(Credit: Sam Horine)
Actually, it’s funny. When I first started, I would never have been associated with a clothing company. I didn’t want context like that. I actually intentionally obscured where I came from and what I liked, just so there would be no preconceptions on who I was. It was great; I was able to start fresh, and imagine myself becoming someone else. I would just imagine what the coolest, most amazing person would be like, how the music would sound, how that person would act, and then go from there.
Do you have a fashion interest? Most people see you as the guy who dressed in all white.
I love clothes. I was always making clothes for me or my girlfriend, and I originally wanted to go to fashion school in New York. I became obsessed with this clothing company, Comme des Garcon; I started writing letters to them when I was 16, asking about getting work. When I finally got here and got an internship…and then I realized the job had nothing to do with design. I was just working in an office. I left after two months, and it began a long process of making me realize that whatever I was going to accomplish, it was going to come from me, not because of a store or a person.
Where did you live when you first moved here?
The first place I ever lived was with two people from Ann Arbor. They were nice enough to let me and my girlfriend live with them in their living room on Bedford and South 1st in Williamsburg. This was 1997, so it was different then--it was disgusting. I also didn’t like the East Village. It looked like Williamsburg, or a rundown part to Detroit. I wondered why anyone would want to move here to experience that. To me, it was all about the visual aspect; that’s why I went to midtown, where the skyscrapers were, and there was more diversity – tourists, commuters, business people, old, young.. I didn’t like being around people who looked like me; I was trying to become unique to myself. I needed to be around people who wouldn’t’ boost my ego necessarily, but actually crush it a little.
But, yeah, I had moved in with this guy, Mark Morgan, who it turns out didn’t like me very much. I had moved in under the pretense of staying a couple of weeks, on a cot in the living room. I was stupid; I didn’t realize how uncomfortable it would be for them. And I took it further, by throwing out their food or rearranging their living room. You can’t do that if it’s not your place! But I eventually moved out, we became friends, and he actually started a band called Sightings… which I had the honor of producing their most recent album.
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