I don't think it's really changed. It's evolved. We've gotten better and better at doing this. Our naivety started to give way to experience. And with experience, we got better.
When I first started, I was doing tech packs, technical sketches, all labeling, branding, storytelling, shooting all the lookbooks. Tim and I shot every lookbook alone with no photographer. In the early days, before we had an office per se, I would spend a lot of time being able to use the space at one of our main printers that's famous in the Los Angeles apparel world. And I would spend hours there developing prints on yardage of fabric. They use old techniques like stamping like they do in India or airbrushing like they do in Venice Beach, and some traditional screen printing. But I was just given free rein to experiment and explore there on my own. And I would return the next day and be like, "Here's 15 ideas that are airbrushed, stamped, or done by hand." And then we would develop those into the line, and then we would do production by hand that same way. So in the early days, there was a lot more physical hands-on working in a warehouse.
And we ran that way for a while, maybe three or four years, until we slowly felt like bringing more creatives in. And I personally love to work collaboratively, so that's how... I would say that's the biggest thing that's changed, is being able to work with more people and being able to work with more people in a completely open, honest, creative way where we just throw stuff back and forth and build out. And even though we're just talking about jeans, I mean, when we look at the way we're shooting stuff or sayings on T-shirts, it's like we're always just laughing and vibing off one another. I'm pushing the envelope. We try and push ourselves to do something better or more daring or more unique than what we see elsewhere in our little niche in the world.
