What’s your background - when did P.L.N enter your life?
It started back when I was in high school. I was kind of sick and tired of these rules of dressing that seemed to be dominating the hallways of the high school: Ralph Lauren polo shirts and caps with the logos and all. It felt as if you had to dress and look a certain way to be accepted, which just made me want to do something that was completely different. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, and after talking to my best friend about it I was like “fuck it”, I’ll make some caps that are the complete opposite of this polished look. There were so many rules. At the time I only had the capacity to make tee’s and caps, because I was in school you know. But then what happened was really wild: I made some things that sold to some models who had walked the first Vetements show (fall 2015, Paris red.) and they’d worn some of these things, and by chance, Demna (Gvasalia, creative director at Balenciaga red.) had noticed, and then he found me on Instagram. At this point, making these pieces was really just for fun. I just took photos of my friends wearing these things I’d made. But then he wrote to me saying he really liked what I was doing “cool stuff, I wanna buy a cap for Gosha (…)” . So I sent him a cap and a few tees I’d made and before I knew it I’d made like 50 of these t-shirts that were sold to all of his friends and people he knew, all kinds of people in the industry that just liked the joke of it.
Do you still have some of these pieces you made back then? What was P.L.N then?
I have a red tee like the one I sold to Demna. I was inspired by quotes in this period. Like silly quotes. Without knowing that Vetements did a collection later on that was based on cartoon quotes, I also did the quotes thing because I thought it was funny. I think that’s why Demna thought it would be cool to invite me in. We shared some of the same ideas, humor playing an important part.