Alex James Heals With Pleasure

July 07, 2023

I remember the first time I saw Pleasures. It was back in 2017 when they released the iconic Kate Moss tee, an early offering of the brand, showcasing their cutting edge pop cultural knowledge and mischievousness. Here, I was six years later wearing that same tee in front of Alex James, cofounder of the iconoclastic brand.

Back in the day, the cease and desists came regularly. Now, Pleasures regularly collaborates within the culture. Over the years, Pleasures has worked with iconic brands from Doc Martens and The Grateful Dead to Rolling Stone. Most recently, they’ve worked with Puma on reimagining the classic Velophasis shoe. Aside from Pleasures, Alex also works in the holistic health industry at Mount Sunny, a healing space specializing in acupuncture and cupping.

Interview by Jard Lerebours
Photos courtesy of Pleasures

office sat down with Alex to talk about Chopped and Screwed music, working with Puma and fighting climate change.

Hey what’s up?

I’m in LA now but I’m from New Jersey. Where are you from?

Long Island

I just made a Long Island focused playlist.

Can you send that along? What’s on it?

Everything from Billy Joel to MF Doom, De La Soul, punk rock and hardcore. Tons of shit. You'll dig it. It's a mixture of New Jersey vs. Long Island vibes.

What are you wearing right now?

This is the Obama Matrix.

Wow, that's cool. I'm wearing a Pleasures tee right now. It's actually one of the first brands I bought for myself.

Let me see. Which one? Oh the Kate Moss one.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude, for sure. We probably got a CND on that one.

Really?

Richard Prince made this as a phrase painting in the nineties and then Kate Moss wore the t-shirt with the phrase on it to the opening.

And then we made it meta, the shirt never existed. And then somebody was like, no go.

Does that happen a lot? How do you deal with that?

No, because now we just work directly with people now. We're working directly with bands, image, licensing, artists, all types of proper shit.

We're Like a globalized thing now, right? We can't do the bootleg anymore and we haven't for a very long time.

I know that one of the first designs you did was the Morrissey's dead shirt.

I love Morrissey and I thought it was like a funny joke but people were definitely hot about it.

What's your favorite Smiths album?

I like Louder Than Bombs. I go back and forth with not listening to albums but just specific tracks.

I’ve seen Morrissey a bunch of times in concert. One time he left the concert, eight songs in because it was too cold and he didn't feel comfortable with the stuff he had to wear. People went berserk.

He's a menace. He’s like Kanye before Kanye.

I actually said that in an interview a while ago that Morrissey is my Kanye and it kind of circulated the internet for a little while [laughs].

If Pleasures was an album, what would it sound like?

I think it would sound like a Chopped and Screwed goth record.

Wow.

There’s a new wave of music out right now and we’re doing a project with DJ Micheal Watts. He was one of the O.G. guys in the Chopped and Screwed movement with DJ Screw.

He played me some stuff he’s doing with hardcore bands, it sounds fucking crazy.

I'm ready for that to start hitting the club.

I'll send you some tracks that are out right now.

Yeah, I'd appreciate that. Who wears Pleasures?

It's so many different types of people. It's people who aren't into streetwear, you know what I'm saying? It's people who are, mall rats, goth kids, people learning how to play musical instruments, people who are not on the internet that much. It's all different types of people that gravitate toward our brand because we speak with a different language. We use music, meme culture.

Pleasures is an inclusive thing. Everybody's welcome. You don’t even have to have a t-shirt from us. You can still enjoy what we do via social media or music sharing.

I know that Pleasures has had a lot of collabs from the Grateful Dead to Doc Martens. How do you decide on collaborators?

I think the first thing is that if we're gonna work with somebody, it has to be something that we would wear ourselves. I grew up wearing the Puma Clyde and Puma Suede. Some of my favorite artists growing up wore Pumas like The Beastie Boys and Glassjaw.

I will say, it's been a while since I wore Puma but I'm rocking it again just because I've been digging in their archives.

What has your experience been collabing with Puma?

Honestly, my experience has been pretty good. They're really open to trying stuff. They don’t really say no. They really care about the product.

Sometimes you can tell when someone’s just there to collect a check and just fucking go on to the next corporate job. It seems like everybody at Puma really cares about their job and gives it 110%.

How did you approach reimagining the Puma Velophasis?

We started from the ground up and really pieced it together and made it look dope and saw what we could change and improve upon.

