhaps a lawyer would know.

Words Alec Leach Photography Thomas Welch

202

Julie Zerbo started The Fashion Law in 2011 while she was in law school. She’s been a ballet dancer and an economics major in previous lives, but now she’s an expert on intellectual property—the legal driving force behind so much of the fashion industry. She’s an expert resource for journalists, but also a voice who’s unafraid to call out bullshit when she sees it—whether it’s brands using shady labor practices, or Instagrammers not properly disclosing when a post has been paid for. Zerbo lays down the law around the legal grey area that streetwear occupies.

203

Streetwear as we know it is based on appropriation—people flipping recognizable logos and motifs.

Where does the law stand on that kind of thing? At what stage does a T-shirt rip become a legal problem?

It really just depends on the extent of the use of another party’s trademark. Trademark law basically says you can’t put, like, the word “Gucci” on your shirt and sell it. You know, ‘cause people might think that it’s actually coming from Gucci.

At least in the United States, the laws can be tricky. As we saw a few years ago, there’s a big thing with brands using others’ logos and then saying, “Oh but it’s a parody.” And courts are really split on that: What is a parody as opposed to a trademark infringement? There isn’t a bright line answer other than that you can’t use another brand’s name or logo without authorization in a way that might confuse consumers, which is why, in the case of VETEMENTS, they licensed the DHL name and logo. If they hadn’t, that would have been a very easy trademark infringement win for DHL. Before the last few years, when luxury brands really started talking about “streetwear” and putting it on the runway, it was something that high fashion brands didn’t want to be associated with, which is why the references oftentimes did (and still do) go uncredited. Kind of like when the Gucci/Dapper Dan thing first happened. In some ways, it is kind of like how brands spend a ton of money to ward off low quality Chinese counterfeits. It’s very much about protecting their image, the hundreds of years, and hundreds of millions of dollars that they have paid to establish their names and logos within the luxury sector. It’s delicate.

In Supremacist, Al Shapiro’s book about Supreme, he speculates that the reason Supreme gets away with constantly flipping logos is that everything’s produced as a limited-edition. If they want to do a T-shirt, say, with a salt manufacturer’s logo, then because it’s such a small product run, by the time they get the cease and desist, everything’s sold out anyway.

I think there’s merit to that argument, but the company could still sue. Supreme has records on how many products were made bearing Morton Salt’s trademark or copyright-protected image, and then the company could say, even if you did sell all of them, we want you to pay us all the profits that you made.

How do retailers like ZARA and Topshop get away with taking ideas straight off luxury brands’ runway shows?

There’s a few answers, but the first is that ideas aren’t really protectable by law. Copyright law protects the actual, tangible expression of ideas. So if you have an idea to make a dress with a specific print, the law may protect aspects of the actual piece that you see on the runway, but it doesn’t protect the general idea.

Copyright law also doesn’t protect useful articles because it doesn’t want to grant a monopoly on things that are useful. Let’s say you come up with an original floral print and you put it on a dress. That print is protectable but no other aspect of the dress is because dresses are inherently useful.

Let’s say you come up with an original sleeve design. Under copyright law in the United States, because more or less everything that you use to cover your body is considered to be useful, you can only protect that original creative element of the shirt: the sleeve. So that’s why companies like ZARA, Forever 21, and H&M have been enormously successful. Yes, we hear about lawsuits involving those companies but considering the pure volume of garments and accessories that these brands sell, there are very few lawsuits. And the cases that we do see tend to be ones that involve specific elements like a T-shirt graphic or a trademark-protected name or logo, because those are protectable.

Brands can easily create a sweatshirt that looks and feels a lot like Gucci but doesn’t actually use the Gucci name or the Gucci logo, and that would be perfectly legal. Companies like H&M and ZARA, for instance, have gotten really good at taking specific trends from the runway, changing them just enough so that they’re not illegal, and selling them.

204

Streetwear as we know it is based on appropriation—people flipping recognizable logos and motifs.

Where does the law stand on that kind of thing? At what stage does a T-shirt rip become a legal problem?

It really just depends on the extent of the use of another party’s trademark. Trademark law basically says you can’t put, like, the word “Gucci” on your shirt and sell it. You know, ‘cause people might think that it’s actually coming from Gucci.

At least in the United States, the laws can be tricky. As we saw a few years ago, there’s a big thing with brands using others’ logos and then saying, “Oh but it’s a parody.” And courts are really split on that: What is a parody as opposed to a trademark infringement? There isn’t a bright line answer other than that you can’t use another brand’s name or logo without authorization in a way that might confuse consumers, which is why, in the case of VETEMENTS, they licensed the DHL name and logo. If they hadn’t, that would have been a very easy trademark infringement win for DHL. Before the last few years, when luxury brands really started talking about “streetwear” and putting it on the runway, it was something that high fashion brands didn’t want to be associated with, which is why the references oftentimes did (and still do) go uncredited. Kind of like when the Gucci/Dapper Dan thing first happened. In some ways, it is kind of like how brands spend a ton of money to ward off low quality Chinese counterfeits. It’s very much about protecting their image, the hundreds of years, and hundreds of millions of dollars that they have paid to establish their names and logos within the luxury sector. It’s delicate.

In Supremacist, Al Shapiro’s book about Supreme, he speculates that the reason Supreme gets away with constantly flipping logos is that everything’s produced as a limited-edition. If they want to do a T-shirt, say, with a salt manufacturer’s logo, then because it’s such a small product run, by the time they get the cease and desist, everything’s sold out anyway.

I think there’s merit to that argument, but the company could still sue. Supreme has records on how many products were made bearing Morton Salt’s trademark or copyright-protected image, and then the company could say, even if you did sell all of them, we want you to pay us all the profits that you made.

How do retailers like ZARA and Topshop get away with taking ideas straight off luxury brands’ runway shows?

There’s a few answers, but the first is that ideas aren’t really protectable by law. Copyright law protects the actual, tangible expression of ideas. So if you have an idea to make a dress with a specific print, the law may protect aspects of the actual piece that you see on the runway, but it doesn’t protect the general idea.

Copyright law also doesn’t protect useful articles because it doesn’t want to grant a monopoly on things that are useful. Let’s say you come up with an original floral print and you put it on a dress. That print is protectable but no other aspect of the dress is because dresses are inherently useful.

Let’s say you come up with an original sleeve design. Under copyright law in the United States, because more or less everything that you use to cover your body is considered to be useful, you can only protect that original creative element of the shirt: the sleeve. So that’s why companies like ZARA, Forever 21, and H&M have been enormously successful. Yes, we hear about lawsuits involving those companies but considering the pure volume of garments and accessories that these brands sell, there are very few lawsuits. And the cases that we do see tend to be ones that involve specific elements like a T-shirt graphic or a trademark-protected name or logo, because those are protectable.

Brands can easily create a sweatshirt that looks and feels a lot like Gucci but doesn’t actually use the Gucci name or the Gucci logo, and that would be perfectly legal. Companies like H&M and ZARA, for instance, have gotten really good at taking specific trends from the runway, changing them just enough so that they’re not illegal, and selling them.

204

Just down the road from where I live in Berlin there’s this shop that sells shoes identical to Nikes, but without the Swoosh on them.

Yeah, so obviously they know. They have someone telling them that if they use that logo, the shoe becomes a trademark-infringing shoe or more likely, a counterfeit shoe. And to be frank, something like the Air Force 1 is so iconic that it might be protected by trade dress law, which essentially says that the design of a product is so iconic that if consumers see it, even without the brand’s name on it, they’ll know where it came from. But that’s a hard level of protection to achieve.

It’s funny you should say that, because the sneaker industry is filled with brands that make a really expensive version of an Air Force 1 or a Vans Slip-On. My mum would think they’re the same shoe, but they’re five times the price.

Yeah. There is a chance that the numbers of products that are actually so small that it just might not be worth Nike or adidas’s time. Litigation is expensive. The Céline [Air Force 1-like silhouette] from awhile ago, and also the recent VETEMENTS “Stan Smith,” are pretty problematic. But in terms of gauging whether or not something is actually infringing, there are a bunch of things to consider. One is, are they similar in price? If one is so much more expensive than the other, there’s a good chance consumers won’t be confused as to the source of the “copied” product.

The big question is whether or not people are going to be confused. Are people going to think that this is actually a Nike sneaker? Are they going to think that this is a collaboration with Nike, that Nike in some way endorsed or is allowing this shoe to be made? Wildly different price points might make it so that people won’t be confused. Obviously, the absence of a logo on the Common Projects one is a very big deal because even though they don’t look identical, if Common Projects were to put the Swoosh on its shoe, it would automatically be illegal. If it’s truly a one-off or just a few-off, then Nike and adidas have bigger fish to fry.

I mean adidas is busy suing no shortage of brands, so they’re a little bit busy.

So adidas is an especially litigious brand?

Yes, adidas is very litigious. They have sued Juicy Couture, they’ve sued Forever 21, they’ve taken action against FC Barcelona. They’ve tried to invalidate a trademark from Tesla. Almost anything with three stripes on it, whether it’s fashion or sportswear or apparel related, adidas has probably taken action in some way or other.

Is it true that as long as you can prove that there’s 10 things that are different about a product, then it’s okay?

That’s absolutely not true. I hear that one a lot. People bring it up all the time. I don’t know where it came from, but it is categorically incorrect. Nowhere in the law does it say, “Yeah just change 10 things.” It’s all a bit more complicated than that.

We’ve talked about the gray area between homage products and parodies, but when it comes to straightup counterfeiting, how the hell did a fake version of Supreme manage to be doing business inside the EU? Supreme has stores in London and Paris, which are inside the EU. How would a brand in Italy go about completely operating its own fake store?

I think it’s not a matter of whether or not this was legal or not—it’s very clearly illegal (whether the founders of Supreme Italia acknowledge that or not), James Jebbia (by way of his CHAPTER 4 CORP.) has rights in various Supreme trademarks, including the red box logo, regardless of whether he has trademark registrations or not. You do not need a trademark registration in order to claim trademark rights, that’s not how trademark law works in most of the world.

As long as you are using the mark and consumers identify that mark with your brand—as consumers do when they see the red box logo—then you have rights. There’s a chance that Supreme (the real Supreme) just didn’t know about Supreme Italia and that’s how a lot of counterfeiting operations exist for so long, because it is a brick and mortar store. Where in Italy is it?

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I think it’s in Barletta. Real far in the south.

Okay, so there’s a very real chance that Supreme just didn’t know about it.

Do you know PYREX Vision? It was Virgil Abloh’s brand before he started OFF-WHITE. Yes I do.

There’s another knockoff brand called PYREX Original in Italy as well. I ran across their booth at Pitti Uomo a few seasons ago, and they have basically taken everything that Virgil Abloh designed under PYREX Vision and rebranded it.

Oh, they’re bold.

I was speaking to the guy at the booth and straight off the bat he was like: “Oh, we own the copyright now.” I’m assuming Virgil Abloh never copyrighted PYREX Vision when he was doing it, because he was doing the brand for such a short amount of time.

This is probably just a matter of Abloh and his legal team focusing on OFF-WHITE and not PYREX Vision. It turns out, PYREX Original does actually have a trademark registration in the EU and in the U.S based on that foreign registration. Considering that Abloh did not oppose the foreign PYREX trademarks, I’m guessing that he is not interested. It would be wildly hypocritical for him to try to sue since he did not even come up with the PYREX name, which is the name of a kitchenware brand.

I suppose to many people, counterfeiting is pretty innocent, but it’s really tied up with a lot of extremely shady labor practices, isn’t it?

Time and time again, there have been studies and reports that show that counterfeit T-shirts and shoes are tied to criminal organizations, or are in some cases funding organized crime, and things like that. So in that way, it’s not something that should be taken lightly, and at the same time there’s a lot of questionable labor practices that go into it. When it comes to labor, though, it doesn’t even have to be counterfeit for there to be supply chain issues. I mean just this past month, 120 or 130 people passed out in a supplier factory in Cambodia for Nike and adidas because there wasn’t enough ventilation in the factory. Granted, adidas isn’t funneling their profits to organized crime like counterfeiters are, the state of manufacturing for garments and accessories is really subpar still in 2018—almost across the board.

When I was growing up in the ’90s, I remember all these stories of sweatshops and labor malpractice. It’s not like I was reading Naomi Klein when I was 13, but the stuff she talks about, her attitude to fashion, is exactly what I remember hearing from my mom and my peers when I was younger. Fashion felt like a real dirty word at that time. Do you think it is?

No. No. I still don’t think it is. I think it’s great. I think it’s beautiful, it’s fun. For me, there’s a reason that I keep choosing to write about this industry. It’s meaningful. It touches so many lives. It’s a powerful disseminator of culture. I think that anyone that says fashion is a dirty word is not considering the whole picture.

It’s hard. You just feel like creating beautiful things shouldn’t be coming at the cost of the world. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Right. They definitely shouldn’t be. I think, right now, we’re in a fortunate situation, because transparency is such a buzzy topic. It is part of the discussion. This is the moment that I’ve been living for, when people actually are showing interest in addressing some of the problematic aspects of the industry. This is a time when we can affect change, and that’s exciting.

207

Just down the road from where I live in Berlin there’s this shop that sells shoes identical to Nikes, but without the Swoosh on them.

Yeah, so obviously they know. They have someone telling them that if they use that logo, the shoe becomes a trademark-infringing shoe or more likely, a counterfeit shoe. And to be frank, something like the Air Force 1 is so iconic that it might be protected by trade dress law, which essentially says that the design of a product is so iconic that if consumers see it, even without the brand’s name on it, they’ll know where it came from. But that’s a hard level of protection to achieve.

It’s funny you should say that, because the sneaker industry is filled with brands that make a really expensive version of an Air Force 1 or a Vans Slip-On. My mum would think they’re the same shoe, but they’re five times the price.

Yeah. There is a chance that the numbers of products that are actually so small that it just might not be worth Nike or adidas’s time. Litigation is expensive. The Céline [Air Force 1-like silhouette] from awhile ago, and also the recent VETEMENTS “Stan Smith,” are pretty problematic. But in terms of gauging whether or not something is actually infringing, there are a bunch of things to consider. One is, are they similar in price? If one is so much more expensive than the other, there’s a good chance consumers won’t be confused as to the source of the “copied” product.

The big question is whether or not people are going to be confused. Are people going to think that this is actually a Nike sneaker? Are they going to think that this is a collaboration with Nike, that Nike in some way endorsed or is allowing this shoe to be made? Wildly different price points might make it so that people won’t be confused. Obviously, the absence of a logo on the Common Projects one is a very big deal because even though they don’t look identical, if Common Projects were to put the Swoosh on its shoe, it would automatically be illegal. If it’s truly a one-off or just a few-off, then Nike and adidas have bigger fish to fry.

I mean adidas is busy suing no shortage of brands, so they’re a little bit busy.

So adidas is an especially litigious brand?

Yes, adidas is very litigious. They have sued Juicy Couture, they’ve sued Forever 21, they’ve taken action against FC Barcelona. They’ve tried to invalidate a trademark from Tesla. Almost anything with three stripes on it, whether it’s fashion or sportswear or apparel related, adidas has probably taken action in some way or other.

Is it true that as long as you can prove that there’s 10 things that are different about a product, then it’s okay?

That’s absolutely not true. I hear that one a lot. People bring it up all the time. I don’t know where it came from, but it is categorically incorrect. Nowhere in the law does it say, “Yeah just change 10 things.” It’s all a bit more complicated than that.

We’ve talked about the gray area between homage products and parodies, but when it comes to straightup counterfeiting, how the hell did a fake version of Supreme manage to be doing business inside the EU? Supreme has stores in London and Paris, which are inside the EU. How would a brand in Italy go about completely operating its own fake store?

I think it’s not a matter of whether or not this was legal or not—it’s very clearly illegal (whether the founders of Supreme Italia acknowledge that or not), James Jebbia (by way of his CHAPTER 4 CORP.) has rights in various Supreme trademarks, including the red box logo, regardless of whether he has trademark registrations or not. You do not need a trademark registration in order to claim trademark rights, that’s not how trademark law works in most of the world.

As long as you are using the mark and consumers identify that mark with your brand—as consumers do when they see the red box logo—then you have rights. There’s a chance that Supreme (the real Supreme) just didn’t know about Supreme Italia and that’s how a lot of counterfeiting operations exist for so long, because it is a brick and mortar store. Where in Italy is it?

206

I think it’s in Barletta. Real far in the south.

Okay, so there’s a very real chance that Supreme just didn’t know about it.

Do you know PYREX Vision? It was Virgil Abloh’s brand before he started OFF-WHITE. Yes I do.

There’s another knockoff brand called PYREX Original in Italy as well. I ran across their booth at Pitti Uomo a few seasons ago, and they have basically taken everything that Virgil Abloh designed under PYREX Vision and rebranded it.

Oh, they’re bold.

I was speaking to the guy at the booth and straight off the bat he was like: “Oh, we own the copyright now.” I’m assuming Virgil Abloh never copyrighted PYREX Vision when he was doing it, because he was doing the brand for such a short amount of time.

This is probably just a matter of Abloh and his legal team focusing on OFF-WHITE and not PYREX Vision. It turns out, PYREX Original does actually have a trademark registration in the EU and in the U.S based on that foreign registration. Considering that Abloh did not oppose the foreign PYREX trademarks, I’m guessing that he is not interested. It would be wildly hypocritical for him to try to sue since he did not even come up with the PYREX name, which is the name of a kitchenware brand.

I suppose to many people, counterfeiting is pretty innocent, but it’s really tied up with a lot of extremely shady labor practices, isn’t it?

