Helmut Lang As Seen By Jeremy Deller

How was the Midnight Rave event?

It went really well. I would probably say it was our best rave to date so far, as far as turnout, music selection, just the overall aesthetic of the rave, and it was two floors, which was really cool. We've never done that before.

When was the first Midnight Rave and how did it come about?

The first Midnight Rave was towards the end of 2016. This was actually all Rocky's idea to begin with. He wanted to do this party and he wanted to have clothing to go along with it. So, he decided we would open a popup before the rave and sell the clothing we had. Any purchase made that day would get you access to the party later that night, so it was all a one-day thing. It was very, very DIY. We really didn't know how to throw a party at that point. It was just me and Rocky and we booked a random warehouse, got some DJ equipment in there and then had myself DJ, some of the A$AP guys DJed, Virgil DJed and then there was just a lot of guest DJs throughout the night.

How many have there been now? I'm guessing the Pandemic put a pause on it.

The whole rave series was really about to develop into a full world tour. At that time, before the pandemic, we were aiming to shift the rave to being a mini world tour where we would stop in each major city, do the pop up and then the party. We actually had scheduled the first stop to be in London right at the beginning of April of 2020 and we were working on other dates after that in Tokyo and Paris, but yeah, the Pandemic canceled all of that. So, the end of last year we kind of reshifted and we're starting over.

How did it feel having your debut New York Fashion Week show in September?

That was really cool. New York is somewhere I've always dreamt of showing one day, from when I was little going there for the first time and really getting inspired by the city. I actually came up with the name for Midnight while I was on my first trip in New York when I was a kid. So, it was cool to kind of full circle, come back and do our show, especially being locked in on the calendar for the first time. It was very exciting, but I was very nervous to do it as well. I wasn't sure how it would turn out being that we've never shown in New York. We're not from New York, but the turnout was great and overall I think it was super successful.

How did you first gain interest in fashion and at what point did you consider it a serious career path?

I think my first interest in fashion was when I was in middle school. I remember seeing Pharrell and Nigo and Kanye during that time period. That for me was the peak era of fashion that was more accessible to everybody. That wasn't really like fashion houses, you know, that's when BBC came around and Ice Cream, Bape, Mastermind. I discovered Supreme right around that time. I think that moment is when I really shifted from anything else I had interest in, to doing fashion, and drawing t-shirt designs on my homework and really trying to take it seriously. But I was so young at that point, it was just the thought in my head.

I had to finish school so once I was getting ready to graduate high school I started working on designs, just printing t-shirts out of a garage at that point.  I was able to get them on certain artists that I really liked, that's when I started to see that maybe I could this for a living. When I graduated high school was right around the time I met A$AP Rocky and I remember getting a phone call that he wanted to meet me and work on some stuff together. Since then, I dropped anything else I was focusing on to just shift my energy to clothing.

Do you feel like growing up in California has played a role in the aesthetic of Midnight Studios?
 

Yeah, definitely. Originally the brand was a hundred percent based on punk rock and primarily California punk bands, like Black Flag and Circle Jerks. I was taking a lot of references from their flyers. A lot of these big punk bands came from the coast of California and Orange County, so it was always pretty close to me. Growing up with a huge skateboard culture also developed what type of fashion I was getting more interested in. As far as gaining inspiration from the Nigos and Pharrells, I was just watching a lot of MTV at the time (laughs), I think that really opened my eyes to a whole different world that I wouldn't have discovered just being in California alone.

That actually leads me to my next question because your designs reference a lot of bands like Sex Pistols. Can you speak more on the influence of punk rock music on Midnight Studios?

Punk rock is something I've always been really into in general. That was the first music that I got into at home without it being whatever my parents played (laughs). I remember playing the Tony Hawk video games and the soundtrack was primarily punk rock. I was probably five or six at the time, so I would just play that soundtrack all day every day. I think that really stuck with me throughout the rest of my life. When I started the brand, I didn't really see any other brands focusing in on that particular time period of music or culture, aside from Vivienne Westwood. Vivienne was one of my favorite designers once I graduated high school and started looking into other people, so that really inspired the brand but I took a different approach to it, more graphic based. When I launched Midnight, it was primarily graphic t-shirts, hoodies, and hats, so I was recreating a lot of punk flyers, tour posters, whatever I could find really.

You would've only been around 21 when you started Midnight. How do you feel the brand has evolved as you've aged?

