00:00You know when people feel our clothes and they purchase them and they see them
00:03we want them to feel the love that we put into it. I always draw a reference to
00:08like home cooking. That's how I feel about our clothes. It's that feeling when
00:14you go home after not being home for a while and your mom makes your favorite
00:17dish. We want to evoke that same feeling.
00:28My grandfather was a first lieutenant in World War II, so I grew up you know just
00:35being educated about that at a very early age and having to see a lot of that kind
00:41of communication and but also I was really I was always into like all of the
00:46Americana and all of the military clothing and I always thought that the
00:50heavy canvas was so special as a textile and so to bring that over to denim and
00:55a lot of the things that we manipulate, a lot of the textiles that we manipulate
00:58today are very derivative of that.
01:02As people of color you know we're not to be put in the box of pigeonholed so
01:07especially with this last collection we really wanted to delve into the fantasy
01:11of what who decides what is, what that world is that we're treating and
01:16yeah it's just to show people but to us to express like we're not to be held in a box.
01:23We could do couture level gowns even though we don't have masters from
01:29Parsons and so anywhere but you know we give that amount of attention that these
01:36houses do so why not be mentioned in the same vein in the same draft as they are.
01:41In this past collection we developed our womenswear you know to match the men's
01:49to let the output that we were creating with the menswear our menswear has been our
01:55baby for so long to both of us and with that there was this whole kind of
02:01connotation that you know Ev creates the menswear and I create the womenswear and
02:07really everything is so 50 50 and he came and stepped on big time for the
02:11womenswear and so there's just been this huge exchange in this conversation of
02:16making sure that we were both represented equally on that front.
02:21From day one we've always reached out to younger designers to give them a hand the
02:26same thing that Virgil did for myself and many others you know because coming up as a
02:33person of color a black man or black woman in this fashion industry it's quite hard so
02:39you got to lend a hand whenever you get the opportunity and we do our best to tell
02:44the stories that make us feel something.
02:48My whole team has been having this conversation friends family that like I've
02:51got to you know really step outside and put on for that you know so that's been
02:57the biggest thing is putting out for my community and making sure that there is a
03:01voice and with that there's been already so much outreach I don't care about what
03:08celebrities in the stuff I don't care about who what event you know that's all
03:12cool but the coolest thing to me is when someone is in my DMs asking me yo just
03:19tell me where I can get a shirt made tell me where and I'm giving those
03:22resources and those are the people that I'm answering first.