Time and time again, there have been studies and reports that show that counterfeit T-shirts and shoes are tied to criminal organizations, or are in some cases funding organized crime, and things like that. So in that way, it’s not something that should be taken lightly, and at the same time there’s a lot of questionable labor practices that go into it. When it comes to labor, though, it doesn’t even have to be counterfeit for there to be supply chain issues. I mean just this past month, 120 or 130 people passed out in a supplier factory in Cambodia for Nike and adidas because there wasn’t enough ventilation in the factory. Granted, adidas isn’t funneling their profits to organized crime like counterfeiters are, the state of manufacturing for garments and accessories is really subpar still in 2018—almost across the board.

When I was growing up in the ’90s, I remember all these stories of sweatshops and labor malpractice. It’s not like I was reading Naomi Klein when I was 13, but the stuff she talks about, her attitude to fashion, is exactly what I remember hearing from my mom and my peers when I was younger. Fashion felt like a real dirty word at that time. Do you think it is?

No. No. I still don’t think it is. I think it’s great. I think it’s beautiful, it’s fun. For me, there’s a reason that I keep choosing to write about this industry. It’s meaningful. It touches so many lives. It’s a powerful disseminator of culture. I think that anyone that says fashion is a dirty word is not considering the whole picture.

It’s hard. You just feel like creating beautiful things shouldn’t be coming at the cost of the world. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Right. They definitely shouldn’t be. I think, right now, we’re in a fortunate situation, because transparency is such a buzzy topic. It is part of the discussion. This is the moment that I’ve been living for, when people actually are showing interest in addressing some of the problematic aspects of the industry. This is a time when we can affect change, and that’s exciting.

207

You’ve written a lot about the legal implications of influencer marketing, where people aren’t fully disclosing when a post has been paid for or not. But to a lot of people, that doesn’t really seem like much of a big deal.

Yeah, it’s not a big deal to most people. For me this is significant because it’s a consumer rights issue.

Whether or not you care if a post is sponsored is beside the point. What is really relevant is that the law requires that consumers, whether they want to know or not, be given all of the information that they need when they’re viewing something that’s been paid for. And that extends to Instagram. This is something that is observed across the board. Just because the laws, as they always have, have taken a little bit of time to catch up to technological advances, like Instagram, that does not mean that consumers should be deprived of information. So for me this is a much bigger issue than just someone posting #ad or not on Instagram.

Do you think, compared to the ’90s, that the fashion industry is improving?

Yes and no. Nowadays, I personally have quite high expectations for how brands should be managing their supply chains, for example. In that way, I think things might not be that much better. One of the big examples that everybody tends to know about is the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh a few years ago, where over 1,100 people died because this building, which housed a handful of garment factories, was structurally unsafe.

For me, the thing that’s most upsetting is that there are so many women and girls, and young boys, too, that are ensnared in this manufacturing sector, where they are really presented with the worst of both worlds.

They’re either given “financial freedom” by having this job, or they’re in a potentially even worse situation.

And the global manufacturing sector comes with really serious concerns, like consistent exposure to emotional and sexual harassment, which we love to talk about in connection with Hollywood and is something that is virtually ignored in terms of garment manufacturing. So many of the clothes that we’re wearing, whether it be from mainstream brands or even some of the higher-end ones, they’re not in any way removed from this.

What about those women’s rights, too?

How do you think we can move forward on that?

There is a really boring answer, and that’s where brands need to really revamp their codes of conduct for each country in which they’re operating. They should demand and practice more oversight into the factories that they’re using to ensure that subcontractors are not being used, that women and girls are not working from their homes undocumented, without any of the employment regulations that we would otherwise expect from people working in factories.

I was just reading the other day that to pay a living wage to an Indian garment manufacturing laborer would cost 10 or 20 cents more per shirt. So, these are doable things. Part of it is, if brands were to step in more, they would take on a lot more liability legally, and that’s just not very attractive.

A lot of these steps have to be taken by brands, but consumers can lobby, whether it’s on Twitter or in terms of spending, to make brands aware of their values, and let them know that they don’t want garments and accessories that were made in sweatshop conditions. I think that, honestly, we’re quite far away from that, though, because people buy what they can afford, and right now, the prices in fashion are so drastic. It’s like, if you can’t afford Gucci, you buy ZARA or H&M. There are not as many brands operating in that in-between space anymore.

Global supply chains are so complicated now, and a lot of people don’t actually know where everything is coming from. If you buy a roll of denim, you don’t always know exactly where the yarn’s been made.

Being more responsible about your supply chain is really, really difficult, and it’s really expensive. I’m not trying to minimize that, by any means. But, do I think that’s truly doable by H&M and ZARA? Yes, I really, truly do.

209

You’ve written a lot about the legal implications of influencer marketing, where people aren’t fully disclosing when a post has been paid for or not. But to a lot of people, that doesn’t really seem like much of a big deal.

Yeah, it’s not a big deal to most people. For me this is significant because it’s a consumer rights issue.

Whether or not you care if a post is sponsored is beside the point. What is really relevant is that the law requires that consumers, whether they want to know or not, be given all of the information that they need when they’re viewing something that’s been paid for. And that extends to Instagram. This is something that is observed across the board. Just because the laws, as they always have, have taken a little bit of time to catch up to technological advances, like Instagram, that does not mean that consumers should be deprived of information. So for me this is a much bigger issue than just someone posting #ad or not on Instagram.

Do you think, compared to the ’90s, that the fashion industry is improving?

Yes and no. Nowadays, I personally have quite high expectations for how brands should be managing their supply chains, for example. In that way, I think things might not be that much better. One of the big examples that everybody tends to know about is the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh a few years ago, where over 1,100 people died because this building, which housed a handful of garment factories, was structurally unsafe.

For me, the thing that’s most upsetting is that there are so many women and girls, and young boys, too, that are ensnared in this manufacturing sector, where they are really presented with the worst of both worlds.

They’re either given “financial freedom” by having this job, or they’re in a potentially even worse situation.

And the global manufacturing sector comes with really serious concerns, like consistent exposure to emotional and sexual harassment, which we love to talk about in connection with Hollywood and is something that is virtually ignored in terms of garment manufacturing. So many of the clothes that we’re wearing, whether it be from mainstream brands or even some of the higher-end ones, they’re not in any way removed from this.

What about those women’s rights, too?

How do you think we can move forward on that?

There is a really boring answer, and that’s where brands need to really revamp their codes of conduct for each country in which they’re operating. They should demand and practice more oversight into the factories that they’re using to ensure that subcontractors are not being used, that women and girls are not working from their homes undocumented, without any of the employment regulations that we would otherwise expect from people working in factories.

I was just reading the other day that to pay a living wage to an Indian garment manufacturing laborer would cost 10 or 20 cents more per shirt. So, these are doable things. Part of it is, if brands were to step in more, they would take on a lot more liability legally, and that’s just not very attractive.

A lot of these steps have to be taken by brands, but consumers can lobby, whether it’s on Twitter or in terms of spending, to make brands aware of their values, and let them know that they don’t want garments and accessories that were made in sweatshop conditions. I think that, honestly, we’re quite far away from that, though, because people buy what they can afford, and right now, the prices in fashion are so drastic. It’s like, if you can’t afford Gucci, you buy ZARA or H&M. There are not as many brands operating in that in-between space anymore.

Global supply chains are so complicated now, and a lot of people don’t actually know where everything is coming from. If you buy a roll of denim, you don’t always know exactly where the yarn’s been made.

Being more responsible about your supply chain is really, really difficult, and it’s really expensive. I’m not trying to minimize that, by any means. But, do I think that’s truly doable by H&M and ZARA? Yes, I really, truly do.

209

Diversity Photography Florian Renner Styling Atip W Hair Elvire Roux @ Carol Hayes using EVO Hair Make-up Aga Dobosz @ Carol Hayes using MAC Cosmetics Photography Assistant Laura Zepp Models Tarun @ Elite, Sarah M @ PRM, Djibrill & Clement @ Wilhelmina, George @ Next, Suzie @ Bookings, Oscar @ NEVS Models & Hamda @ The Squad

Diversity Photography Florian Renner Styling Atip W Hair Elvire Roux @ Carol Hayes using EVO Hair Make-up Aga Dobosz @ Carol Hayes using MAC Cosmetics Photography Assistant Laura Zepp Models Tarun @ Elite, Sarah M @ PRM, Djibrill & Clement @ Wilhelmina, George @ Next, Suzie @ Bookings, Oscar @ NEVS Models & Hamda @ The Squad

VEST ÉTUDES STUDIO,

COAT SSS WORLD CORP, JEANS G-STAR

TOP IVY PARK, JACKET MARTIN ASBJØRN, TRACK PANTS HAAL, SHOES AXEL ARIGATO

VEST ÉTUDES STUDIO,

COAT SSS WORLD CORP, JEANS G-STAR

TOP IVY PARK, JACKET MARTIN ASBJØRN, TRACK PANTS HAAL, SHOES AXEL ARIGATO

SWEATER P.E. NATION, JACKET FAUSTINE STEINMETZ, BOOTS DR MARTENS

ALL LANVIN

SWEATER P.E. NATION, JACKET FAUSTINE STEINMETZ, BOOTS DR MARTENS

ALL LANVIN

VEST & BASEBALL SHIRT SSS WORLD CORP, BIKER JACKET SOULLAND, TROUSERS JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN

SWEATSHIRT KORAL, DENIM JACKET ZADIG & VOLTAIRE, DUNGAREES G-STAR, SHOES GEORGE COX

VEST & BASEBALL SHIRT SSS WORLD CORP, BIKER JACKET SOULLAND, TROUSERS JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN

SWEATSHIRT KORAL, DENIM JACKET ZADIG & VOLTAIRE, DUNGAREES G-STAR, SHOES GEORGE COX

POLO SHIRT LACOSTE LIVE, BOILER SUIT FACETASM, SHOES LANVIN

HOODED SHIRT & COAT JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, TRACKSUIT GOLDEN GOOSE

POLO SHIRT LACOSTE LIVE, BOILER SUIT FACETASM, SHOES LANVIN

HOODED SHIRT & COAT JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, TRACKSUIT GOLDEN GOOSE

Kelela has made a career out of haunting, ambient soundscapes and a lyrical rawness that shines on her debut album, Take Me Apart. Her career is a case study in modern self-actualization and the importance of measuring success on your own timeline.

For most people, the path to success is not a straight line— it’s a circuitous trail punctuated by roadblocks and alternate routes. Often on social media platforms like Instagram, we’re saturated with images and dispatches from artists who “make it” in an astonishingly short time. It can create a toxic environment for aspiring creatives who feel like if they haven’t broken through in a couple of years, it probably means they never will.

Piecing It Together Kelela Words Jian DeLeon Photography Bryan Luna Styling Corey Stokes Hair Virginia Moreira Make-up Raisa Flowers Lighting & Photo Tech Jessup Deane Styling Assistants Krystal Benson & James McCollum Assistants Noah Roberts, Iman Bokhari & Josh Sobel

Kelela meets me at The Beekman Hotel in New York. Clad in a slim white turtleneck and track pants, her signature beaded braids falling in her face, she pushes some arugula around her plate before she realizes I’m the one interviewing her. It’s the second time I have seen her this week, which happens to be New York Fashion Week: Men’s.

The first time was during the debut fashion show of New York menswear label, Abasi Rosborough, designed by Greg Rosborough and Abdul Abasi. It’s a very promising label whose designers previously worked for RLX (Ralph Lauren’s performance-oriented ski line) and cult Japanese-American menswear label Engineered Garments. For their debut show, the design duo tapped heavy metal guitarist Tosin Abasi (Abdul’s brother) and Kelela to compose a song for the runway.

It brought back memories of Washington, D.C.—where the Abasi brothers, Kelela, and I grew up and experienced most of our formative early 20s. Before the mononym, she was Kelela Mizanekristos, a second-generation Ethiopian immigrant from the nearby suburbs of Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she discovered artists through her mom’s record collection. She was especially fond of Tracy Chapman, Janet Jackson, and Amel Larrieux.

She got into experimental jazz later in life, at 19, through an exboyfriend, flirting with D.C.’s thriving jazz scene in the process.

The District boasts some of the country’s best jazz clubs like Blues Alley in Georgetown and Twins Jazz in the U St. Corridor.

In the mid-2000s she began dipping her toe into open mic nights at Cafe Nema.

A few years later she met Tosin Abasi, and the two began dating. We all were involved in the city’s small-yet-bustling creative scene of artists, musicians, and dilettantes with government day jobs. The two stood out because they both had an inimitable sense of style, and a galvanic chemistry that not only characterized their relationship, but the music they made together. Abasi composed complicated, metal-inspired riffs on a classical guitar that Kelela improvised melodies to—which would become a signature part of her creative process. It toed the line between jazz, progressive rock, folk, and R&B. I was part of a four-person music blog that filmed some of their early performances at smaller venues and neighborhood coffee shops. To say it was easy to tell from those moments that Kelela would blow up would be a huge disservice to her hustle and her journey.

The interesting thing about Washington, D.C.’s culture is that despite its predominantly black population, its ’80s hardcore punk and post-punk heyday, and the success of newer artists like Goldlink, its cultural arbiters remain overwhelmingly white, and its nightlife scene remains almost exclusively divided by race.

It’s a sentiment Kelela remembers all too well.

“Indie culture in D.C. was so stifling because it was so white,” she says. “I struggled. Not because I didn’t dig anything in it, just because it didn’t consider me.”

That feeling of “otherness” and disenfranchisement is shared by children of immigrants trying to succeed in that kind of paradigm. On the one hand, there’s a desire to assimilate and be accepted, but on the other, there’s the idea that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice who you are in order to be taken legitimately.

“I think I first needed to feel really shitty about where I was and hate it,” Kelela admits.

SPORTS BRA NIKE, SHIRT MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, EARRING HELMUT LANG

220

221

Kelela has made a career out of haunting, ambient soundscapes and a lyrical rawness that shines on her debut album, Take Me Apart. Her career is a case study in modern self-actualization and the importance of measuring success on your own timeline.

For most people, the path to success is not a straight line— it’s a circuitous trail punctuated by roadblocks and alternate routes. Often on social media platforms like Instagram, we’re saturated with images and dispatches from artists who “make it” in an astonishingly short time. It can create a toxic environment for aspiring creatives who feel like if they haven’t broken through in a couple of years, it probably means they never will.

Piecing It Together Kelela Words Jian DeLeon Photography Bryan Luna Styling Corey Stokes Hair Virginia Moreira Make-up Raisa Flowers Lighting & Photo Tech Jessup Deane Styling Assistants Krystal Benson & James McCollum Assistants Noah Roberts, Iman Bokhari & Josh Sobel

Kelela meets me at The Beekman Hotel in New York. Clad in a slim white turtleneck and track pants, her signature beaded braids falling in her face, she pushes some arugula around her plate before she realizes I’m the one interviewing her. It’s the second time I have seen her this week, which happens to be New York Fashion Week: Men’s.

The first time was during the debut fashion show of New York menswear label, Abasi Rosborough, designed by Greg Rosborough and Abdul Abasi. It’s a very promising label whose designers previously worked for RLX (Ralph Lauren’s performance-oriented ski line) and cult Japanese-American menswear label Engineered Garments. For their debut show, the design duo tapped heavy metal guitarist Tosin Abasi (Abdul’s brother) and Kelela to compose a song for the runway.

It brought back memories of Washington, D.C.—where the Abasi brothers, Kelela, and I grew up and experienced most of our formative early 20s. Before the mononym, she was Kelela Mizanekristos, a second-generation Ethiopian immigrant from the nearby suburbs of Gaithersburg, Maryland, where she discovered artists through her mom’s record collection. She was especially fond of Tracy Chapman, Janet Jackson, and Amel Larrieux.

She got into experimental jazz later in life, at 19, through an exboyfriend, flirting with D.C.’s thriving jazz scene in the process.

The District boasts some of the country’s best jazz clubs like Blues Alley in Georgetown and Twins Jazz in the U St. Corridor.

In the mid-2000s she began dipping her toe into open mic nights at Cafe Nema.

A few years later she met Tosin Abasi, and the two began dating. We all were involved in the city’s small-yet-bustling creative scene of artists, musicians, and dilettantes with government day jobs. The two stood out because they both had an inimitable sense of style, and a galvanic chemistry that not only characterized their relationship, but the music they made together. Abasi composed complicated, metal-inspired riffs on a classical guitar that Kelela improvised melodies to—which would become a signature part of her creative process. It toed the line between jazz, progressive rock, folk, and R&B. I was part of a four-person music blog that filmed some of their early performances at smaller venues and neighborhood coffee shops. To say it was easy to tell from those moments that Kelela would blow up would be a huge disservice to her hustle and her journey.

The interesting thing about Washington, D.C.’s culture is that despite its predominantly black population, its ’80s hardcore punk and post-punk heyday, and the success of newer artists like Goldlink, its cultural arbiters remain overwhelmingly white, and its nightlife scene remains almost exclusively divided by race.

It’s a sentiment Kelela remembers all too well.

“Indie culture in D.C. was so stifling because it was so white,” she says. “I struggled. Not because I didn’t dig anything in it, just because it didn’t consider me.”

That feeling of “otherness” and disenfranchisement is shared by children of immigrants trying to succeed in that kind of paradigm. On the one hand, there’s a desire to assimilate and be accepted, but on the other, there’s the idea that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice who you are in order to be taken legitimately.

“I think I first needed to feel really shitty about where I was and hate it,” Kelela admits.

SPORTS BRA NIKE, SHIRT MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, EARRING HELMUT LANG

220

221

If anything, being in that environment was an inspiration for her gestation period. If Kelela had stayed on the East Coast any longer, she imagines the best-case scenario being a future where she’d have a frustrating day-to-day life, and ultimately be the kind of overbearing stage mom trying to live vicariously through her children. That feeling gave her the motivation to head to LA. It wasn’t just about working on her music, but herself. An incubation period was necessary to kickstart her self-actualization. So for the next few years, she formed a cocoon from her experiences to figure out how she wanted to evolve.

“It’s less about the dream coming true and being fulfilled in a total sense, and more about having tried my fucking best,” she says.