I first learned about design through shoes. I was on a factory floor in Vietnam for this other company I was working for back in the day. Here, I am again working with Puma.

The original version of the Velophasis, the sole was much thinner. It was more like a Y2K late nineties vibe and we wanted to make it fatter and more substantial.

How does it feel returning to shoes after so many years in the industry?

I think footwear is always the key to an outfit. You know what I'm saying? I’m a big advocate for wearing my t-shirt inside out. Sometimes, the branding is too much.

I think shoes really say something about someone, more than your clothes.

What does a pair of Pleasures Puma Velophasis say about someone?

First of all, it's a fucking pink and purple shoe so it’s loud as hell, right? So you got some confidence if you're rocking this thing. And I also think it says ‘yo, I'm down, I'm different, and I'm here if you fuck with me or not?’.

The sales have been really good. It sold really well cause we put good energy out there and styled it in a lot of different ways.

We showed people that you can wear this shit with all black and it looks banging. You can wear it with shorts, you can wear it with anything.

I might buy a pair. So you're a partner at Mount Sunny? Do you see fashion as a tool for healing?

I have two amazing friends who started this concept called Mount Sunny. It's an acupuncture, cupping facility and store in Phoenix, Arizona. They brought me on board as a partner.

Healing is number one, right? You gotta get your mind right? You gotta get your body right for you to feel good externally. The business has really changed people's lives.

Your body is like a river and sometimes there's garbage in the river, you gotta get that garbage out, you gotta clear it out. You gotta fucking get it moving. Acupuncture and cupping really help with that.

There's a clothing component over there too. We’re using fully organic cotton grown in Texas and local food waste to dye the product, different colors.

How is that process different from your process with Pleasures?

Healing is the focus over there. It’s like having your own restaurant and you make a t-shirt. It’s more the healing and the service versus the clothing.

What advice do you have for folks trying to break into the fashion industry?

It's really negative but I'm gonna say don't do it. Choose something else, choose something on this earth that, that can help future existence. Try to find a solution for global warming or cure all these crazy diseases.

We need more problem solvers for the next generation and unfortunately, clothing is not in that equation. I got a three year old. I don’t know what his future’s looking like. This shit is looking crazy.

Fashion

Happy 424 Day!

Simon Rasmussen — What's going on?

Guillermo Andrade — Right now we're just setting everything up.

So, what are you doing, is it a party?

Well, I kind of felt universally forced, right? Because 4/24/24, I was just like, I don’t really have a choice here. The stars also just kind of aligned, so to be honest, I got this settlement that came with a bunch of clothes so I had this idea to give back to the kids who fuck with us by allowing them to buy our shit first. Not handing stuff out for free, but to do it in a way where we could skip the middleman of the industry, so to speak, and not allow clothes to disappear into the abyss of Farfetch or whatever else. So what we’re going to do is a sort of warehouse sale, which we’ve never done before so that was really exciting for me. I didn’t want to do just another warehouse sale, so it’s like a sample sale turns rager. We teamed up with Adidas and a couple of other sponsors, then drinks, DJs, and a performance.

Sick, I love it.

Yeah. My dream sample sale. Also, it’s not just hoodies and t-shirts here in there, it’s proper collections from the past three seasons. I’m also not picking and choosing, trying to make it accessible, like this was the only way I could afford to buy shit when I was a kid, bro. Sample sales were the thing I looked forward to the most.

I feel you. In New York, there's the annual CDG sale, which is when I used to cop all my CDG.

The only time I could afford Rick. I flew to New York once for a Rick sample sale and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I got invited. And it was mental. I still have those pieces. I will never sell them. Not even because I got 'em cheap. It was also just really fun. Even on the flight to New York, I was like, I can't believe I'm going to New York for a sample sale, what a fucking loser I am. But it was like the adult version of when I was a kid and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I'm 20-something and I'm still doing the thing I was doing in high school. So I hope we can create moments like that for kids here in LA.

Yeah. I love that. It’s important to connect with them; they’re essentially creating the brand. If you don't have them, good luck.

I mean, yeah. Fuck, bro. It's cool that we've been around for this long. I mean, it got a little rocky there for a second I think, for all of us. So coming out of it, tomorrow is a celebration. And it’s like an odd day of the week. It's a Wednesday, super random. And now that we've set it up, the homies are all like, Yo, I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me jump on stage, let me do this, and that's really what it's always been about. It's not some other strategy to get likes on the internet.

That’s how the best things happen, you just couldn’t help yourself. It was intuitive.

