So your clothing line, it's like a whole business now with radio and video and everything else, but it started in Sacramento and then moved to New York. What caused that shift?
I knew in high school that it was either gonna be New York or LA just based on where the creative industries are. Though what caused it was I got accepted to Fordham university and that was looking like where I would be going to college. Then it also just seemed like more of a challenge in LA. LA had its opportunities already there and we didn't have as much coming from New York. And that was also where a creative community was sort of being built, with us and other creatives within New York City. So we just thought it was the better decision
Was that move tough considering when you usually want to start a clothing line, the cost of anything in New York is not cheap, especially looking at storefronts.
Right, the storefront itself, to this day, isn't something that I'm extremely concerned with. I mean, as it grows maybe a storefront is something I want to do down the line, but I don't know. That [A storefront] was never really a complication in my mind, but there were a lot of challenges that came with moving to New York itself for sure.
I'm from here so I could not imagine what it's like to completely pack up your life, but you did that so congrats.
It's a huge contrast, mostly in pace but I honestly prefer it at this point, the lifestyle of New York.
LA is all play and New York is all work. So I love LA. Everyone wants to make a t-shirt company and then have it kind of evolve into a clothing line. What were the first steps when it came to making a collection, and what were the hiccups in your process and how did you solve them?
Honestly, I never approached the brand itself as a t-shirt project, I guess. So even before I made any t-shirts I had around 30 designs. So to build the collection, it was just like, how many of these can I make physically? I wanna say the first collection was about five pieces, but when I was first starting, before I was even doing manufacturing or screen printing, I was printing them myself. So I literally had maybe 30 designs and I would let friends choose their favorite one and then I would heat press it myself.
So the hiccups were that you were making stuff on heat print and how did you evolve into cut and sew?
Yeah, it began with a heat press, and then everyone complained. I was like, ‘I have to do better than this.’ So I started calling all the local screen printers and eventually found a screen printer. When I was building collections from the jump, I always included in my "lookbooks" was the products that I knew I couldn't make, but I just mocked them up and just showed them with them. Back then, essentially my lookbooks were showing my designs because they were all made to order. So, once I was able to get a screen printer, the next step was finding out how to produce some of the cut and sew pieces I was designing. Then of course that was just through Googling, a lot of trial and error. Then eventually I had like my first cut and sew piece.
From then, you went from your first cut and sew piece to then evolving to other creative realms like films and a radio station. Why did you start branching into those fields and how did that come about?
I feel like even fashion itself was kind of just the medium or the choice of the day. So, jumping into film or clothing, any of this, it all was very natural. It wasn't like someone taught me how to do any of it, It was more so, I have an idea. I worked backward to figure out how to achieve the idea. So it’s really funny, I got into directing before I even got into movies or anything like that. So the way I approached it was, I had a vision for this commercial, for the radio curation that you're referring to and I was just writing a shot list. Then I went out and just followed the shot list and shot the video. After that experience of directing that commercial, I was just really engulfed and wanted to learn as much as possible.