Kelela relates wholeheartedly to the torturous self-doubt of artists trying to make something of themselves. Most of her experience in the industry is characterized by disillusionment and impostor syndrome—the feeling that despite your talent and accomplishments, maybe one day you’ll be exposed as someone who doesn’t deserve to be in your position. This is especially true for minorities in creative careers, where a lack of visibility and mentors who look like you only reinforce that internalized struggle that you don’t belong in the first place.

Kelela is an antithesis to that mode of thinking, what she describes as a “culture of prodigiousness.” Her career and rise is a visible grind, having dropped her debut mixtape, Cut 4 Me, at age 30.

“It was hard for me to hear how simple and easy it was for so many people. That plagued me for a long time, and it’s still a voice that I have to shut down,” she admits. “It’s a slow process—developing the courage to pursue your dreams. For me, it happened piecemeal, little by little and little by little. I think that’s something that isn’t illuminated so much; it’s not a real common success story.”

Cut 4 Me is slightly reminiscent of those first sessions I witnessed with Kelela and Tosin Abasi—seeing her improvise melodies and lyrics over instrumentation—except this time the tracks were provided by notable producers like Jam City, Bok Bok, and Nguzunguzu. It’s ironic, given that some of the album’s material is directly inspired by the demise of their relationship. The mixtape earned universal acclaim and praise from the likes of Björk and Solange, who would go on to tap Kelela as one of her muses for Calvin Klein’s Spring/Summer 2018 “Our Family” campaign.

Kelela and I talk about jazz, and bring up the term “woodshedding.” Originating in 1930s jazz culture, it refers to a musician retreating into a literal woodshed to perfect her or his craft, allowing ideas to evolve and be perfected. She refers to the practice as being “in the shed,” and credits the method for helping her fully flesh out her sonic identity.

“ It’s less about the dream coming true and being fulfilled in a total sense, and more about having tried my fucking best.”

That self-doubt is exacerbated by the seemingly quick path of many new musicians and artists who happen to catch a prominent cosign early on. There are numerous stories of young people getting their big break on Instagram, or through a chance meeting with an A&R or agent through a family friend. In the age of “industry plants” who start their careers from a position of privilege or nepotism, it can leave complete outsiders feeling discouraged and frustrated about their possibilities.

“Before you go into the shed, you just listen, and you’re grabbing all the things. I think some people just go straight to making from that place, but the shed is really about synthesizing all of those things—and really getting them in to the fabric of what you make,” she says. “All of us, we’re still battling on some level.

There’s what you think you have to do, what people like, what people don’t like—I know I still deal with those voices—but if you go in the shed and you focus inwardly first, it becomes easier to pursue your vision, irrespective of what the world is saying you should do.”

“It’s what kept me feeling small and underneath my experience for so long,” she says. “Feeling like, if you were gonna do it, you would have already done it. And that’s a fucked-up culture.”

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If anything, being in that environment was an inspiration for her gestation period. If Kelela had stayed on the East Coast any longer, she imagines the best-case scenario being a future where she’d have a frustrating day-to-day life, and ultimately be the kind of overbearing stage mom trying to live vicariously through her children. That feeling gave her the motivation to head to LA. It wasn’t just about working on her music, but herself. An incubation period was necessary to kickstart her self-actualization. So for the next few years, she formed a cocoon from her experiences to figure out how she wanted to evolve.

“It’s less about the dream coming true and being fulfilled in a total sense, and more about having tried my fucking best,” she says.

Kelela relates wholeheartedly to the torturous self-doubt of artists trying to make something of themselves. Most of her experience in the industry is characterized by disillusionment and impostor syndrome—the feeling that despite your talent and accomplishments, maybe one day you’ll be exposed as someone who doesn’t deserve to be in your position. This is especially true for minorities in creative careers, where a lack of visibility and mentors who look like you only reinforce that internalized struggle that you don’t belong in the first place.

Kelela is an antithesis to that mode of thinking, what she describes as a “culture of prodigiousness.” Her career and rise is a visible grind, having dropped her debut mixtape, Cut 4 Me, at age 30.

“It was hard for me to hear how simple and easy it was for so many people. That plagued me for a long time, and it’s still a voice that I have to shut down,” she admits. “It’s a slow process—developing the courage to pursue your dreams. For me, it happened piecemeal, little by little and little by little. I think that’s something that isn’t illuminated so much; it’s not a real common success story.”

Cut 4 Me is slightly reminiscent of those first sessions I witnessed with Kelela and Tosin Abasi—seeing her improvise melodies and lyrics over instrumentation—except this time the tracks were provided by notable producers like Jam City, Bok Bok, and Nguzunguzu. It’s ironic, given that some of the album’s material is directly inspired by the demise of their relationship. The mixtape earned universal acclaim and praise from the likes of Björk and Solange, who would go on to tap Kelela as one of her muses for Calvin Klein’s Spring/Summer 2018 “Our Family” campaign.

Kelela and I talk about jazz, and bring up the term “woodshedding.” Originating in 1930s jazz culture, it refers to a musician retreating into a literal woodshed to perfect her or his craft, allowing ideas to evolve and be perfected. She refers to the practice as being “in the shed,” and credits the method for helping her fully flesh out her sonic identity.

“ It’s less about the dream coming true and being fulfilled in a total sense, and more about having tried my fucking best.”

That self-doubt is exacerbated by the seemingly quick path of many new musicians and artists who happen to catch a prominent cosign early on. There are numerous stories of young people getting their big break on Instagram, or through a chance meeting with an A&R or agent through a family friend. In the age of “industry plants” who start their careers from a position of privilege or nepotism, it can leave complete outsiders feeling discouraged and frustrated about their possibilities.

“Before you go into the shed, you just listen, and you’re grabbing all the things. I think some people just go straight to making from that place, but the shed is really about synthesizing all of those things—and really getting them in to the fabric of what you make,” she says. “All of us, we’re still battling on some level.

There’s what you think you have to do, what people like, what people don’t like—I know I still deal with those voices—but if you go in the shed and you focus inwardly first, it becomes easier to pursue your vision, irrespective of what the world is saying you should do.”

“It’s what kept me feeling small and underneath my experience for so long,” she says. “Feeling like, if you were gonna do it, you would have already done it. And that’s a fucked-up culture.”

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As a result, there’s an intent and self-assuredness to her sound that feels more grounded than younger artists. It helps explain the two-year gap between her Hallucinogen EP, a sixtrack narrative about the lifespan of a relationship, which saw her reunite with her former collaborators in addition to revered producers like Arca and Ariel Rechtshaid, and her debut album Take Me Apart. It took Kelela four years to work on the album, but for fans and critics, it was well worth the wait. Take Me Apart is equally an exercise in self-deconstruction and self-exploration.

Its cover, depicting her nude but concealed by a long strand of locs, is a literal interpretation of the artist baring herself and the raw emotion behind the songs.

The 53-minute soundscape transcends genres and portrays Kelela in her out-of-the-shed final form. Her influences are clear, but have been tempered by personal experience and given enough breathing room to coalesce into something truly new.

Kelela has transformed a lifetime of “otherness” into a universe of her own making. The accompanying music video for “LMK” depicts her changing locations and looks several times; in one, she sports a blonde wig and black cutout dress, then a red wig with leather coordinates, and finally her natural hair while clad in all white. While visually striking, it speaks to the multitudes Kelela has had to contain, and on a cerebral level, speaks to the code-switching necessary for minorities to navigate between different social and industry circles. Her visual and aural identities touch on underground and outsider culture, filtered through the lens of a strong, self-confident identity rooted in her black, feminine perspective.

“I feel like so much of my lens comes from the tradition of black people in this country trying to get free,” she says. “People of color throughout the world—and not just black people—have found so much solace and freedom for themselves in the analysis and deconstruction of fuckery in this country.”

An avid reader of James Baldwin, Kelela feels his work in establishing the elaborate dichotomy of race relations in the United States has become an archetype for the rest of the world.

As she’s about to embark on a European leg of her tour, she talks about the rise of neo-Fascism in the West and the domino effect

TOP HELMUT LANG, JACKET & PANTS ACNE STUDIOS, SHOES MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, EARRINGS MARNI & SHINY SQUIRREL, BELT ASHYA

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of Brexit, Trump, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. For her, it isn’t just about idealism, but there are very real considerations people of color have to account for when going abroad—like radical changes in geopolitics. As Baldwin himself said in a 1961 interview, “If you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover, too, the terms with which they are connected to other people.”

She discusses a recent text from a black friend in Milan advising her to be careful when she performs there. He mentions far-right extremist Luca Traini, who shot six Africans during a twohour drive-by in Macerata. After his arrest, police found copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, other Nazi-centric publications, and a Celtic cross in his home. She brings up the fact that in the United Kingdom, there’s a different intricacy to black and white race relations because black people there, for the most part, are not direct descendants of slaves. These heady conversations aren’t just on her mind daily, but in the group chats she shares with her friends—where everyday microaggressions are deconstructed and laughed about in the same breath.

“ W hite supremacy is sort of going on everywhere. White hegemony, whatever you want to call it. That shit requires an African-American lens. That pair of glasses is the only one that gets underneath the surface.”

“The framework of race, and the framework of understanding difference and social justice that comes specifically from black people in the United States, is a framework that’s useful in the world only because of the level of extremity of white supremacy,” she asserts. “White supremacy is sort of going on everywhere.

White hegemony, whatever you want to call it. That shit requires an African-American lens. That pair of glasses is the only one that gets underneath the surface.”

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As a result, there’s an intent and self-assuredness to her sound that feels more grounded than younger artists. It helps explain the two-year gap between her Hallucinogen EP, a sixtrack narrative about the lifespan of a relationship, which saw her reunite with her former collaborators in addition to revered producers like Arca and Ariel Rechtshaid, and her debut album Take Me Apart. It took Kelela four years to work on the album, but for fans and critics, it was well worth the wait. Take Me Apart is equally an exercise in self-deconstruction and self-exploration.

Its cover, depicting her nude but concealed by a long strand of locs, is a literal interpretation of the artist baring herself and the raw emotion behind the songs.

The 53-minute soundscape transcends genres and portrays Kelela in her out-of-the-shed final form. Her influences are clear, but have been tempered by personal experience and given enough breathing room to coalesce into something truly new.

Kelela has transformed a lifetime of “otherness” into a universe of her own making. The accompanying music video for “LMK” depicts her changing locations and looks several times; in one, she sports a blonde wig and black cutout dress, then a red wig with leather coordinates, and finally her natural hair while clad in all white. While visually striking, it speaks to the multitudes Kelela has had to contain, and on a cerebral level, speaks to the code-switching necessary for minorities to navigate between different social and industry circles. Her visual and aural identities touch on underground and outsider culture, filtered through the lens of a strong, self-confident identity rooted in her black, feminine perspective.

“I feel like so much of my lens comes from the tradition of black people in this country trying to get free,” she says. “People of color throughout the world—and not just black people—have found so much solace and freedom for themselves in the analysis and deconstruction of fuckery in this country.”

An avid reader of James Baldwin, Kelela feels his work in establishing the elaborate dichotomy of race relations in the United States has become an archetype for the rest of the world.

As she’s about to embark on a European leg of her tour, she talks about the rise of neo-Fascism in the West and the domino effect

TOP HELMUT LANG, JACKET & PANTS ACNE STUDIOS, SHOES MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, EARRINGS MARNI & SHINY SQUIRREL, BELT ASHYA

226

of Brexit, Trump, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. For her, it isn’t just about idealism, but there are very real considerations people of color have to account for when going abroad—like radical changes in geopolitics. As Baldwin himself said in a 1961 interview, “If you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover, too, the terms with which they are connected to other people.”

She discusses a recent text from a black friend in Milan advising her to be careful when she performs there. He mentions far-right extremist Luca Traini, who shot six Africans during a twohour drive-by in Macerata. After his arrest, police found copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, other Nazi-centric publications, and a Celtic cross in his home. She brings up the fact that in the United Kingdom, there’s a different intricacy to black and white race relations because black people there, for the most part, are not direct descendants of slaves. These heady conversations aren’t just on her mind daily, but in the group chats she shares with her friends—where everyday microaggressions are deconstructed and laughed about in the same breath.

“ W hite supremacy is sort of going on everywhere. White hegemony, whatever you want to call it. That shit requires an African-American lens. That pair of glasses is the only one that gets underneath the surface.”

“The framework of race, and the framework of understanding difference and social justice that comes specifically from black people in the United States, is a framework that’s useful in the world only because of the level of extremity of white supremacy,” she asserts. “White supremacy is sort of going on everywhere.

White hegemony, whatever you want to call it. That shit requires an African-American lens. That pair of glasses is the only one that gets underneath the surface.”

227

Kelela’s rise coincides with a sentiment of consciousness and awareness about intersectionality, representation, and social justice in the arts and on a global level. Social platforms like Twitter are a hotbed for hashtag-fueled movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, though admittedly a ton of the energy is coming from activists and community leaders largely based in the United States. It’s a zeitgeist that is ushering in a new era of diverse creativity, but she points out it’s occurring at one of the darkest political times. Despite the rave reviews for Take Me Apart and her continuously growing fanbase, she is adamant about using her platform to advocate for her beliefs.

Within the past 50 years, she points out, the fight for social justice and equality has become more visible than ever.

And although there have been great strides, oppression and institutionalized racism won’t go away overnight, let alone in a few years. Resting on the laurels of small victories can be a distraction from the larger struggle.

And Kelela, who once lamented that she didn’t start writing about politics sooner, is seeing the transformative power of her art, realizing that by simply embracing who she is and being in this highly visible position as a lauded creator, paints a portrait of an artist as an uncompromising, headstrong black woman. One who is so fully aware that she deserves the best kind of love that she isn’t afraid to quickly fall in and out of it, and comes out of broken relationships even stronger and more ready to give her energy to the world. It calls to mind a line from Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time: “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

Her words call to mind a recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Titled “An Incomplete History of Protest,” it culls from the museum’s collection of sociallyconscious art from 1940-2017, including works from the antiVietnam War sentiment of the late ’60s, the AIDS awareness of the ’80s, and the Guerilla Girls’ fight for visibility of women in the arts and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. It exhibits pieces by Faith Ringgold and Emma Amos, as well as more modern pieces from Glenn Ligon and Dread Scott, who repurposed the NAACP’s “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” banner to read “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday.”

That in turn is influencing a new generation of children, who see it’s possible to break through without having to compromise your identity. Ironically, we bond over the portrayal of this in the Disney film Zootopia, in which the main character, Lt. Judy Hopps, overcomes adversity in an attempt to become the world’s first bunny police officer. The film’s message is about overcoming stereotypes and preconceptions the world may form about you solely based on your looks, which is fitting given Kelela’s overarching message.

“I guess I just don’t want to lose sight of how much fuckery still exists,” she says. “Punk music was coming up against Thatcher-era policies. Hip-hop was born in that moment before Reagan took power.”

The Whitney puts protest art in a different vein than other creative means of social commentary, adding that some think of protest “with the long term in mind, hoping to create new ways of imagining society and citizenship,” according to the museum’s description of the exhibit. And although it’s hard to deny we are currently witnessing a new renaissance for unabashed artists of color, what Kelela wants to remind everyone is there’s still much work to be done.

“It’s hard for me to call it the ‘Golden Age’ because it don’t feel so gold. But it is triumphant and really important.”

“Kids are growing up not even thinking about those things— it’s just like, that’s the default setting,” she says.

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Kelela’s rise coincides with a sentiment of consciousness and awareness about intersectionality, representation, and social justice in the arts and on a global level. Social platforms like Twitter are a hotbed for hashtag-fueled movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, though admittedly a ton of the energy is coming from activists and community leaders largely based in the United States. It’s a zeitgeist that is ushering in a new era of diverse creativity, but she points out it’s occurring at one of the darkest political times. Despite the rave reviews for Take Me Apart and her continuously growing fanbase, she is adamant about using her platform to advocate for her beliefs.

Within the past 50 years, she points out, the fight for social justice and equality has become more visible than ever.

And although there have been great strides, oppression and institutionalized racism won’t go away overnight, let alone in a few years. Resting on the laurels of small victories can be a distraction from the larger struggle.

And Kelela, who once lamented that she didn’t start writing about politics sooner, is seeing the transformative power of her art, realizing that by simply embracing who she is and being in this highly visible position as a lauded creator, paints a portrait of an artist as an uncompromising, headstrong black woman. One who is so fully aware that she deserves the best kind of love that she isn’t afraid to quickly fall in and out of it, and comes out of broken relationships even stronger and more ready to give her energy to the world. It calls to mind a line from Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time: “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

Her words call to mind a recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Titled “An Incomplete History of Protest,” it culls from the museum’s collection of sociallyconscious art from 1940-2017, including works from the antiVietnam War sentiment of the late ’60s, the AIDS awareness of the ’80s, and the Guerilla Girls’ fight for visibility of women in the arts and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. It exhibits pieces by Faith Ringgold and Emma Amos, as well as more modern pieces from Glenn Ligon and Dread Scott, who repurposed the NAACP’s “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday” banner to read “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday.”

That in turn is influencing a new generation of children, who see it’s possible to break through without having to compromise your identity. Ironically, we bond over the portrayal of this in the Disney film Zootopia, in which the main character, Lt. Judy Hopps, overcomes adversity in an attempt to become the world’s first bunny police officer. The film’s message is about overcoming stereotypes and preconceptions the world may form about you solely based on your looks, which is fitting given Kelela’s overarching message.

“I guess I just don’t want to lose sight of how much fuckery still exists,” she says. “Punk music was coming up against Thatcher-era policies. Hip-hop was born in that moment before Reagan took power.”

The Whitney puts protest art in a different vein than other creative means of social commentary, adding that some think of protest “with the long term in mind, hoping to create new ways of imagining society and citizenship,” according to the museum’s description of the exhibit. And although it’s hard to deny we are currently witnessing a new renaissance for unabashed artists of color, what Kelela wants to remind everyone is there’s still much work to be done.