I think now that I'm older and I'm nearing my thirties, the brand has taken a turn from streetwear into a more luxury menswear space. I like to focus now on not so much the graphics, but more attention to detail, cleaner silhouettes. I'm mentoring the tailoring space; we have our suiting program now. We do keep our graphic t-shirts and hoodie programs alive, but my focus lately has been on more mature level garments and something a little bit more traditional and timeless while still keeping that edge of the original rock and roll roots that we started with. Essentially, finding a balance of growing older, but keeping the youth intact.

Did you initially find it hard to be accepted or taken seriously in the fashion industry?

Yeah, and it was primarily because I didn't have the resources to make garments that could keep up with a lot of the bigger names. I was pretty much doing the brand myself for the first five years, getting the t-shirts printed, walking around downtown trying to find anyone that could help me sew up jackets and pants when I wanted to enter the cut and sew space. For a long time, it really felt like the quality wasn't there and I wasn't able to do all of this on my own.

It wasn't until Virgil came around and I started picking his brain; he offered me tons of advice and help. He actually pointed me in the direction of a lot of people to start producing for me. When I wanted to start printing publications, he had the printing companies that would help me do it. Once me and him developed a better relationship is when I felt like, “okay, I kind of belong in this space." He gave me the collaboration in like 2017, I believe, and once that happened it kind of validated everything that I was hoping to do with my career. Since then, I feel pretty welcome in this space. I feel like we sit well along other brands.

My next question was going to be how the Off-White collaboration came about.

Yeah, so I had met Virgil in LA a few times prior to the collaboration and I met him once in Paris when I was with Rocky. I remember he followed me on Instagram one day and I think the first thing I did was immediately make a sample Off-White x Midnight collab and pitched it to him. Basically, I cut these two shirts in half, printed Off-White logos on one, Midnight logos on the other and then sewed the two different pieces back together. I sent him like 15 photos of all different pieces I made and then two days later he responded that he was in LA and wanted to come see them. He literally came into my apartment (laughs) and just looked at all of them. I remember he was just like, “Can I borrow these? I wanna show these to some people.”

I literally didn't hear from him for another month. He just took them, and I never knew what he was going to do with them. Fast forward to fashion week in January, he sent me a text message asking for my info for flights for me, my brother, and my mom. He flew us out to Paris and we went to his show. A few looks in, those shirts came down the runway. It was a really cool experience. It happened so fast and it was really just off of me DMing him a few pictures of shirts I made.

Do you feel like the Midnight Rave line offers a different creative outlet for you than Midnight Studios?

Yeah, Midnight Rave is something that we can do to engage our audience, and our fans, and kids around the world as often as possible. With Midnight Studios we only show twice a year now, so there's not a lot of events and activations that we're constantly focusing on throughout the year. With Midnight Rave, we can do these a lot more often. The prices are a lot more accessible, the designs are a lot more loud. I think it engages all ages of our audience. The events allow everyone to come so it offers an experience, much more frequently, to be a part of the Midnight world. I think with the rave and the price point that it's at, it's really for everybody.

Can you tell me about Midnight Art Department?

Midnight Art Department is something we started this year, that we're kind of just testing out. It's a way that I can do more collaborations with the musicians and films, artists, other brands, anyone that I really have an interest in. We have this new platform to produce small capsules and release them at more accessible price points, similar to Rave, but more collaboration based. With Midnight Studios being limited to the two collections, I can't release as many collaborations as I would like to and showcase a lot of my favorite brands and musicians and whatnot. So, the Art Department definitely allows that and gives us that platform to put their work out there in clothing format. We've always done collaborations in the past, but we couldn't really do that many. We did the Sex Pistols collaboration and the Courtney Love and Rolling Stones and things like that, but now we're able to do much more, much quicker.

What are your objectives moving forward?

With Midnight Rave, my goal is to really expand on it and do what we initially set out to do, which is take it global, more of a tour experience, maybe even grow into a festival at some point. We want the collections to get larger, we’re aiming to hit retailers in the next few years. Overall, make the Midnight Rave a much larger experience than what it is now, but still keep the underground aesthetic that it has. I don't want to go too big with it, too commercial. I want it to stay authentic.

Midnight Art Department, I really want to just organically grow. I want to keep bringing in the collaborations with musicians and films and things that I grew up on and translate those into clothing, which has always been something that's really fun for me. And then Studios, the overall plan is more retailers, more shows, get the brand more out there and then open a platform for other people to come in, similar to what Virgil was offering to me at the time. I want to create more opportunities for kids to collaborate with us, release their music with us, print their magazines with us, things like that. So I hope in the long run we can really open up those opportunities for a lot of people.