Alexander McQueen SS25

Office sat down with the stylist and designer a few weeks prior to Friday’s drop to discuss his early influences growing up in St. Louis, his creative relationship with music, and our mutual affection for HUF’s weed socks. 

Nick, where are you from originally?

I'm from St. Louis, then moved to L.A. I really like L.A. a lot but New York is so much fun. Probably because I don't live here. But being from St. Louis, you want to go to one of the two.

I feel like a lot of people who move to New York or L.A. from almost anywhere else I feel kind of resentful of where they're from. Do you feel that way at all?

No. I love St. Louis so much. I find all my friends know and it's like an ongoing joke that I can connect everything to St. Louis. I could try to bring it up in the conversation or if someone's like, "We're going to St. Louis." Everyone in the group just looks at me and they're like, "Nick." Like, Travis Scott’s Cacti— that's made in St. Louis. I rep St. Louis very hard because I don't want to feel ashamed of it. I learned everything there.

What's something that you learned there that you still refer to today?

Everything about fashion, and everything about running a brand. When I was in high school, I was walking down the street and passed this store— the only streetwear store in St. Louis. I saw they carried GOLF, so I ran in, and I'm just holding the shirt and they told me they were one of 40 stores that carried it, and they carried other brands too. And I'm like, “Holy fuck, you guys carry Supreme?" And they're like, "No." And I'm like, "All right, all right."
I became super obsessed with that store, to the point I'd go there after school every day. Finally, I got confident enough that one day I asked, "Can you guys give me homework to do? Can you guys teach me something?" And they said, ”Bring a notepad in tomorrow and write down every single brand that's in the store. And then, write the owner, write the creative director, write their competition, write who you would pair it with and then style an outfit with their stuff."

Amazing.

Eventually, they were like, "Okay, do you want to sweep the store?" Those guys really watched out for me. At the time, I was living in an apartment and had no money. I had just left college and was cut off from my family financially. My diet was like a Pop-Tart a day. That was around when I started forming my own brand, Stay Broke. But Seth, the guy that started the whole thing, just really took me under, connecting me to screen printers, showing me what it's like making a line sheet, telling me why it's important to do this, that, presentation. He would show me the line sheets from the brands I loved. Like HUF at the time, a huge brand. He would be like, "Come here. Look at these line sheets. This is how they plan their collection."

I feel like that wouldn't happen in New York or L.A. or in a big city, like that kind of apprenticeship experience. Valuable, very old school.

That's the essence of streetwear. I don't know, personally, if it really exists the way it used to anymore. I feel like it's just different now and especially with the pandemic. Everyone's goal, when you have a store, is to get the kid that's obsessed with you guys, that's obsessed with the store, that is just down to go get coffees for everyone and learn about brands and just want to talk about clothes for eight hours a day.

What was your favorite brand when you started there, that they had?

GOLF was my favorite. FTP. And I liked HUF. They had those weed socks—

I remember those. The best of times.

Those were fucking the coolest thing. There was a whole wall of weed socks and everyone would just come in and point. Sadly, the store closed during the pandemic.

Well, with COVID and the internet, it’s a hard time to have a store that's not based around a brand, and is built on selling other brands. So, it seems like you have really good relationships with other brands. Where does a sense of competition play into things? Do you feel competitive?

I'm not a competitive person at all when it comes to fashion. As a stylist too, I don't see someone else that puts an outfit together and feel like that's mine. That's someone else’s. They're on their own platform! If I had to pick my competition, it's all vintage. That’s the stuff that lasts. That's the stuff that's still around.

I see that your work is pretty heavy on nostalgia.

It's all based on nostalgia. Everything I do, it's all based on emotion and it's based on me seeing certain colors. Color is a very important way to express. In the past year, Holiday fully switched— we custom dye every single piece, so the black is a certain shade of black, as is the yellow from the last collection. This “harvest moon” color I created came from dyeing these hoodies from a color I called Moon and it's a mix of forest green, dark gray, a little bit of white, and then black and mixing it together because in my head that's what moons emulate. But I looked at it with the rest of the collection and realized it needed to be happier— we needed to pull the sun out of the moon. So we stripped it down, added more of this beautiful yellow, a little lighter with a dark undertone. It's so great. It's my favorite color we've ever done because it was so much process. Oddly enough there's actually a thing called harvest moon when the moon turns yellow. And it looks that exact color of the hoodies that we got. 

That’s a way to ensure uniqueness, which is a truly hard thing to do in your industry. In streetwear, we do see diversity, but you're also limited by the nature of the products. You're making hoodies. But in creating this palate with Holiday, with narrative and experience around each tone, you’ve given each piece purpose beyond being simply something already out there or too trendy. I appreciate as well that you've aligned yourself with like-minded creatives across various mediums— like musicians and artists. That's how I got to know your brand, through my friend The Blossom, and BROCKHAMPTON. I don't necessarily see that often in the industry.

I like working with people that I'm really friends with, honesty. I love that. And music is one of my favorite things ever. So if I'm doing a brand, and an up-and-coming artist has a mixtape dropping, I want them to use my platform. If this helps them in any way, it's going to help me too. We can all be honest about what helps us, instead of this cool, "Oh no, I'm doing you a favor."

Well, I think that's what collaboration is supposed to mean. But if you were to literally define what a “collab” these days has come to mean, it wouldn’t necessarily fit. It's more about marketing. What would your dream collaboration be?

I want to collab with people, that's it. It’s hard to say a specific collaboration because I'm always wanting to work with my friends. That's my favorite thing. Everyone I work with has to inspire me. I'm not friends with a single person that does not inspire me and that might be shallow, but I can get inspired by any single thing.

I don't think that's shallow. I think that's the opposite of shallow. What music is driving you lately?

I listen to Kevin's music. I listen to Whole Lotta Red, and I listen to Kanye. That's been my rotation. Oh my God, I also started listening to this dude, Dom McLean. This one song, Vincent has been lowkey is inspiring the next collection. I heard it when we were on set and I had my assistant. I'm like, "Bro, go find this song. I need this." And he found it and I listened to it on repeat all day.
 

What was one look that you did growing up that you regret?

Well, as a kid it's different because I was super insecure. I was a big kid and I was super insecure about my weight. I was not comfortable at all. I didn't have a good family relationship when I grew up, it was tough. so I was insecure about a lot of other things other than clothes, which makes sense why I make clothes now. I went to private school where you have to wear a uniform every day. As a form of rebellion, I picked my own clothes. Me making clothes is almost like a form of personal rebellion, still.
It just opened up a whole other world, where I’m fully in control. I pull inspiration from my old stuff. I just see old baby photos and I'm like, "That shirt looks fucking dope." This red polo with some blue embroidery, what the fuck, blue cuffs? Run it, we need this.

Like I said, it seems like there's a lot of nostalgia in your stuff.

There's so much nostalgia and I think that it's really important. Childhood was fucked for me.

Trust, I get it. It's just part of the story.