“It’s hard for me to call it the ‘Golden Age’ because it don’t feel so gold. But it is triumphant and really important.”

“Kids are growing up not even thinking about those things— it’s just like, that’s the default setting,” she says.

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The Boom Years Metro Boomin Words Kyle Hodge

Photography Thomas Welch Styling Jenny Haapala

Make-up Ayaka Nihei using MAC Cosmetics Grooming Troy Hugie

Photography Assistant Bryan Luna

Styling Assistants Rashied Black & Mitchell Burgess

In just a few years, Leland Wayne—better known as Metro Boomin—has become hip-hop’s most in-demand producer, several memes, and ushered in a new sound taking the music to a new level. Besides his innate talent, his work ethic is what got him there.

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The Boom Years Metro Boomin Words Kyle Hodge

Photography Thomas Welch Styling Jenny Haapala

Make-up Ayaka Nihei using MAC Cosmetics Grooming Troy Hugie

Photography Assistant Bryan Luna

Styling Assistants Rashied Black & Mitchell Burgess

In just a few years, Leland Wayne—better known as Metro Boomin—has become hip-hop’s most in-demand producer, several memes, and ushered in a new sound taking the music to a new level. Besides his innate talent, his work ethic is what got him there.

SHIRT HELIOT EMIL, JEWELRY TALENT’S OWN

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Metro Boomin is meticulous about everything—especially his ‘fits. Right now, it’s 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in a small loft in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The sun peeks through the industrial windows during its limited time in the winter sky, albeit the weather is forgiving for an otherwise chilly February. It’s a balmy 55 degrees Fahrenheit outside, compared to New York’s usual 32°F and below. Speaking of shining, the ambient sun rays dance around one particular part of the room—the space where Metro is rummaging through an MCM bag chock-full of jewelry.

Born in St. Louis as Leland Tyler Wayne, the producer got his start in middle school. In seventh grade, he was already expressing his passion for music playing bass guitar in band class. That Christmas, his mom got him a laptop, on which he downloaded the rudimentary music production program FruityLoops after hearing about it from friends. He started messing around with it, aspiring to be a rapper, mostly because of Nelly’s Country Grammar.

“That was one of my first real CDs,” he admits. “It was my first explicit CD. Country Grammar came out, and it just made me want to rap. That simple.”

Metro wanted to rap, but knew he needed beats first. He wasn’t in a position to buy any, so he decided to make his own. As he dived deeper into production, he found out he liked it a lot more than rapping—and it was a less crowded market to compete in, with more aspiring rappers than aspiring producers. Soon, he threw himself fully into hip-hop production, establishing the monster work ethic he’s known for today. In high school, he was making about five beats a day.

“I really couldn’t buy any beats, so I just started trying to make my own,” he says. “I just figured so many people wanted to rap, so I had to choose some other shit.”

Of course, being a teenager telling your mom you want to pursue a career in rap is the kind of thing most parents would quickly dismiss as a pipe dream, but Metro was prepared. He had a green folder with information on all the artists he wanted to work with. He’d done his research online, printed out a document and presented it to his mom. She’s been his biggest supporter ever since.

“I was always telling my aunties, my grandma, and everybody I want to be a producer. It just sounded better,” he says. “Sounded like it had more business. It just sounded better than being a rapper. Especially rap from back then I think is well... you know.”

What Metro means is that in the mid-2000s, hip-hop was still largely known for gangsta rap in the post-Biggie and Tupac era. The sound had evolved and the gang affiliations had tempered, but among the most prolific artists of the time were JAY-Z, 50 Cent, Dipset, and Eminem—all of whom, in many ways, still glorified the violence, rampant misogyny, and drug culture that kept hip-hop from being truly mainstream. It was on the precipice of a huge shift however, with a bubbling underground movement of “backpack rap” fueled by conscious lyricism, and a new crop of Southern rappers making music people could just party to. There was also an interest in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene, where seminal groups like OutKast were taking the culture forward by making music that bent and broke the preconceived rules of the genre.

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SHIRT, SWEATER & PANTS RAF SIMONS, EYEGLASSES TALENT’S OWN

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Metro Boomin is meticulous about everything—especially his ‘fits. Right now, it’s 2 o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in a small loft in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The sun peeks through the industrial windows during its limited time in the winter sky, albeit the weather is forgiving for an otherwise chilly February. It’s a balmy 55 degrees Fahrenheit outside, compared to New York’s usual 32°F and below. Speaking of shining, the ambient sun rays dance around one particular part of the room—the space where Metro is rummaging through an MCM bag chock-full of jewelry.

Born in St. Louis as Leland Tyler Wayne, the producer got his start in middle school. In seventh grade, he was already expressing his passion for music playing bass guitar in band class. That Christmas, his mom got him a laptop, on which he downloaded the rudimentary music production program FruityLoops after hearing about it from friends. He started messing around with it, aspiring to be a rapper, mostly because of Nelly’s Country Grammar.

“That was one of my first real CDs,” he admits. “It was my first explicit CD. Country Grammar came out, and it just made me want to rap. That simple.”

Metro wanted to rap, but knew he needed beats first. He wasn’t in a position to buy any, so he decided to make his own. As he dived deeper into production, he found out he liked it a lot more than rapping—and it was a less crowded market to compete in, with more aspiring rappers than aspiring producers. Soon, he threw himself fully into hip-hop production, establishing the monster work ethic he’s known for today. In high school, he was making about five beats a day.

“I really couldn’t buy any beats, so I just started trying to make my own,” he says. “I just figured so many people wanted to rap, so I had to choose some other shit.”

Of course, being a teenager telling your mom you want to pursue a career in rap is the kind of thing most parents would quickly dismiss as a pipe dream, but Metro was prepared. He had a green folder with information on all the artists he wanted to work with. He’d done his research online, printed out a document and presented it to his mom. She’s been his biggest supporter ever since.

“I was always telling my aunties, my grandma, and everybody I want to be a producer. It just sounded better,” he says. “Sounded like it had more business. It just sounded better than being a rapper. Especially rap from back then I think is well... you know.”

What Metro means is that in the mid-2000s, hip-hop was still largely known for gangsta rap in the post-Biggie and Tupac era. The sound had evolved and the gang affiliations had tempered, but among the most prolific artists of the time were JAY-Z, 50 Cent, Dipset, and Eminem—all of whom, in many ways, still glorified the violence, rampant misogyny, and drug culture that kept hip-hop from being truly mainstream. It was on the precipice of a huge shift however, with a bubbling underground movement of “backpack rap” fueled by conscious lyricism, and a new crop of Southern rappers making music people could just party to. There was also an interest in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene, where seminal groups like OutKast were taking the culture forward by making music that bent and broke the preconceived rules of the genre.

232

SHIRT, SWEATER & PANTS RAF SIMONS, EYEGLASSES TALENT’S OWN

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That scene in particular struck a chord with a teenage Metro, and he used nascent social media platforms like Twitter to connect with rappers in Atlanta looking for beats—all while still in high school. Ever the ardent supporter, Metro’s mom was willing to drive the 17-hour commute to Atlanta from St. Louis on weekends—provided that he was back in school by Monday. Soon, Metro was spending his weekends in the studio with OJ Da Juiceman and Gucci Mane, which led Leland Wayne to rechristen himself as Metro Boomin.

“Metro” stems from the bus line in St. Louis, and “Boomin” comes from OJ Da Juiceman, who constantly described Leland’s beats as “booming!”

In 2012, Metro was accepted to Morehouse College, the prestigious Atlanta HBCU. By that time, he had already started gaining some buzz in the Atlanta rap scene and just months into the first semester, his momentum grew bigger than he expected. “Karate Chop,” his collaboration with Future became a surprise hit (going on to become the lead single off the rising Atlanta rapper’s second album Honest). Doors started opening and the industry was paying serious attention. But as an 18-year-old freshman, Metro was met with an extremely difficult decision. He could either continue his education and do music on the weekends, or drop out and fully pursue his dream.

“ E very day, I would leave class, and go to the studio with either Future or Gucci [Mane] exclusively... So having to get up early for class and having all that homework, it was just a lot.”

“Every day, I would leave class, and go to the studio with either Future or Gucci [Mane] exclusively. Every day was between them—a lot of times two the same day. Go to one session then go to the other,” he says. “So having to get up early for class and having all that homework, it was just a lot. I knew I had to make a choice, rather than slacking in both these areas. I called my mom in the back of the studio and told her I wanted to take a semester off.”

Like any mother reacting to their son dropping out of college, she was furious. However, Metro was still relieved. The decision has undoubtedly paid off, and while his mother’s sacrifices didn’t work out exactly how she had intended, she has certainly reaped the benefits from her son’s alternate route to success. With his focus fully on music production, there’s nothing standing in Metro’s way. Well, except right now—in the present—he’s a little distracted.

Metro is still rummaging through his leather MCM bag, looking to find the right pendant and ring to match a full look from lauded fashion designer Raf Simons.

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That scene in particular struck a chord with a teenage Metro, and he used nascent social media platforms like Twitter to connect with rappers in Atlanta looking for beats—all while still in high school. Ever the ardent supporter, Metro’s mom was willing to drive the 17-hour commute to Atlanta from St. Louis on weekends—provided that he was back in school by Monday. Soon, Metro was spending his weekends in the studio with OJ Da Juiceman and Gucci Mane, which led Leland Wayne to rechristen himself as Metro Boomin.

“Metro” stems from the bus line in St. Louis, and “Boomin” comes from OJ Da Juiceman, who constantly described Leland’s beats as “booming!”

In 2012, Metro was accepted to Morehouse College, the prestigious Atlanta HBCU. By that time, he had already started gaining some buzz in the Atlanta rap scene and just months into the first semester, his momentum grew bigger than he expected. “Karate Chop,” his collaboration with Future became a surprise hit (going on to become the lead single off the rising Atlanta rapper’s second album Honest). Doors started opening and the industry was paying serious attention. But as an 18-year-old freshman, Metro was met with an extremely difficult decision. He could either continue his education and do music on the weekends, or drop out and fully pursue his dream.

“ E very day, I would leave class, and go to the studio with either Future or Gucci [Mane] exclusively... So having to get up early for class and having all that homework, it was just a lot.”

“Every day, I would leave class, and go to the studio with either Future or Gucci [Mane] exclusively. Every day was between them—a lot of times two the same day. Go to one session then go to the other,” he says. “So having to get up early for class and having all that homework, it was just a lot. I knew I had to make a choice, rather than slacking in both these areas. I called my mom in the back of the studio and told her I wanted to take a semester off.”

Like any mother reacting to their son dropping out of college, she was furious. However, Metro was still relieved. The decision has undoubtedly paid off, and while his mother’s sacrifices didn’t work out exactly how she had intended, she has certainly reaped the benefits from her son’s alternate route to success. With his focus fully on music production, there’s nothing standing in Metro’s way. Well, except right now—in the present—he’s a little distracted.

Metro is still rummaging through his leather MCM bag, looking to find the right pendant and ring to match a full look from lauded fashion designer Raf Simons.

COAT MISBHV

235

Next to him is close friend and photographer Gunner Stahl, who took on the important role of loft DJ for the day. Throughout the six-hour shoot, Stahl plays a lengthy Metro playlist, and for six hours straight everyone in the space gets hyphy, milly-rocks, bumps their head, or dances to one hard-hitting beat after another.

As the playlist transitions from one banger to the next, from Future to Kanye West, Drake to Young Thug, it becomes astounding at how deeply Metro’s sound has permeated the rap industry during his relatively short time in the game. Fittingly, a period of great prosperity or rapid economic growth is the literal definition of the word “booming,” which is part of the title of Metro’s debut 2013 mixtape, 19 & Boomin’, which featured Atlanta artists like Trinidad James and Gucci Mane. But despite his quick ascent, it’s clear the success hasn’t gone to Metro’s head. The 24-year-old producer remains relatively down-toearth, able to happily talk about Star Wars and the pop culture phenomenon Black Panther as much as his already-impressive catalog of work, downplaying his accomplishments with a low-key sense of humility.

Instead of bragging about all of his hits that are pounding through the space, he’s opening up about other producers and his favorite beats. He expresses an appreciation for The Neptunes’ entire catalog, specifically calling out the barebones drums of Clipse’s “Grindin’,” Kanye West and Brian “All Day” Miller’s beat for Cam’ron’s “Down and Out” off of Purple Haze, and Lil Wayne’s “Prostitute 2” off of Tha Carter III—a beat produced by his friend Maestro, who actually wrote Metro a letter of recommendation to attend Morehouse College.

Metro’s calculated blend of haunting, atmospheric melodies, and crisp trap drums established himself at the forefront of Atlanta’s rap renaissance and solidified himself as Future’s right-hand man. It’s a career that’s still fairly new, but is already breaking major music milestones. Grammy nominations, several Billboard Hot 100 singles, collaborations with the biggest names in music, you name it. However, he’s very humble, cool, calm, and collected. Not wearing his success on his sleeve.

Ever since their first team up on “Karate Chop” in 2013, Future and Metro Boomin have been on a winning streak. In 2015, the duo delivered arguably Future’s best project in DS2 with hit records including “Where Ya At,” “Stick Talk,” and “I Serve the Base,” a psychedelic masterpiece that would start to mold them together as one of rap’s preeminent “Name a more iconic duo—we’ll wait” memes. That same year, they would also work together on the Drake collaboration project What a Time to Be Alive. This led to Metro landing an executive producer credit. Future and Boomin’s work ethic didn’t slow down there. In 2016, Metro would go on to produce a whopping thirteen tracks for the Atlanta rapper, including the chart topping “Low Life” with Canadian artist The Weeknd.

T-SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON, COAT MISBHV

“I remember when Dirty Sprite came out. I started listening to Future way more after that,” Metro says. “That shit was going crazy at home. When I was younger, it was more like: ‘Pull up to the studio every day.’ But through the years we both grown in our own ways, but we schedule time to be in studio.

Like a week, or two weeks, or even months, we be in the studio every day.”

Metro and Future’s biggest success to date happened in 2017 when they worked on the single, “Mask Off.” The pair had legions of people chanting “Percocet, Molly, Percocet” like a pagan mantra. The catchy hook wasn’t the only thing getting attention. Boomin’ sampled a flute lick from the 1976 track “Prison Song” by Tommy Butler that seemingly set a trend throughout the rest of the industry. “Flute rap” became a goldmine for #BlackTwitter memes, pairing the “Mask Off” beat to apropos movie scenes like Will Ferrell’s memorable “jazz flute” performance in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy or screengrabs from video games like Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Murda Beatz’s flute-infused beat for “Portland” off of Drake’s More Life album carried the zeitgeist forward, while Metro teamed up with producer Southside to produce more flute-licious tracks like Kodak Black’s “Tunnel Vision” and Gucci Mane and Drake’s “Both.” But Metro is quick to point out that hip-hop trends can be just as cyclical as style trends, and hip-hop’s affection for the flute sound actually can be heard in plenty of songs from the ’90s.

“Hip-hop shit just like fashion shit. Shit just goes and comes back,” he explains. “I’m not going to say like I’m the nigga that invented the flute. Growing up, flute riffs was big in rap back then. It’s what I listened to. It inspires you and influences you to bring that back around.”

237

Next to him is close friend and photographer Gunner Stahl, who took on the important role of loft DJ for the day. Throughout the six-hour shoot, Stahl plays a lengthy Metro playlist, and for six hours straight everyone in the space gets hyphy, milly-rocks, bumps their head, or dances to one hard-hitting beat after another.

As the playlist transitions from one banger to the next, from Future to Kanye West, Drake to Young Thug, it becomes astounding at how deeply Metro’s sound has permeated the rap industry during his relatively short time in the game. Fittingly, a period of great prosperity or rapid economic growth is the literal definition of the word “booming,” which is part of the title of Metro’s debut 2013 mixtape, 19 & Boomin’, which featured Atlanta artists like Trinidad James and Gucci Mane. But despite his quick ascent, it’s clear the success hasn’t gone to Metro’s head. The 24-year-old producer remains relatively down-toearth, able to happily talk about Star Wars and the pop culture phenomenon Black Panther as much as his already-impressive catalog of work, downplaying his accomplishments with a low-key sense of humility.

Instead of bragging about all of his hits that are pounding through the space, he’s opening up about other producers and his favorite beats. He expresses an appreciation for The Neptunes’ entire catalog, specifically calling out the barebones drums of Clipse’s “Grindin’,” Kanye West and Brian “All Day” Miller’s beat for Cam’ron’s “Down and Out” off of Purple Haze, and Lil Wayne’s “Prostitute 2” off of Tha Carter III—a beat produced by his friend Maestro, who actually wrote Metro a letter of recommendation to attend Morehouse College.

Metro’s calculated blend of haunting, atmospheric melodies, and crisp trap drums established himself at the forefront of Atlanta’s rap renaissance and solidified himself as Future’s right-hand man. It’s a career that’s still fairly new, but is already breaking major music milestones. Grammy nominations, several Billboard Hot 100 singles, collaborations with the biggest names in music, you name it. However, he’s very humble, cool, calm, and collected. Not wearing his success on his sleeve.

Ever since their first team up on “Karate Chop” in 2013, Future and Metro Boomin have been on a winning streak. In 2015, the duo delivered arguably Future’s best project in DS2 with hit records including “Where Ya At,” “Stick Talk,” and “I Serve the Base,” a psychedelic masterpiece that would start to mold them together as one of rap’s preeminent “Name a more iconic duo—we’ll wait” memes. That same year, they would also work together on the Drake collaboration project What a Time to Be Alive. This led to Metro landing an executive producer credit. Future and Boomin’s work ethic didn’t slow down there. In 2016, Metro would go on to produce a whopping thirteen tracks for the Atlanta rapper, including the chart topping “Low Life” with Canadian artist The Weeknd.