Yeah, it all came together in a really nice way.

Would you say that’s how 424 started as well? I remember we met in like 2010 on Fairfax and I was visiting with Rasmus…

Oh bro, it’s probably the time when I started the branch… do you remember Cecilia from Black Dakini? She’s the one that introduced me to CIFF and honestly, I didn’t even care what she was doing, I was just like, I’m coming, I’ll go with you. She said she’d give me half of her booth and I said, Awesome count me in. At the time, I had just gotten my green card and I wasn't allowed to ever leave America, so Copenhagen was one of the first cities I went to when I could finally travel. I mean, you see what we did at CIFF bro? It became our fucking hub for half a decade.

That was a moment for sure.

I remember the first account I got was Antonioli, and he came super gangster, being like, You're going to sell me these clothes. And I was like, bro, I didn't come to sell clothes. I'm just kind of catching a vibe with my homie and I made these things. And he's like, No, you're going to sell it to me. And then I was like, Oh my god that’s Claudio Antonioli. So then I went home, I googled wholesale, and figured that shit out. [laughs]

[Laughs]

Like you said, I couldn't help myself, but I didn't just make t-shirts and hoodies either. I was really on my Rick wave, so I made my version of the Rick things. It was that meets like The Boondock Saints, because I'm still a little bit of a Cali bro, sort of rock kid, but not really. I like hip-hop, but I like the way the rock stars look. I like the contrast. I thought it was cool. After that, I just never stopped.

It was clear to me when I first met you that you were onto your own thing in LA. It made a lot of sense, and it was so cool. It was before 424 was its own brand; you just had the store and this really cool curation.

It was all my shit, bro. I was very, very invested in sharing all of these things that I was finding from all over the world, like Astrid Anderson. She was one of those designers at the time, so important to 424. The connection to Copenhagen specifically for me was huge. I had a big fan base there. It was incredible. And then here in LA, we were sharing the things that we were a part of and finding; it was still the early days of Fear of God, Rhude, Martine Rose. A lot of these brands, we were the first store to ever sell it — we were selling Hood By Air on the West Coast.

You had Rick as well, I remember.

Oh yeah. It took me a long time. But I got Rick, bro. By the time I had to close the store on Fairfax, I already had a Raf Simons account. I had reached my ultimate dream. It was really all the stuff I wanted to wear at the time. It was dope. The best of the best.

We had an office magazine newsstand in there as well.

Oh yeah, we did! I came to visit the one you had, and I was like, Yo, I got to bring this whole fucking thing over here. But yeah, in LA, after two days people forget you exist, but everyone’s been super supportive. We’re all 10 years older now. We've been around forever at this point.

It can be dangerous to take those breaks when you’re figuring shit out, but there’s something very genuine to this comeback you’re having.

Thank you, thank you. We’ve been in and out of those fucking showrooms in Paris for long enough. I've been in and out of these factories for the past 10 years of my life. We had to figure something out. And I think now really diving in, being in Italy full time and being there to develop these products over time, I think that the whole thing just really shows the suppliers respect you more. The people who are making your goods understand why you're making them. And I think now I finally got to the place where I'm not making Italian things, I’m making my clothes, I'm making Cali-centric shit, but with that European technicality and execution. With this Fall / Winter collection, it clicked.

So what’s the vision for the next year? What are you manifesting?

I'm just fucking relentless, bro. This is the way I want to live my life. Now that we are more aligned, more prepared, and have more experience, moving forward it is just more of becoming a fully functioning company that can provide and create opportunities for all of the people around me. We’ve been operating just on instinct for a long time.

Sustaining a business is scary, trust me I know.

Scary as fuck, dog. I just opened a store next to Bottega, bro, and it’s like what am I even doing? You have to just believe in the thing you're doing more than anybody else.

100%, and it seems like that’s what you’re doing.

And fashion’s kind of a competitive sport, as much as people don’t think it is. We can reach a certain level without losing ourselves. My biggest ambition at the moment is to create something that, when you leave one of our neighbors you come into our place you don’t feel that the level has been sacrificed at all. And it’s not easy.

Definitely. I wish I could be there tomorrow.

Thank you, bro. 10 years now. You’ve always shown me so much love. We have to do a booth or have the office part of the next 424 day. Shit let’s do a 424 day in New York.

That would be sick. Let's do it. I'm here. Let’s catch up soon.

Next season’s right around the corner so I’ll see you in Paris.

Yes, see you in Paris and Happy 424 day!

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