T-SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON, COAT MISBHV

“I remember when Dirty Sprite came out. I started listening to Future way more after that,” Metro says. “That shit was going crazy at home. When I was younger, it was more like: ‘Pull up to the studio every day.’ But through the years we both grown in our own ways, but we schedule time to be in studio.

Like a week, or two weeks, or even months, we be in the studio every day.”

Metro and Future’s biggest success to date happened in 2017 when they worked on the single, “Mask Off.” The pair had legions of people chanting “Percocet, Molly, Percocet” like a pagan mantra. The catchy hook wasn’t the only thing getting attention. Boomin’ sampled a flute lick from the 1976 track “Prison Song” by Tommy Butler that seemingly set a trend throughout the rest of the industry. “Flute rap” became a goldmine for #BlackTwitter memes, pairing the “Mask Off” beat to apropos movie scenes like Will Ferrell’s memorable “jazz flute” performance in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy or screengrabs from video games like Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64. Murda Beatz’s flute-infused beat for “Portland” off of Drake’s More Life album carried the zeitgeist forward, while Metro teamed up with producer Southside to produce more flute-licious tracks like Kodak Black’s “Tunnel Vision” and Gucci Mane and Drake’s “Both.” But Metro is quick to point out that hip-hop trends can be just as cyclical as style trends, and hip-hop’s affection for the flute sound actually can be heard in plenty of songs from the ’90s.

“Hip-hop shit just like fashion shit. Shit just goes and comes back,” he explains. “I’m not going to say like I’m the nigga that invented the flute. Growing up, flute riffs was big in rap back then. It’s what I listened to. It inspires you and influences you to bring that back around.”

237

As the Metro Boomin wave started to take hold, so did his signature bandana look. As he continues to dig through his bag of jewelry, currently mulling over a diamond-encrusted Darth Vader pendant, he reveals why he began wearing one in the first place.

“Growing up we were big on Tupac. We was real big on Tupac in my house.

So it’s my influence from that,” he says. “But one day I was just fucking around, tied it to the front, and took a picture. For real when I started wearing it, it just happened. Then I started to put it to the side and figure out how to make it mine.”

Metro’s interest in fashion goes far beyond bandanas and flex-worthy jewelry though, and it’s a lot more complex and nuanced than most people think. Of course, as a young, style-conscious man in his early 20s with NBAplayer levels of disposable income, he’s an avid shopper. He admits to GQ in a 2016 interview that one of his favorite things to do on tour is shop. He might pack a bag full of clothes, but will end up blowing racks at esteemed retailers like London’s Selfridges and leave with an entirely new wardrobe. His relationship with Young Thug and admiration of style icons like Prince have inspired him to look at menswear and womenswear differently. He isn’t afraid to take fashion risks that could be perceived as feminine, purely looking at bright colors and more directional pieces as other ways to express himself. In that same GQ interview, he talks about his predilection for the color pink, and how he used to be clowned on it when he was younger. Now, he points out, when brands like Supreme release hoodies or tees in a pink colorway, it’s often the first color to sell out.

In a similar way he’s expanded his style horizons, Metro wants to break out of any preconceived musical connotations that have been set for himself.

Like how The Neptunes and Just Blaze characterized the early 2000s sound, evolving the old soul samples that defined the early part of Kanye West’s career, we may very well be in the Metro Boomin era of hip-hop. His sound is transcending genres at the same time hip-hop is becoming the driving force of pop culture, and that’s a wave Metro wants to ride on.

“ M y sound can go whichever way. I try not to be predictable... I try to keep it versatile as I can, with everything still being hard and not getting weird.”

“My sound can go whichever way. I try not to be predictable,” he says.

“I just keep switching it up. And sometimes with an album, that album will be that vibe, or this sound will be this sound. I try to keep it versatile as I can, with everything still being hard and not getting weird.”

SHIRT HELIOT EMIL, JEWELRY TALENT’S OWN

238

239

As the Metro Boomin wave started to take hold, so did his signature bandana look. As he continues to dig through his bag of jewelry, currently mulling over a diamond-encrusted Darth Vader pendant, he reveals why he began wearing one in the first place.

“Growing up we were big on Tupac. We was real big on Tupac in my house.

So it’s my influence from that,” he says. “But one day I was just fucking around, tied it to the front, and took a picture. For real when I started wearing it, it just happened. Then I started to put it to the side and figure out how to make it mine.”

Metro’s interest in fashion goes far beyond bandanas and flex-worthy jewelry though, and it’s a lot more complex and nuanced than most people think. Of course, as a young, style-conscious man in his early 20s with NBAplayer levels of disposable income, he’s an avid shopper. He admits to GQ in a 2016 interview that one of his favorite things to do on tour is shop. He might pack a bag full of clothes, but will end up blowing racks at esteemed retailers like London’s Selfridges and leave with an entirely new wardrobe. His relationship with Young Thug and admiration of style icons like Prince have inspired him to look at menswear and womenswear differently. He isn’t afraid to take fashion risks that could be perceived as feminine, purely looking at bright colors and more directional pieces as other ways to express himself. In that same GQ interview, he talks about his predilection for the color pink, and how he used to be clowned on it when he was younger. Now, he points out, when brands like Supreme release hoodies or tees in a pink colorway, it’s often the first color to sell out.

In a similar way he’s expanded his style horizons, Metro wants to break out of any preconceived musical connotations that have been set for himself.

Like how The Neptunes and Just Blaze characterized the early 2000s sound, evolving the old soul samples that defined the early part of Kanye West’s career, we may very well be in the Metro Boomin era of hip-hop. His sound is transcending genres at the same time hip-hop is becoming the driving force of pop culture, and that’s a wave Metro wants to ride on.

“ M y sound can go whichever way. I try not to be predictable... I try to keep it versatile as I can, with everything still being hard and not getting weird.”

“My sound can go whichever way. I try not to be predictable,” he says.

“I just keep switching it up. And sometimes with an album, that album will be that vibe, or this sound will be this sound. I try to keep it versatile as I can, with everything still being hard and not getting weird.”

SHIRT HELIOT EMIL, JEWELRY TALENT’S OWN

238

239

Metro Boomin is already expanding his horizons, having collaborated with Lana Del Rey on “God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It” off her 2017 album Lust for Life. He says he would have loved to work with Michael Jackson or Prince. And he still wants to work with Justin Timberlake, whose most recent album Man of the Woods—which features production from The Neptunes, Timbaland, and Rob Knox—has been met with tepid reception.

Critics of the album point out that it just doesn’t sound like something that reflects the current state of pop music, which straddles the line between Drake’s Instagram caption-ready lyrics, Kendrick Lamar’s revolution-inspiring soundscapes, and Kanye West’s standard-setting releases. What all three of those artists have in common is their ability to make music that is ready to be re-contextualized and proliferated by an internet-savvy audience with their own social media platforms.

Thanks to the smash hit “Father Stretch My Hands” off Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Metro became a pop culture and social media phenomenon. It started with a beat tag: “If young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you,” uttered by Future in the studio when he was working on the rapper’s song “Right Now,” featuring Uncle Murda. The meme reached every corner of the web. Manifesting from Twitter and Instagram to protest signs at Donald Trump rallies. It even spawned a concert: “Young Metro Don’t Trust Trump,” a onenight show that happened in September 2016.

It’s been five years since Metro decided to drop out of college to pursue his dream, and he is still as motivated as ever. He’s still got the work ethic he honed in high school, except now he’s churning out a lot more than five beats a day.

It’s impossible to turn on a rap radio station and not hear a Metro beat playing.

He doesn’t just want to work with rap’s best, he wants more Billboard chart singles, and more Grammy nominations. Being a Twitter meme is cool, but he doesn’t let that phase him. It isn’t about the fame as much as breaking more ground, and making the type of music that lives on beyond its initial platform.

Now, more than ever, it’s still about the work.

“ [ This ] time period is a blessing, to see all this stuff. All the memes, all the support and shit. It’s a wave.”

“I can’t really identify if I ever really felt that I made it. Because even though we got a good start, we came a long way… it’s a way even longer to go,” he admits. “[There’s] still so much more I want to do… [This] time period is a blessing, to see all this stuff. All the memes, all the support and shit.

It’s a wave.”

Meanwhile, back at Metro’s magazine shoot, he’s finally decided on which jewelry to wear. He gets through the next look, and finishes up a couple of more before the majority of his extremely valuable accessories go back into his expensive leather duffle bag. But his day is far from over. When asked what the rest of his day looks like, he makes it clear the real work’s about to begin.

“Shit, just hit the studio. Making beats and shit. Lead the way to the next thing.”

240

ALL TALENT’S OWN

Metro Boomin is already expanding his horizons, having collaborated with Lana Del Rey on “God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It” off her 2017 album Lust for Life. He says he would have loved to work with Michael Jackson or Prince. And he still wants to work with Justin Timberlake, whose most recent album Man of the Woods—which features production from The Neptunes, Timbaland, and Rob Knox—has been met with tepid reception.

Critics of the album point out that it just doesn’t sound like something that reflects the current state of pop music, which straddles the line between Drake’s Instagram caption-ready lyrics, Kendrick Lamar’s revolution-inspiring soundscapes, and Kanye West’s standard-setting releases. What all three of those artists have in common is their ability to make music that is ready to be re-contextualized and proliferated by an internet-savvy audience with their own social media platforms.

Thanks to the smash hit “Father Stretch My Hands” off Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Metro became a pop culture and social media phenomenon. It started with a beat tag: “If young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you,” uttered by Future in the studio when he was working on the rapper’s song “Right Now,” featuring Uncle Murda. The meme reached every corner of the web. Manifesting from Twitter and Instagram to protest signs at Donald Trump rallies. It even spawned a concert: “Young Metro Don’t Trust Trump,” a onenight show that happened in September 2016.

It’s been five years since Metro decided to drop out of college to pursue his dream, and he is still as motivated as ever. He’s still got the work ethic he honed in high school, except now he’s churning out a lot more than five beats a day.

It’s impossible to turn on a rap radio station and not hear a Metro beat playing.

He doesn’t just want to work with rap’s best, he wants more Billboard chart singles, and more Grammy nominations. Being a Twitter meme is cool, but he doesn’t let that phase him. It isn’t about the fame as much as breaking more ground, and making the type of music that lives on beyond its initial platform.

Now, more than ever, it’s still about the work.

“ [ This ] time period is a blessing, to see all this stuff. All the memes, all the support and shit. It’s a wave.”

“I can’t really identify if I ever really felt that I made it. Because even though we got a good start, we came a long way… it’s a way even longer to go,” he admits. “[There’s] still so much more I want to do… [This] time period is a blessing, to see all this stuff. All the memes, all the support and shit.

It’s a wave.”

Meanwhile, back at Metro’s magazine shoot, he’s finally decided on which jewelry to wear. He gets through the next look, and finishes up a couple of more before the majority of his extremely valuable accessories go back into his expensive leather duffle bag. But his day is far from over. When asked what the rest of his day looks like, he makes it clear the real work’s about to begin.

“Shit, just hit the studio. Making beats and shit. Lead the way to the next thing.”

240

ALL TALENT’S OWN

The Creative Universe Trevor Jackson

It’s a bitingly cold February afternoon when I make my way to the East London studio of one of the true underground renaissance men. Trevor Jackson is known as much for his strong opinions as his creative output. For three decades now he has been innovating at the cutting edge of audio and visual culture through his work as a producer, sound designer, art director, graphic designer, filmmaker, label owner, and DJ. In the ’90s, Jackson went by the nom-de-plume of The Underdog. He worked with the kind of cognoscenti-conscious groups known to hardcore record shop diggers, like multi-racial independent UK hip-hop trip The Brotherhood. Jackson’s Bite It! label also released similar nuggets from groups like Scientists of Sound and 100% Proof. Jackson’s distinctive monochrome design adorned the sleeves of these indie hip-hop LPs. And it’s this multidisciplinary aesthetic that has marked him out as a radical DIY pioneer who laid the groundwork for today’s exciting creative landscape.

Whether through his own recordings under the name Playgroup or releasing the early music of Four Tet and The Rapture on his cultish Output Recordings label, Jackson has been both a constant musical innovator and industry outsider. As a producer, his abstract electronic sensibilities have seen him remix artists like Massive Attack and UNKLE. At the same time, a career in graphic design that began with raw DIY record sleeves created against the backdrop of London’s Acid House scene has led to beautifully abstract innovations like his optical illusion sleeve for Soulwax’s Any Minute Now. Always exploring the further reaches of electronic music, his current NTS radio show and compilations like Metal Dance for Strut have become essential resources for heads into the more experimental end of electronic music. But Jackson has never been afraid of pop and labels like ZTT continue to be just as much an inspiration to him as Rough Trade and 99 Records. Despite his underground credentials, Jackson has brought inventive creative ideas to a range of brands—from Lexus to Stone Island. Safe to say, he’s far from the underdog.

Words Andy Thomas Photography Chris Tang

242

Like fellow cross-disciplinary UK pioneer James Lavelle, in recent years Jackson has moved his art from the street to the gallery with his own solo show called “Nowhere” at the KK gallery in London. In 2014, he created perhaps his most innovative work to date: an exhibition in Paris entitled “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Forever,” featuring blown-up abstract images of the well-worn grooves from his vast record collection. When I arrive at the studio, Jackson is immersed in a number of new projects— despite getting off a flight from Australia the day before.

Trevor Jackson was raised in the Jewish neighborhood of Edgware in North London, where one of his first exposures to the intersection of music and fashion was the little-known scene of self-described “Becks.”

“It was a subculture that nobody really talks about now,” he says. “Everyone would hang out at the tube stations on Saturday night listening to soul and disco wearing their Kickers boots, Fiorucci, Chippie, and Chevignon jeans.”

One of the popular hangouts for Becks was a place called Patsy’s Parlour. “It was an ice cream parlour and that is where I first played video games,” says Jackson. “It was a small place but had about 10 video games and I used to play Scramble and Gorf all the time.”

While Jackson was introduced to disco and jazz funk through his elder brother who was a Beck, Jackson’s first musical love was electronic music.

“I was really into Human League, Soft Cell, Kraftwerk and so when electro came out I could hear how the American and European stuff was all connected,” he says. “We were really lucky back then as well because the charts were full of all this incredible stuff that was rooted in underground music. I remember seeing ABC on Multi-Coloured Swapshop [a children’s TV program] on a Saturday morning talking about their two favorite records being Yello’s ‘Bostich’ and Shannon’s ‘Let The Music Play.’”

Jackson was soon dreaming of escaping his suburban world through the exotic music he was hearing on pirate radio stations.

“I’d listen to Colin Favor and he would play Kiss FM mastermixes from New York,” he recalls. “I never wanted to be like the other kids where I grew up and New York was like my fantasy. So many cool things were coming out of there, the music, fashion, graffiti, films, and comic books—all of it really fascinated me.”

243

The Creative Universe Trevor Jackson

It’s a bitingly cold February afternoon when I make my way to the East London studio of one of the true underground renaissance men. Trevor Jackson is known as much for his strong opinions as his creative output. For three decades now he has been innovating at the cutting edge of audio and visual culture through his work as a producer, sound designer, art director, graphic designer, filmmaker, label owner, and DJ. In the ’90s, Jackson went by the nom-de-plume of The Underdog. He worked with the kind of cognoscenti-conscious groups known to hardcore record shop diggers, like multi-racial independent UK hip-hop trip The Brotherhood. Jackson’s Bite It! label also released similar nuggets from groups like Scientists of Sound and 100% Proof. Jackson’s distinctive monochrome design adorned the sleeves of these indie hip-hop LPs. And it’s this multidisciplinary aesthetic that has marked him out as a radical DIY pioneer who laid the groundwork for today’s exciting creative landscape.

Whether through his own recordings under the name Playgroup or releasing the early music of Four Tet and The Rapture on his cultish Output Recordings label, Jackson has been both a constant musical innovator and industry outsider. As a producer, his abstract electronic sensibilities have seen him remix artists like Massive Attack and UNKLE. At the same time, a career in graphic design that began with raw DIY record sleeves created against the backdrop of London’s Acid House scene has led to beautifully abstract innovations like his optical illusion sleeve for Soulwax’s Any Minute Now. Always exploring the further reaches of electronic music, his current NTS radio show and compilations like Metal Dance for Strut have become essential resources for heads into the more experimental end of electronic music. But Jackson has never been afraid of pop and labels like ZTT continue to be just as much an inspiration to him as Rough Trade and 99 Records. Despite his underground credentials, Jackson has brought inventive creative ideas to a range of brands—from Lexus to Stone Island. Safe to say, he’s far from the underdog.

Words Andy Thomas Photography Chris Tang

242

Like fellow cross-disciplinary UK pioneer James Lavelle, in recent years Jackson has moved his art from the street to the gallery with his own solo show called “Nowhere” at the KK gallery in London. In 2014, he created perhaps his most innovative work to date: an exhibition in Paris entitled “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Forever,” featuring blown-up abstract images of the well-worn grooves from his vast record collection. When I arrive at the studio, Jackson is immersed in a number of new projects— despite getting off a flight from Australia the day before.

Trevor Jackson was raised in the Jewish neighborhood of Edgware in North London, where one of his first exposures to the intersection of music and fashion was the little-known scene of self-described “Becks.”

“It was a subculture that nobody really talks about now,” he says. “Everyone would hang out at the tube stations on Saturday night listening to soul and disco wearing their Kickers boots, Fiorucci, Chippie, and Chevignon jeans.”

One of the popular hangouts for Becks was a place called Patsy’s Parlour. “It was an ice cream parlour and that is where I first played video games,” says Jackson. “It was a small place but had about 10 video games and I used to play Scramble and Gorf all the time.”

While Jackson was introduced to disco and jazz funk through his elder brother who was a Beck, Jackson’s first musical love was electronic music.

“I was really into Human League, Soft Cell, Kraftwerk and so when electro came out I could hear how the American and European stuff was all connected,” he says. “We were really lucky back then as well because the charts were full of all this incredible stuff that was rooted in underground music. I remember seeing ABC on Multi-Coloured Swapshop [a children’s TV program] on a Saturday morning talking about their two favorite records being Yello’s ‘Bostich’ and Shannon’s ‘Let The Music Play.’”

Jackson was soon dreaming of escaping his suburban world through the exotic music he was hearing on pirate radio stations.

“I’d listen to Colin Favor and he would play Kiss FM mastermixes from New York,” he recalls. “I never wanted to be like the other kids where I grew up and New York was like my fantasy. So many cool things were coming out of there, the music, fashion, graffiti, films, and comic books—all of it really fascinated me.”

243

Magazines like The Face and i-D became other portals to an exciting new world of style tribes and underground parties. He started going to clubs at age 14, when some older friends took him to Camden Palace. Another club that the teenage Jackson would frequent was Astral Flight at The Embassy Club with DJ Wolf, who would become one of his biggest influences. While Jackson would have his eyes opened by this early exposure to club culture, it was the London warehouse scene that really blew his mind. There, he was exposed to Coldcut, Soul II Soul, Shake N Fingerpop, Family Function, and Mutoid Waste Company, who threw one of his favorite parties under The Westway—a West London overpass—that resembled a post-apocalyptic club night.

“They had people riding in on steam-powered metal dinosaurs like something out of a Mad Max movie,” he says. “Then there was another one where you had to climb over this assault course to get in, and then there was Test Department [an industrial group] in one room with a DJ in another playing a go-go record.

It was just a mad mix.”

It was a time in the UK when the DIY culture of punk was having aftershocks across the creative landscape. Jackson thinks people were making a real effort in all aspects of culture—from music to art to fashion—and he witnessed a monumental culture jam firsthand. From 1983-1989, he claims he was going out five nights a week, soaking up inspiration from one of the country’s most seminal times in alternative arts.

Jackson’s own style stems from a variety of other inspirations.

He originally wanted to be a comic book artist, and hung out with a few guys from 2000 AD, the seminal British pulp comic anthology that birthed franchises like Judge Dredd and Tank Girl.

But when he started working at a record shop at 13, he became obsessed with the works of Peter Savile, Neville Brody, and Keith Breeden. After leaving Barnet College in North London, he took his first job in graphic design with Kunst Art Company, working with photocopiers, Tipp-Ex, and Rotring pens.

“This was all pre-Apple Mac so you really had to experiment,” he says. Taking the cut and paste sample culture of both hip-hop and Art of Noise, from his favorite pop label ZTT, he applied it to his DIY design. “From an early age I didn’t see the difference in sampling music to sampling visuals, but I would never sample or take something just because it looked nice. It had to have a meaning and to have a connection to something. So there was always a purpose to my sampling and that is the same today both with music and design.”

Never short on confidence and in his own words “slightly precocious,” Jackson started to pitch for freelance work. He cobbled together a portfolio and shopped himself to labels that he dug, like Champion Records, sometimes offering to work for free based off his sheer love for the music. Jackson’s designs for

artists like Frankie Bones and Raze saw him become a pioneer of rave culture design. The sleeve that really illustrated Jackson’s immersion in club culture was Todd Terry’s “Yeah Buddy.”

Featuring a raver being chased by a policeman and designed to look like video game graphics, the sleeve was deliberately primitive. It was partly due to Jackson’s inability to afford a Mac, working off of a ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 that gave his work a more homegrown aesthetic. It’s something he feels lent to the lo-fi sensibility of Terry’s music.

“Although I loved the design of people like Peter Saville I also had a bit of distain for them as I thought, ‘You’re old mate, what do you know about clubs?’ I was young and I was going to the clubs every night,” he says. “I wanted to create a sleeve that really captured what was happening out there at night. Todd Terry’s records were raw and sounded like early video games, so that became the aesthetic.”

More than 30 years on, Jackson thinks the accessibility of imagery online has made people less adventurous. He gestures to rows of reference books from designers like Paul Rand, Dieter Rams, and Saul Bass. He brags that he can remember each store he bought them from, especially beaming about the rare tomes he had to go to great lengths to track down. It gives them more sentimental value, and explains his disdain for social platforms like Instagram.

“I don’t really use it because I don’t want to just put an image up without any context,” he says. “I think this breeds a culture of people who like things because they look good—they don’t really understand it or know the connections and ethos of what all these people were about.”

“ I think this [Instagram] breeds a culture of people who like things because they look good— they don’t really understand it or know the connections and ethos of what all these people were about.”

Jackson went on to become an in-demand graphic designer working for labels like Gee Street, creating sleeves for Stereo MCs and Jungle Brothers. By the early ’90s, Jackson’s success as a designer saw him taking on more commercial projects, many of which felt like a betrayal of his DIY roots. Inspired both by the old school hip-hop he had first fallen in love with and the sound collages of Art and Noise, he began to make music in a similar fashion to his design work.

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Magazines like The Face and i-D became other portals to an exciting new world of style tribes and underground parties. He started going to clubs at age 14, when some older friends took him to Camden Palace. Another club that the teenage Jackson would frequent was Astral Flight at The Embassy Club with DJ Wolf, who would become one of his biggest influences. While Jackson would have his eyes opened by this early exposure to club culture, it was the London warehouse scene that really blew his mind. There, he was exposed to Coldcut, Soul II Soul, Shake N Fingerpop, Family Function, and Mutoid Waste Company, who threw one of his favorite parties under The Westway—a West London overpass—that resembled a post-apocalyptic club night.

“They had people riding in on steam-powered metal dinosaurs like something out of a Mad Max movie,” he says. “Then there was another one where you had to climb over this assault course to get in, and then there was Test Department [an industrial group] in one room with a DJ in another playing a go-go record.

It was just a mad mix.”

It was a time in the UK when the DIY culture of punk was having aftershocks across the creative landscape. Jackson thinks people were making a real effort in all aspects of culture—from music to art to fashion—and he witnessed a monumental culture jam firsthand. From 1983-1989, he claims he was going out five nights a week, soaking up inspiration from one of the country’s most seminal times in alternative arts.

Jackson’s own style stems from a variety of other inspirations.

He originally wanted to be a comic book artist, and hung out with a few guys from 2000 AD, the seminal British pulp comic anthology that birthed franchises like Judge Dredd and Tank Girl.

But when he started working at a record shop at 13, he became obsessed with the works of Peter Savile, Neville Brody, and Keith Breeden. After leaving Barnet College in North London, he took his first job in graphic design with Kunst Art Company, working with photocopiers, Tipp-Ex, and Rotring pens.

“This was all pre-Apple Mac so you really had to experiment,” he says. Taking the cut and paste sample culture of both hip-hop and Art of Noise, from his favorite pop label ZTT, he applied it to his DIY design. “From an early age I didn’t see the difference in sampling music to sampling visuals, but I would never sample or take something just because it looked nice. It had to have a meaning and to have a connection to something. So there was always a purpose to my sampling and that is the same today both with music and design.”

Never short on confidence and in his own words “slightly precocious,” Jackson started to pitch for freelance work. He cobbled together a portfolio and shopped himself to labels that he dug, like Champion Records, sometimes offering to work for free based off his sheer love for the music. Jackson’s designs for

artists like Frankie Bones and Raze saw him become a pioneer of rave culture design. The sleeve that really illustrated Jackson’s immersion in club culture was Todd Terry’s “Yeah Buddy.”

Featuring a raver being chased by a policeman and designed to look like video game graphics, the sleeve was deliberately primitive. It was partly due to Jackson’s inability to afford a Mac, working off of a ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 that gave his work a more homegrown aesthetic. It’s something he feels lent to the lo-fi sensibility of Terry’s music.

“Although I loved the design of people like Peter Saville I also had a bit of distain for them as I thought, ‘You’re old mate, what do you know about clubs?’ I was young and I was going to the clubs every night,” he says. “I wanted to create a sleeve that really captured what was happening out there at night. Todd Terry’s records were raw and sounded like early video games, so that became the aesthetic.”

More than 30 years on, Jackson thinks the accessibility of imagery online has made people less adventurous. He gestures to rows of reference books from designers like Paul Rand, Dieter Rams, and Saul Bass. He brags that he can remember each store he bought them from, especially beaming about the rare tomes he had to go to great lengths to track down. It gives them more sentimental value, and explains his disdain for social platforms like Instagram.

“I don’t really use it because I don’t want to just put an image up without any context,” he says. “I think this breeds a culture of people who like things because they look good—they don’t really understand it or know the connections and ethos of what all these people were about.”

“ I think this [Instagram] breeds a culture of people who like things because they look good— they don’t really understand it or know the connections and ethos of what all these people were about.”

Jackson went on to become an in-demand graphic designer working for labels like Gee Street, creating sleeves for Stereo MCs and Jungle Brothers. By the early ’90s, Jackson’s success as a designer saw him taking on more commercial projects, many of which felt like a betrayal of his DIY roots. Inspired both by the old school hip-hop he had first fallen in love with and the sound collages of Art and Noise, he began to make music in a similar fashion to his design work.

244

NOWHERE #10 2011

NOWHERE #1 2011

NOWHERE #7 2011

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

The first piece of music equipment he bought was a Commodore sampler, followed by a Roland W30. He used these for a remix competition for Street Sounds, Morgan Khan’s UK label known for its compilations of American electro. Having such basic equipment was a great foundation as a music maker when he met a rap crew from the neighborhood—The Brotherhood.

Jackson not only produced their first single “Descendants of the Holocaust,” but set up the label Bite It! to release it. That was when he decided to dub himself “The Underdog,” to maintain a sense of anonymity. The first Brotherhood records with The Underdog were recorded at a small studio called Monroe at Barnet with an Akai 950 sampler and an Atari ST. But the records that really made the group’s name like Alphabetical Response and the subsequent Elementalz LP were created at Monroe’s second home in Holloway, Islington. It went on to become the de facto home of UK drum and bass, seeing artists like Ed Rush and Optical produce there.

rock electronic band from South West London featuring a young Kieran Hebden—later to become Four Tet.

While the early 1990s American hip-hop scene produced pivotal LPs like Nas’ Illmatic and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, many UK hip-hop heads couldn’t associate with the gangsta rap that soon predominated. Their response was an indigenous music that discussed real life on the streets at home rather than an imaginary one in Compton. The Brotherhood’s immortal lyrics of “One mixed race, one black, one yid, trap you like an arachnid. Power of the pyramid,” from the track “Goin Undaground” pertained to the multiculturalism of the scene Jackson grew up in. The cockney rap of Rodney P and the London Posse and labels like Music of Life had set the tone in the late ’80s, and now it was time for groups like The Brotherhood.

“The dance and electronic music community did not care about the early ’80s. It was a joke to them,” says Jackson. “Now you get all these dance producers referencing things like Soft Cell’s ‘Memorabilia’ as an early techno record, but back then nobody was interested.”

“I wanted to make us stand apart from the American scene by sampling different music,” says Jackson. “Everyone was sampling James Brown, Zapp, the Gap Band, and things like that and I sampled the weird European and Japanese electronic music and jazz. So things like Soft Machine, King Crimson, and stuff on the ECM label. It was also because those records were cheaper than the funk and soul records everyone else was sampling.”

Following a mix for Irish/LA hip-hop band House of Pain for XL Records, Jackson went on to become an in-demand producer, with The Underdog name associated with everyone from Massive Attack to Pharcyde. The pressures of running a UK label at the same time became too much, and he closed Bite It! in 1996.

“There was also a lot of fighting going on in the UK hip-hop scene, a lot of tension because there was no money in it and I just had to get out,” he says. “I also grew out of hip-hop when it became all about the bitches, guns, and money.”

BITE 05. SCIENTISTS OF SOUND - SCIENTISTS OF SOUND E.P. 1992 BITE 06. BROTHERHOOD - WAYZ OF THE WIZE. 1992 BITE 09. SCIENTISTS OF SOUND - BAD BOY SWING. 1995 BITE 04. 100% PROOF - DIFFERENT NEIGHBOURHOOD. 1992 BHOODT2. BROTHERHOOD - ALPHABETICAL RESPONSE. 1995

Turning his back on hip-hop Jackson decided to set up a label dedicated to the kind of alternative music that had first inspired him, called Output Recordings. After releasing some Underdog instrumental tracks, Output signed Fridge, a post-

“I really wanted to put out weird records that nobody else wanted to know about,” he says.

Through the monochrome sleeves on Fridge’s Lign and Four Tet’s Thirtysixtwentyfive, Jackson created a refined visual identity with echoes of Peter Saville’s work for New Order and other Factory groups. Jackson says the change to a minimalist and conceptual aesthetic matched the tone of the music. As well as the electronic experimental music of Fridge and Four Tet, Output would also be one of the first labels in the late ’90s to reference the fertile cross-pollination of the post-punk period. Output also released the early singles of LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, doing much to revive interest in a period of music that had been pretty much forgotten.

Jackson’s record sleeves, like the optical illusion op art design for Belgian band Soulwax’s 2004 LP Any Minute Now, challenged mainstream design conventions and won him a number of awards, but he was soon disillusioned with the industry and seeking new challenges. Output closed its doors at the end of 2006.

After his withdrawal from music and having become bored with the design world, Jackson turned back to art for creative salvation. One day Jackson was on the beach taking photographs as the sun went down during a holiday in Tel Aviv. As cliché as it sounds, it made him want to rethink his own career, and as the metaphorical sun set on this chapter in his life, he began to imagine his next step. Shortly after his return from Tel Aviv, he was approached by the KK Gallery in Hoxton, East London, who asked him if he wanted to do an exhibition there. Jackson was reassessing his whole creative world—one that had seen him rise from DIY obscurity to become one of the most in-demand graphic designers.

“I was looking back and thinking about what was important to me. And one of those things when I first started working was the idea of positive and negative space. A lot of my early work related to opposites,” Jackson recalls. “And so I started to think about my place in the universe and forces much bigger than me.

So that show was based around these ideas of light, color, and the universe.”

A healing experience for Jackson, the art show was called “Nowhere” and featured his photographs of skies and sunsets turned into abstract works of color and light.

PHOTOGRAPHY DONALD CHRISTIE

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN TREVOR JACKSON

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247

NOWHERE #10 2011

NOWHERE #1 2011

NOWHERE #7 2011

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

C TYPE PRINT. 36.5 X 52MM

The first piece of music equipment he bought was a Commodore sampler, followed by a Roland W30. He used these for a remix competition for Street Sounds, Morgan Khan’s UK label known for its compilations of American electro. Having such basic equipment was a great foundation as a music maker when he met a rap crew from the neighborhood—The Brotherhood.

Jackson not only produced their first single “Descendants of the Holocaust,” but set up the label Bite It! to release it. That was when he decided to dub himself “The Underdog,” to maintain a sense of anonymity. The first Brotherhood records with The Underdog were recorded at a small studio called Monroe at Barnet with an Akai 950 sampler and an Atari ST. But the records that really made the group’s name like Alphabetical Response and the subsequent Elementalz LP were created at Monroe’s second home in Holloway, Islington. It went on to become the de facto home of UK drum and bass, seeing artists like Ed Rush and Optical produce there.

rock electronic band from South West London featuring a young Kieran Hebden—later to become Four Tet.

While the early 1990s American hip-hop scene produced pivotal LPs like Nas’ Illmatic and Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, many UK hip-hop heads couldn’t associate with the gangsta rap that soon predominated. Their response was an indigenous music that discussed real life on the streets at home rather than an imaginary one in Compton. The Brotherhood’s immortal lyrics of “One mixed race, one black, one yid, trap you like an arachnid. Power of the pyramid,” from the track “Goin Undaground” pertained to the multiculturalism of the scene Jackson grew up in. The cockney rap of Rodney P and the London Posse and labels like Music of Life had set the tone in the late ’80s, and now it was time for groups like The Brotherhood.

“The dance and electronic music community did not care about the early ’80s. It was a joke to them,” says Jackson. “Now you get all these dance producers referencing things like Soft Cell’s ‘Memorabilia’ as an early techno record, but back then nobody was interested.”

“I wanted to make us stand apart from the American scene by sampling different music,” says Jackson. “Everyone was sampling James Brown, Zapp, the Gap Band, and things like that and I sampled the weird European and Japanese electronic music and jazz. So things like Soft Machine, King Crimson, and stuff on the ECM label. It was also because those records were cheaper than the funk and soul records everyone else was sampling.”

Following a mix for Irish/LA hip-hop band House of Pain for XL Records, Jackson went on to become an in-demand producer, with The Underdog name associated with everyone from Massive Attack to Pharcyde. The pressures of running a UK label at the same time became too much, and he closed Bite It! in 1996.

“There was also a lot of fighting going on in the UK hip-hop scene, a lot of tension because there was no money in it and I just had to get out,” he says. “I also grew out of hip-hop when it became all about the bitches, guns, and money.”

BITE 05. SCIENTISTS OF SOUND - SCIENTISTS OF SOUND E.P. 1992 BITE 06. BROTHERHOOD - WAYZ OF THE WIZE. 1992 BITE 09. SCIENTISTS OF SOUND - BAD BOY SWING. 1995 BITE 04. 100% PROOF - DIFFERENT NEIGHBOURHOOD. 1992 BHOODT2. BROTHERHOOD - ALPHABETICAL RESPONSE. 1995

Turning his back on hip-hop Jackson decided to set up a label dedicated to the kind of alternative music that had first inspired him, called Output Recordings. After releasing some Underdog instrumental tracks, Output signed Fridge, a post-

“I really wanted to put out weird records that nobody else wanted to know about,” he says.

Through the monochrome sleeves on Fridge’s Lign and Four Tet’s Thirtysixtwentyfive, Jackson created a refined visual identity with echoes of Peter Saville’s work for New Order and other Factory groups. Jackson says the change to a minimalist and conceptual aesthetic matched the tone of the music. As well as the electronic experimental music of Fridge and Four Tet, Output would also be one of the first labels in the late ’90s to reference the fertile cross-pollination of the post-punk period. Output also released the early singles of LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture, doing much to revive interest in a period of music that had been pretty much forgotten.

Jackson’s record sleeves, like the optical illusion op art design for Belgian band Soulwax’s 2004 LP Any Minute Now, challenged mainstream design conventions and won him a number of awards, but he was soon disillusioned with the industry and seeking new challenges. Output closed its doors at the end of 2006.

After his withdrawal from music and having become bored with the design world, Jackson turned back to art for creative salvation. One day Jackson was on the beach taking photographs as the sun went down during a holiday in Tel Aviv. As cliché as it sounds, it made him want to rethink his own career, and as the metaphorical sun set on this chapter in his life, he began to imagine his next step. Shortly after his return from Tel Aviv, he was approached by the KK Gallery in Hoxton, East London, who asked him if he wanted to do an exhibition there. Jackson was reassessing his whole creative world—one that had seen him rise from DIY obscurity to become one of the most in-demand graphic designers.

“I was looking back and thinking about what was important to me. And one of those things when I first started working was the idea of positive and negative space. A lot of my early work related to opposites,” Jackson recalls. “And so I started to think about my place in the universe and forces much bigger than me.

So that show was based around these ideas of light, color, and the universe.”

A healing experience for Jackson, the art show was called “Nowhere” and featured his photographs of skies and sunsets turned into abstract works of color and light.

PHOTOGRAPHY DONALD CHRISTIE

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN TREVOR JACKSON

246

247

“I had been through all these things so it was me taking my visual language back to its purest form of natural light and color,” says Jackson. “Capturing that was really cathartic for me. It was like a cleanse of what had been before so it was stripping things back to a minimalist level. To get myself away from all the sadness and to focus on something beautiful and natural—that was like a spiritual experience. It really was like visual therapy. And it was like a real turning point for me.”

After “Nowhere” came other acclaimed exhibitions, notably one in Paris called “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Forever,” that consisted of abstract magnified images of vinyl grooves and the dirt and clicks that accumulate over time. The inspiration for that exhibit came when Jackson realized he had over 50,000 records in his collection, but hasn’t exactly taken the best care of them.

“There’s dust, grime, beer, my sweat—these records are my journey,” says Jackson. “And every time you play a bit of vinyl you’re wearing out that groove and distorting that object. I found that quite fascinating. So I took those scratched records, many of them that I had played since my youth, and photographed them and found there was a real beauty there.”

That 2014 exhibition got Jackson back into making new music, sampling the very sections of the records he photographed into new tracks, ultimately leading to 2015’s Format, a unique album of 12 tracks each released in a separate limited edition physical format (from 7”s to eight tracks) accompanied by a multiscreen installation in a car park in London’s Soho. It was a decidedly analog return that spoke to Jackson’s tendencies to avoid contextless platforms where the intent behind the music can be lost. And whether releasing his Metal Dance compilations of EMB/Industrial music or playing “weird” electronic tracks on his NTS radio show, it seems that Jackson has learned how to love music again. It was also an ideal segue into his more commercial work.

BMW, Coca-Cola, and Nike are just a few of the big companies who have looked to Jackson to bring an individual spark to their campaigns. Perhaps his most ambitious commercial campaign was for the Los Angeles launch of the Lexus CT200h, where he created a sound and light performance that had two cars communicating with each other through pulsating light and subbass frequencies.

“These jobs can only work if the client understands you. If the client just wants to employ you because they know your name and think you’re cool and they don’t understand your culture and where you come from, then it’s never going to be a good experience,” says Jackson. “Most brands approach me because they like that I don’t compromise. I mean, I’m not the easiest person to work with but I think I can give people the results they want.”

Some of Jackson’s most satisfying commercial design projects have been with fashion brands including Stüssy, for whom he created a line of T-shirts in 2013 with phrases like “Can

You Feel It?” pulled from classic records from his past. It aligns with his own experience growing up on Stüssy—Jackson still has one of their first T-shirts.

“I’ve been really lucky to work with some of the [best] fashion brands in the world. I mean I worked with Stone Island which for me is more than a fashion brand—it’s a fuckin’ foundation,” he says.

“I mean I’ve always bought Massimo Osti’s stuff. I was addicted to it, so that was an amazing experience going to the factory and seeing their amazing archive. That was an honor to work for them.”

Growing up in ’80s London under the influence of DIY hip-hop culture and the fashion tribes of the warehouse scene, Jackson recalls a time when individuality was the name of the game.

“I think the problem is that concept of being original and unique is becoming lost,” he says. “Unfortunately I think that world has become very materialistic. It’s very difficult for young people because they are constantly bombarded with aspirational things. I mean when the Nike Jordan came out in ‘85 or whenever, I wanted a pair, but most of my aspirations were creative ones.”

“ These people come from a hiphop culture that is so powerful with roots... and they’re going to negate that by wanting to be part of this facile European fashion world.”

For someone brought up on the DIY Gucci and Louis Vuitton reconstructions of Harlem’s Dapper Dan, Jackson looks on in dismay at the aspirational conformity in today’s hip-hop scene.

“I used to love the way Dapper Dan and people like Biz Markie were wearing all this designer stuff but it was very much about subverting the brands. They were taking things they couldn’t afford, from a culture that wasn’t theirs and they were sticking their fingers up to it,” he says.

Now that artists like Pharrell and Kanye West have become so fully ingrained in the world of high fashion, Jackson feels it detracts from their ability to stand against that very establishment.

The same can be said for Dapper Dan’s recent collaboration with Gucci, which includes a capsule collection and the resurrection of his Harlem atelier—now “powered” by official Gucci fabrics.

The legitimization of hip-hop in the fashion world has taken away a healthy amount of its authenticity. The braggadocios luxury cosigns once touted by rappers have been replaced by bona fide product placement.

“These people come from a hip-hop culture that is so powerful with roots that resonate across the planet with real meaning and purpose—and they’re going to negate that by wanting to be part of this facile European fashion world,” laments Jackson. “It’s bollocks. But I don’t even know what hip-hop culture is anymore.”

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251

“I had been through all these things so it was me taking my visual language back to its purest form of natural light and color,” says Jackson. “Capturing that was really cathartic for me. It was like a cleanse of what had been before so it was stripping things back to a minimalist level. To get myself away from all the sadness and to focus on something beautiful and natural—that was like a spiritual experience. It really was like visual therapy. And it was like a real turning point for me.”

After “Nowhere” came other acclaimed exhibitions, notably one in Paris called “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, Forever,” that consisted of abstract magnified images of vinyl grooves and the dirt and clicks that accumulate over time. The inspiration for that exhibit came when Jackson realized he had over 50,000 records in his collection, but hasn’t exactly taken the best care of them.

“There’s dust, grime, beer, my sweat—these records are my journey,” says Jackson. “And every time you play a bit of vinyl you’re wearing out that groove and distorting that object. I found that quite fascinating. So I took those scratched records, many of them that I had played since my youth, and photographed them and found there was a real beauty there.”

That 2014 exhibition got Jackson back into making new music, sampling the very sections of the records he photographed into new tracks, ultimately leading to 2015’s Format, a unique album of 12 tracks each released in a separate limited edition physical format (from 7”s to eight tracks) accompanied by a multiscreen installation in a car park in London’s Soho. It was a decidedly analog return that spoke to Jackson’s tendencies to avoid contextless platforms where the intent behind the music can be lost. And whether releasing his Metal Dance compilations of EMB/Industrial music or playing “weird” electronic tracks on his NTS radio show, it seems that Jackson has learned how to love music again. It was also an ideal segue into his more commercial work.

BMW, Coca-Cola, and Nike are just a few of the big companies who have looked to Jackson to bring an individual spark to their campaigns. Perhaps his most ambitious commercial campaign was for the Los Angeles launch of the Lexus CT200h, where he created a sound and light performance that had two cars communicating with each other through pulsating light and subbass frequencies.

“These jobs can only work if the client understands you. If the client just wants to employ you because they know your name and think you’re cool and they don’t understand your culture and where you come from, then it’s never going to be a good experience,” says Jackson. “Most brands approach me because they like that I don’t compromise. I mean, I’m not the easiest person to work with but I think I can give people the results they want.”

Some of Jackson’s most satisfying commercial design projects have been with fashion brands including Stüssy, for whom he created a line of T-shirts in 2013 with phrases like “Can

You Feel It?” pulled from classic records from his past. It aligns with his own experience growing up on Stüssy—Jackson still has one of their first T-shirts.

“I’ve been really lucky to work with some of the [best] fashion brands in the world. I mean I worked with Stone Island which for me is more than a fashion brand—it’s a fuckin’ foundation,” he says.

“I mean I’ve always bought Massimo Osti’s stuff. I was addicted to it, so that was an amazing experience going to the factory and seeing their amazing archive. That was an honor to work for them.”

Growing up in ’80s London under the influence of DIY hip-hop culture and the fashion tribes of the warehouse scene, Jackson recalls a time when individuality was the name of the game.

“I think the problem is that concept of being original and unique is becoming lost,” he says. “Unfortunately I think that world has become very materialistic. It’s very difficult for young people because they are constantly bombarded with aspirational things. I mean when the Nike Jordan came out in ‘85 or whenever, I wanted a pair, but most of my aspirations were creative ones.”

“ These people come from a hiphop culture that is so powerful with roots... and they’re going to negate that by wanting to be part of this facile European fashion world.”

For someone brought up on the DIY Gucci and Louis Vuitton reconstructions of Harlem’s Dapper Dan, Jackson looks on in dismay at the aspirational conformity in today’s hip-hop scene.

“I used to love the way Dapper Dan and people like Biz Markie were wearing all this designer stuff but it was very much about subverting the brands. They were taking things they couldn’t afford, from a culture that wasn’t theirs and they were sticking their fingers up to it,” he says.

Now that artists like Pharrell and Kanye West have become so fully ingrained in the world of high fashion, Jackson feels it detracts from their ability to stand against that very establishment.

The same can be said for Dapper Dan’s recent collaboration with Gucci, which includes a capsule collection and the resurrection of his Harlem atelier—now “powered” by official Gucci fabrics.

The legitimization of hip-hop in the fashion world has taken away a healthy amount of its authenticity. The braggadocios luxury cosigns once touted by rappers have been replaced by bona fide product placement.

“These people come from a hip-hop culture that is so powerful with roots that resonate across the planet with real meaning and purpose—and they’re going to negate that by wanting to be part of this facile European fashion world,” laments Jackson. “It’s bollocks. But I don’t even know what hip-hop culture is anymore.”

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Words Ross Wilson

Photography Luke Weller

Supreme Graphic T-Shirts: A Personal Retrospective An affordable form of art, a vehicle to air your social and political views, a mobile billboard to show your appreciation for your favorite brand, an expression of your personality—or simply a more decorative way of wearing clothes—the graphic T-shirt can tick all of these boxes and more.

Reasonably cheap to produce, easy to wear, and open to a multitude of designs, the printed tee has become the staple good of the “streetwear” industry.

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My relationship with the brand Supreme happened purely by accident. While skating around the streets of downtown Manhattan on my first trip to NYC, in October 1994, I found the newly opened store by chance. Back then Supreme wasn’t so much a brand, more a hub for the local downtown skate scene—a clubhouse for skaters to hang out, watch skate videos, and meet up to go skate some spots. Primarily selling products from established skateboard brands, Supreme’s in-house offering was initially limited to a few screen-printed T-shirts. There was the simple (but now iconic) Box Logo design as a standard shop tee, but what interested me most was their overall approach to graphic tees.

Back then, the Southern Californian skateboard brands (who ran the industry for the most part) would usually just stick a board graphic on their shirts, as apparel came as more of an afterthought versus the hard goods. Supreme did things a little differently and produced a line of shirts that would stand alone regardless of your interest in skateboarding. Instead of just producing skatecentric designs, they took inspiration from all the activities and interests that resonated with them—punk, reggae, soul, hip-hop, art, photography, movies, American football, boxing, designer brands, and New York’s underground subculture in general.

For someone growing up in London, the New York vibe felt a lot closer to home than that of skateboarding’s SoCal epicenter, so these striking and original designs really grabbed my attention.

The Supreme T-shirts felt original, looked great, and were also very cheap back then—a $24 tee with a $2/£1 exchange rate felt like a bargain, so I would always stock up on a selection during each visit to the Lafayette Street store.

Many of their early designs “remixed” existing logos and images to incorporate Supreme branding, in a similar vibe to the way Harlem tailor Dapper Dan took luxury fashion houses to the streets with his monogram tracksuits. Supreme cheekily took the look of high-end brands like Gucci, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton from the boutiques of Fifth Avenue and brought them to the streets of downtown SoHo. Nothing was too sacred for the skate shop to appropriate. It was all part of Supreme’s appeal, they simply didn’t appear to give a damn about who they robbed or annoyed—very much in keeping with the outlaw nature of skateboarding itself.

SSUR-Plus, Nom De Guerre, IRAK, Rockers NYC, DQM, Nort 235, Clientele, and Orchard Street were all born from this scene, joining the likes of Gimme 5 from London, San Francisco’s HUF, and Tokyo’s NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, and A Bathing Ape as figureheads of the global movement. For these brands, it was often printed T-shirts and hats that served as the entry-level item for most consumers looking to buy into the brand at a reasonable price.

With the inevitable oversaturation of new “T-shirt brands” appearing on a monthly basis throughout the early-mid ’00s, some companies looked at expanding their offering to more expensive “cut-and-sew” products like button-down shirts, trousers, and outerwear (with varying degrees of success), while others stuck to their streetwear roots with a core of print tees and hoods. Many of these brands went on to become hugely successful labels, while others simply couldn’t keep up and sadly faded into oblivion.

Supreme may have been closely associated with this street fashion movement by many, but they always stuck to their own path both creatively and in their business outlook. When the trend for street fashion took off in a mainstream way, most streetwear brands capitalized on the trend by expanding their distribution, and soon brands like The Hundreds, HUF, and Diamond Supply Co. were readily available in chain stores and malls across the globe.

Supreme’s James Jebbia however, took the opposite approach, by choosing to tighten the sale of Supreme products, restricting distribution of the brand almost entirely to their own handful of stores, rather than widening wholesale opportunities.

The now sought-after Box Logo T-shirt was retired from the shelves as a staple shop tee and held back for special collaborations and landmark occasions, thus making it an even more desired (and almost mythical) piece. Playing the long game gave Supreme even more core credibility and, with demand far outweighing supply, intensified hunger for the brand.

Supreme may now be well known for their weird and wonderful range of accessories and their high-profile collaborations with a diverse list of heavyweights such as The North Face, COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT, and Stone Island; but regardless of the continued growth, their core will always be that of a downtown skate store selling printed T-shirts.

Now that Supreme is a global phenomenon, it’s hard to imagine them pulling such audacious stunts. Back then it was just a single-door skate shop with very few outsiders paying attention, until the infamous Louis Vuitton cease-and-desist suit that came in 2000 when the French fashion giant took offense to Supreme’s monogram tees and decks.

Having recently let go of a huge majority of my personal Supreme collection, I’ve been looking back on some of my favorite graphic T-shirts from the brand over the past 23 years.

My favorite era of Supreme tees was undoubtedly 2000-2005, when the cult brand was still relatively unknown outside certain pockets of NYC, Tokyo, London, and Paris.

As the “streetwear” scene grew in popularity in the early ’00s, Supreme was lumped in with a movement they may or may not feel a part of. Downtown New York was a melting pot of creativity at the time, with low rent spaces on the Lower East Side allowing young designers and retailers to open shop and introduce their brands to the world. Prohibit, ALIFE, The Reed Space/Staple,

Back then, the print runs were more limited and the brand still had enough anonymity to allow the freedom to produce some boundary-pushing designs. And they still look as good today as when first released. Here is a small selection of my favorites and the story behind them.

253

Words Ross Wilson

Photography Luke Weller

Supreme Graphic T-Shirts: A Personal Retrospective An affordable form of art, a vehicle to air your social and political views, a mobile billboard to show your appreciation for your favorite brand, an expression of your personality—or simply a more decorative way of wearing clothes—the graphic T-shirt can tick all of these boxes and more.

Reasonably cheap to produce, easy to wear, and open to a multitude of designs, the printed tee has become the staple good of the “streetwear” industry.

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My relationship with the brand Supreme happened purely by accident. While skating around the streets of downtown Manhattan on my first trip to NYC, in October 1994, I found the newly opened store by chance. Back then Supreme wasn’t so much a brand, more a hub for the local downtown skate scene—a clubhouse for skaters to hang out, watch skate videos, and meet up to go skate some spots. Primarily selling products from established skateboard brands, Supreme’s in-house offering was initially limited to a few screen-printed T-shirts. There was the simple (but now iconic) Box Logo design as a standard shop tee, but what interested me most was their overall approach to graphic tees.

Back then, the Southern Californian skateboard brands (who ran the industry for the most part) would usually just stick a board graphic on their shirts, as apparel came as more of an afterthought versus the hard goods. Supreme did things a little differently and produced a line of shirts that would stand alone regardless of your interest in skateboarding. Instead of just producing skatecentric designs, they took inspiration from all the activities and interests that resonated with them—punk, reggae, soul, hip-hop, art, photography, movies, American football, boxing, designer brands, and New York’s underground subculture in general.

For someone growing up in London, the New York vibe felt a lot closer to home than that of skateboarding’s SoCal epicenter, so these striking and original designs really grabbed my attention.

The Supreme T-shirts felt original, looked great, and were also very cheap back then—a $24 tee with a $2/£1 exchange rate felt like a bargain, so I would always stock up on a selection during each visit to the Lafayette Street store.

Many of their early designs “remixed” existing logos and images to incorporate Supreme branding, in a similar vibe to the way Harlem tailor Dapper Dan took luxury fashion houses to the streets with his monogram tracksuits. Supreme cheekily took the look of high-end brands like Gucci, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton from the boutiques of Fifth Avenue and brought them to the streets of downtown SoHo. Nothing was too sacred for the skate shop to appropriate. It was all part of Supreme’s appeal, they simply didn’t appear to give a damn about who they robbed or annoyed—very much in keeping with the outlaw nature of skateboarding itself.

SSUR-Plus, Nom De Guerre, IRAK, Rockers NYC, DQM, Nort 235, Clientele, and Orchard Street were all born from this scene, joining the likes of Gimme 5 from London, San Francisco’s HUF, and Tokyo’s NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, and A Bathing Ape as figureheads of the global movement. For these brands, it was often printed T-shirts and hats that served as the entry-level item for most consumers looking to buy into the brand at a reasonable price.

With the inevitable oversaturation of new “T-shirt brands” appearing on a monthly basis throughout the early-mid ’00s, some companies looked at expanding their offering to more expensive “cut-and-sew” products like button-down shirts, trousers, and outerwear (with varying degrees of success), while others stuck to their streetwear roots with a core of print tees and hoods. Many of these brands went on to become hugely successful labels, while others simply couldn’t keep up and sadly faded into oblivion.

Supreme may have been closely associated with this street fashion movement by many, but they always stuck to their own path both creatively and in their business outlook. When the trend for street fashion took off in a mainstream way, most streetwear brands capitalized on the trend by expanding their distribution, and soon brands like The Hundreds, HUF, and Diamond Supply Co. were readily available in chain stores and malls across the globe.

Supreme’s James Jebbia however, took the opposite approach, by choosing to tighten the sale of Supreme products, restricting distribution of the brand almost entirely to their own handful of stores, rather than widening wholesale opportunities.

The now sought-after Box Logo T-shirt was retired from the shelves as a staple shop tee and held back for special collaborations and landmark occasions, thus making it an even more desired (and almost mythical) piece. Playing the long game gave Supreme even more core credibility and, with demand far outweighing supply, intensified hunger for the brand.

Supreme may now be well known for their weird and wonderful range of accessories and their high-profile collaborations with a diverse list of heavyweights such as The North Face, COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT, and Stone Island; but regardless of the continued growth, their core will always be that of a downtown skate store selling printed T-shirts.

Now that Supreme is a global phenomenon, it’s hard to imagine them pulling such audacious stunts. Back then it was just a single-door skate shop with very few outsiders paying attention, until the infamous Louis Vuitton cease-and-desist suit that came in 2000 when the French fashion giant took offense to Supreme’s monogram tees and decks.

Having recently let go of a huge majority of my personal Supreme collection, I’ve been looking back on some of my favorite graphic T-shirts from the brand over the past 23 years.

My favorite era of Supreme tees was undoubtedly 2000-2005, when the cult brand was still relatively unknown outside certain pockets of NYC, Tokyo, London, and Paris.

As the “streetwear” scene grew in popularity in the early ’00s, Supreme was lumped in with a movement they may or may not feel a part of. Downtown New York was a melting pot of creativity at the time, with low rent spaces on the Lower East Side allowing young designers and retailers to open shop and introduce their brands to the world. Prohibit, ALIFE, The Reed Space/Staple,

Back then, the print runs were more limited and the brand still had enough anonymity to allow the freedom to produce some boundary-pushing designs. And they still look as good today as when first released. Here is a small selection of my favorites and the story behind them.

253

Barbara Kruger T-Shirt - 1997 Supreme’s iconic box logo was created after original designs for the shop’s branding were rejected by founder James Jebbia for looking “too flat.” He gave his designer a book by New York conceptual artist Barbara Kruger for inspiration and the infamous red box logo was born. A few years after opening on Lafayette Street, Supreme once again took inspiration from Kruger’s work by adopting her iconic piece I Shop Therefore I Am for a T-shirt graphic. Keeping the same layout as the original painting but ironically replacing her anti-consumerism slogan with their own store branding. Despite Kruger’s personal views on Supreme, this graphic remains one of Supreme’s all-time classics, two decades on.

Exploited T-Shirt - 2003 The rebellious nature of both punk rock and skateboarding seem to go hand in hand as scenes equally rooted in standing up to authority and expressing yourself through action or craft. It seemed only right that Supreme should flip a classic punk band logo and make it their own.

Shunning the obvious New York connection of the Ramones, British-born James Jebbia favored the logo from Scottish punk band The Exploited to create one of Supreme’s all-time classic T-shirt graphics. The same S/S 2003 season also saw a crafty logo flip using the logo of English punk band the Subhumans on a T-shirt design (which was later also used on a 5-panel cap). Although it may not be one of the most hyped pieces to some younger Supreme fans, for me it is one of the most important, in terms of the brand’s heritage and influences.

254

255

Barbara Kruger T-Shirt - 1997 Supreme’s iconic box logo was created after original designs for the shop’s branding were rejected by founder James Jebbia for looking “too flat.” He gave his designer a book by New York conceptual artist Barbara Kruger for inspiration and the infamous red box logo was born. A few years after opening on Lafayette Street, Supreme once again took inspiration from Kruger’s work by adopting her iconic piece I Shop Therefore I Am for a T-shirt graphic. Keeping the same layout as the original painting but ironically replacing her anti-consumerism slogan with their own store branding. Despite Kruger’s personal views on Supreme, this graphic remains one of Supreme’s all-time classics, two decades on.

Exploited T-Shirt - 2003 The rebellious nature of both punk rock and skateboarding seem to go hand in hand as scenes equally rooted in standing up to authority and expressing yourself through action or craft. It seemed only right that Supreme should flip a classic punk band logo and make it their own.

Shunning the obvious New York connection of the Ramones, British-born James Jebbia favored the logo from Scottish punk band The Exploited to create one of Supreme’s all-time classic T-shirt graphics. The same S/S 2003 season also saw a crafty logo flip using the logo of English punk band the Subhumans on a T-shirt design (which was later also used on a 5-panel cap). Although it may not be one of the most hyped pieces to some younger Supreme fans, for me it is one of the most important, in terms of the brand’s heritage and influences.

254

255

Supreme NYC 10th Anniversary Kate Moss T-Shirt - 2004 One of my favorite of all Supreme’s graphic T-shirt designs was the shirt released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their original store on Lafayette Street.

The shirt’s graphic features an image of British supermodel Kate Moss with a contrasting bright red Supreme box logo. This may have seemed random to those who were not around 10 years prior, but it was a direct nod to the brand’s humble beginnings.

When Supreme opened their doors in downtown New York in April 1994, there was little marketing budget for the shop. The internet was in its infancy back then, and social media was nonexistent, so they went about promoting their new venture via the traditional skateboard medium of shop logo stickers.

At the time, the most prevalent adverts around Manhattan’s billboards and bus shelters were for Calvin Klein underwear. The campaign, shot by Mario Sorrenti, featured a simple black-and-white image of young supermodel Kate Moss that made a perfect contrast to the bright red box logo that Supreme’s crew strategically stuck on top. The placement of the sticker looked so good it was replicated all over town and there were soon very few CK promo posters that weren’t touched by the Supreme box logo sticker.

When it came to celebrating their landmark anniversary in 2004, Supreme produced a special commemorative T-shirt featuring the original Sorrenti image of Kate Moss, complete with the red box logo placed as it was back then. This was the first time I recall Supreme producing a T-shirt in smaller amounts than their usual runs, and actually creating a line outside the shop for a handful of the tees to be sold each day over the course of a week. This shirt was given to me by then-store manager Ryan Hickey and remains one of Supreme’s all-time classic designs.

256

Supreme NYC 10th Anniversary Kate Moss T-Shirt - 2004 One of my favorite of all Supreme’s graphic T-shirt designs was the shirt released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their original store on Lafayette Street.

The shirt’s graphic features an image of British supermodel Kate Moss with a contrasting bright red Supreme box logo. This may have seemed random to those who were not around 10 years prior, but it was a direct nod to the brand’s humble beginnings.

When Supreme opened their doors in downtown New York in April 1994, there was little marketing budget for the shop. The internet was in its infancy back then, and social media was nonexistent, so they went about promoting their new venture via the traditional skateboard medium of shop logo stickers.

At the time, the most prevalent adverts around Manhattan’s billboards and bus shelters were for Calvin Klein underwear. The campaign, shot by Mario Sorrenti, featured a simple black-and-white image of young supermodel Kate Moss that made a perfect contrast to the bright red box logo that Supreme’s crew strategically stuck on top. The placement of the sticker looked so good it was replicated all over town and there were soon very few CK promo posters that weren’t touched by the Supreme box logo sticker.

When it came to celebrating their landmark anniversary in 2004, Supreme produced a special commemorative T-shirt featuring the original Sorrenti image of Kate Moss, complete with the red box logo placed as it was back then. This was the first time I recall Supreme producing a T-shirt in smaller amounts than their usual runs, and actually creating a line outside the shop for a handful of the tees to be sold each day over the course of a week. This shirt was given to me by then-store manager Ryan Hickey and remains one of Supreme’s all-time classic designs.

256

Nomads T-Shirt - 2004 One of Supreme’s signatures right from the start was their tendency to rework the logos and imagery of existing brands and graphics for their T-shirt designs. From musical acts as diverse as Led Zeppelin to James Brown and brands ranging from Coca-Cola to Gucci, nothing seemed off-limits for the Supreme remix treatment.

With the exception of Louis Vuitton and their 2000 cease-and-desist issuance, most of these flips went unnoticed due to their small runs, limited distribution, and lack of online coverage. Not everything works out in Supreme’s favor however, and back in 2004 they felt the wrath of notorious motorcycle gang Hell’s Angels.

Taking the infamous winged skull logo of the Angels for a T-shirt graphic looked incredible but the local chapter of the MC were less than impressed when they discovered someone using their sacred symbol. The New York store was strong-armed to withdraw all remaining shirts from the shelves to avoid any further “issues.”

The “Nomads” T-shirt was a simple concept, but its notoriety has ensured classic status in the Supreme archives. Considering the current popularity of the brand, Supreme may have to be a little more careful of whose designs they “borrow” nowadays!

Illegal Business Controls America T-Shirt - 2005 In 2005, Supreme released a T-shirt featuring a grainy black and white photograph of a man being held in handcuffs by FBI agents with a back print featuring lyrics from the Boogie Down Productions song “Illegal Business.”

The “Illegal Business Controls America” graphic is not only a great looking T-shirt but also has an interesting backstory. Two years prior to the shirt’s release, a group of Manhattan brokers conned investors out of $2.5 million via fraudulent shares. One of these men, Igor Kotlyar, happened to be wearing a Supreme Box Logo tee when he was arrested, a photo that ran in The New York Post.

That same photo is used on the T-shirt, with Kotlyar’s eyes censored.

259

Nomads T-Shirt - 2004 One of Supreme’s signatures right from the start was their tendency to rework the logos and imagery of existing brands and graphics for their T-shirt designs. From musical acts as diverse as Led Zeppelin to James Brown and brands ranging from Coca-Cola to Gucci, nothing seemed off-limits for the Supreme remix treatment.

With the exception of Louis Vuitton and their 2000 cease-and-desist issuance, most of these flips went unnoticed due to their small runs, limited distribution, and lack of online coverage. Not everything works out in Supreme’s favor however, and back in 2004 they felt the wrath of notorious motorcycle gang Hell’s Angels.

Taking the infamous winged skull logo of the Angels for a T-shirt graphic looked incredible but the local chapter of the MC were less than impressed when they discovered someone using their sacred symbol. The New York store was strong-armed to withdraw all remaining shirts from the shelves to avoid any further “issues.”

The “Nomads” T-shirt was a simple concept, but its notoriety has ensured classic status in the Supreme archives. Considering the current popularity of the brand, Supreme may have to be a little more careful of whose designs they “borrow” nowadays!

Illegal Business Controls America T-Shirt - 2005 In 2005, Supreme released a T-shirt featuring a grainy black and white photograph of a man being held in handcuffs by FBI agents with a back print featuring lyrics from the Boogie Down Productions song “Illegal Business.”

The “Illegal Business Controls America” graphic is not only a great looking T-shirt but also has an interesting backstory. Two years prior to the shirt’s release, a group of Manhattan brokers conned investors out of $2.5 million via fraudulent shares. One of these men, Igor Kotlyar, happened to be wearing a Supreme Box Logo tee when he was arrested, a photo that ran in The New York Post.

That same photo is used on the T-shirt, with Kotlyar’s eyes censored.

259

Masthead

SPRING

18

SUMMER

Issue 16 Publisher

Photographers

Distribution

David Fischer

James W Mataitis Bailey,

Tabitha Tan, Fania Folaji

Joseph Barrett, Editor-in-Chief

Sean Alexander Geraghty,

Special Thanks

Pete Williams

Nicolas Robin Hobbs,

ACRONYM, A Bathing Ape, Civilist,

Andrew Jacobs,

N.HOOLYWOOD, NOAH, Pleasures,

Executive Editor

Rupert LaMontagne,

Richardson, Scott A. Sant’Angelo,

Jeff Carvalho

Jeremy Jude Lee, Zhi Li, Bryan Luna,

the family of Fredo Santana

Gilbert Martinez, Takeshi Matsumi, Creative Director

Adrian Mesko, Angel Pham,

Printing

Edward Chiu

Florian Renner, Ash Reynolds,

Feindruckerei

Benjamin Robinson, Takahito Sasaki,

feindruckerei.de

Art Direction & Design

Clare Shilland, Chris Tang,

Son Mok

Paolo Testa, Vuhlandes, Luke Weller,

Contact

Thomas Welch

magazine@highsnobiety.com advertising@highsnobiety.com

Fashion Director Atip W

Brand Manager Hendrik Jürgens

Brock Cardiner, Jian DeLeon

HQ Address Titel Media GmbH

Editorial Directors Head of Production

Highsnobiety Magazine

Klaudia Podsiadlo

Ritterstrasse 9, 10969 Berlin Germany

Editors Jake Boyer, Chris Danforth,

Brand Partnerships Team

Alec Leach

Lindsay Blue, Nathan Chapman,

NY Address

Jason Danahy, John Flood,

Highsnobiety, Inc.

Copy Editor

Ben Hakki, Sam Hart, Caitlin LeRoux,

Suite 1104, 26 Broadway

Peter Suh

Angus MacEwan, Tiffany Macquet,

NY, NY 10004

Rob Miller, Emily Owens,

United States

Contributors

Kristina Truong

Arthur Bray, Aleks Eror,

Website

Anya Firestone,

Brand Partnerships, Italian Market

Angelo Flaccavento,

JB Media

Kyle Hodge, Naavin Karimbux,

advertising@jbmedia.com

highsnobiety.com

Zach Macklovitch, Eugene Rabkin, Andy Thomas, Ross Wilson

Highsnobiety is a trademark under license from Titel Media GmbH. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

All prices and credits are accurate at time of going to press but are subject to change. Manuscripts, photos, drawings and other materials submitted must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Highsnobiety Magazine cannot be held responsible for any solicited material.

260

261

both.com

@bothparis

Masthead

SPRING

18

SUMMER

Issue 16 Publisher

Photographers

Distribution

David Fischer

James W Mataitis Bailey,

Tabitha Tan, Fania Folaji

Joseph Barrett, Editor-in-Chief

Sean Alexander Geraghty,

Special Thanks

Pete Williams

Nicolas Robin Hobbs,

ACRONYM, A Bathing Ape, Civilist,

Andrew Jacobs,

N.HOOLYWOOD, NOAH, Pleasures,

Executive Editor

Rupert LaMontagne,

Richardson, Scott A. Sant’Angelo,

Jeff Carvalho

Jeremy Jude Lee, Zhi Li, Bryan Luna,

the family of Fredo Santana

Gilbert Martinez, Takeshi Matsumi, Creative Director

Adrian Mesko, Angel Pham,

Printing

Edward Chiu

Florian Renner, Ash Reynolds,

Feindruckerei

Benjamin Robinson, Takahito Sasaki,

feindruckerei.de

Art Direction & Design

Clare Shilland, Chris Tang,

Son Mok

Paolo Testa, Vuhlandes, Luke Weller,

Contact

Thomas Welch

magazine@highsnobiety.com advertising@highsnobiety.com

Fashion Director Atip W

Brand Manager Hendrik Jürgens

Brock Cardiner, Jian DeLeon

HQ Address Titel Media GmbH

Editorial Directors Head of Production

Highsnobiety Magazine

Klaudia Podsiadlo

Ritterstrasse 9, 10969 Berlin Germany

Editors Jake Boyer, Chris Danforth,

Brand Partnerships Team

Alec Leach

Lindsay Blue, Nathan Chapman,

NY Address

Jason Danahy, John Flood,

Highsnobiety, Inc.

Copy Editor

Ben Hakki, Sam Hart, Caitlin LeRoux,

Suite 1104, 26 Broadway

Peter Suh

Angus MacEwan, Tiffany Macquet,

NY, NY 10004

Rob Miller, Emily Owens,

United States

Contributors

Kristina Truong

Arthur Bray, Aleks Eror,

Website

Anya Firestone,

Brand Partnerships, Italian Market

Angelo Flaccavento,

JB Media

Kyle Hodge, Naavin Karimbux,

advertising@jbmedia.com

highsnobiety.com

Zach Macklovitch, Eugene Rabkin, Andy Thomas, Ross Wilson

Highsnobiety is a trademark under license from Titel Media GmbH. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

All prices and credits are accurate at time of going to press but are subject to change. Manuscripts, photos, drawings and other materials submitted must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Highsnobiety Magazine cannot be held responsible for any solicited material.

260

261

both.com

@bothparis

PRESLEY’S CHOICE RAILMASTER MASTER CHRONOMETER Exclusively at OMEGA Flagship Boutiques and selected retailers worldwide

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