interview 001: brandon svarc (Naked & famous denim)
LAST MONTH WE DROPPED IN ON BRANDON SVARC, FOUNDER OF NAKED & FAMOUS DENIM, IN HIS RECENTLY OPENED SOHO FLAGSHIP.
WE TALKED ABOUT OPENING SHOP IN NEW YORK, KOKESHI DOLLS, SOUPED UP HONDA PRELUDES, AND ALL THINGS DENIM.
Langton Willms (GERHARD)
Brandon Svarc (Naked & Famous Denim)
I see you have raw denim carpets?
It's not a carpet - it's floor! These are tiles! Denim fabric fused to vinyl tiles - made in Japan. We tiled our whole store with it, as well as our showroom in Montreal.
Who made them?
There's a company called Tajima - they made these in collaboration with the biggest denim mill in Japan. We found out about it and were like: “oh man we have to have this!”.
So you did not initiate this?
We did not initiate this. It was serendipitous. It was perfect timing. We found out about it at exactly the time we needed to lay floor.
Last time I came here it was promised that there would eventually be a nice raw denim fade on the floor - I can fully see it coming together now.
If you look at the floor in the dressing rooms… wherever there's the most travel… behind our sewing machine… you see the fading. It's pretty cool. Every person that comes in gets to help.
Also - I completely forgot about the secret door (as one of Brandon’s staff pushes on a wall, that magically opens into a staff room behind it…)!
Yes. I've always wanted to have a hidden door.
So you pull one of the dolls and it opens the wall?
Yes. They're little wooden dolls called Kokeshi (こけし). They're antique Japanese dolls. If you pull one of them...
And these are the real thing, of course…
Oh yeah! I have 173 of them. I bought one big lot from my favourite antique store : Akaria. You pull it up and it opens the secret door to the back room with the bathroom and the electronics. You know… in the movies you always pull a book. So here we have a row of dolls. You choose the right doll, you open it up!
“You know… in the movies you always pull a book. So here we have a row of dolls. You choose the right doll, you open it up!”
So why would a Canadian designer open up here in New York?
New York City was an obvious choice for us, because New York is the center of the universe. It's got the biggest businesses. It’s got the most tourism. It's got a huge population. It has lots of educated customers, who love raw denim already, and we needed to have a store in America, somewhere, that would represent the whole collection. We have partners in New York… Brooklyn… all over America… but nobody has the full collection.
I wanted to be in SoHo: the biggest shopping destination in all of America, which gets the most tourists, probably, in all of America. I wanted to be easily accessible, and to be able to represent the whole brand properly.
Also, we got to hire and train our own staff! Even when things are available at a department store, the staff are not always ideal. I'm not saying they are not hard working, but they don't have the brand buy-in… they probably don't wear it…
They are also expected to remember the PK (Product Knowledge) on a million other brands...
Exactly. So here we have five staff that are all amazing, and we trained them ourselves. Not only that, but we found them from the grass roots. We didn't look for people with pre-existing managerial experience, or retail experience. We found our staff through our fans… from the Reddit raw denim sub-forums.
Of course that’s where you'll get your most diehard fans. The one thing you cannot train is passion.
Yeah, exactly. All of the employees are passionate. They're all nerdy. They all live it and love it; eat, sleep, and breathe it. That’s the way its gotta be.
You mentioned your reasons for opening in New York. I'm curious to know how Americans have responded to a Made in Canada brand. Do they care?
I think different people buy our jeans for different reasons. I think there are two reasons. They appreciate Made in Canada and Made in North America equally. A lot of people appreciate that it's made in a first world country. They know there is no child labour. They know we aren't dumping dyes into a river. People appreciate that we are not made in China. I really love brands that make stuff where they're from. If you’re a French brand and you make your stuff in France, people appreciate the authenticity. We are a Canadian brand that makes stuff in Canada.
What we find at GERHARD is that people really like Naked & Famous for its tried and true core program; high quality fabrics delivered for a really good price. But what really draws people in and separates Naked & Famous from other high quality denim makers is the sense of play that comes with some of the products: glow in the dark denim… scratch and sniff denim… Some of the jeans are just silly. Some might say you have a vivid imagination.
Absolutely.
Is it getting better? Where are we going with this?
Yeah, I hope it's getting better. People ask all the time where I get these crazy, silly, fun ideas. We just try to go back to when we were kids. You know… when you were a kid… playing in the playground… and your parents have troubles, and worries… they have to worry about taxes… and you… while you just get to sit there and think of all of this amazing stuff. A lot of these inspirations are really from our childhood. I had glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling in my room; I thought screw it - we're making glow in the dark jeans!
They came with a UV light! Kids love that stuff, like the free toy that comes with a Happy Meal…
Of course! The thermo-chromic jeans changed colour with your body heat... we just try to imagine stuff that nobody has ever thought of before. It's the greatest job in the world!
“People ask all the time where I get these crazy, silly, fun ideas. We just try to go back to when we were kids.”
So you just go through the back-catalogue… since all the best ideas come from when you were a kid?
Yeah, and we now create so many different ideas in so many different ways. Some of them happen by accident. Once, we were in a meeting at a mill in Okayama. They always give you tea… coffee… whatever the hell you want - the Japanese are very courteous. We had different denims out, and Bahzad goes : “oh look at that one!”. As he’s reaching over, he knocks his elbow into the coffee and it spills all over a PFD (prepared for dye) fabric. So the fabric turns brown as it sucks in all the coffee, and he jokes : “haha! coffee dyed denim!”. The supplier looks at us and says : “oh, you want that? We know a guy who could do that”. So we did coffee dyed jeans! Sometimes things are happy mistakes, but lately we’ve been looking for fun.
One thing I’m very proud of in recent collections, is that we have been innovating through yarn - not just through weaving. Most companies don't even get to develop fabrics - they just find a fabric from a supplier and go with it. We now get to go one step further and meet with the yarn suppliers themselves. We get to say: “oh, we want to make the slubbiest denim”, or “the neppiest denim, how can we achieve that, can you build us a yarn?”. And then they build us a yarn for the warp and weft to accommodate that! Now that we’re 12 years in, the mills trust us.
You told me once that you considered it a personal goal to make a factory laugh down an idea. If they say it’s either impossible or crazy, you're even more motivated to do it.
Well, when someone tells me it can’t be done, then I definitely want it much, much more. It's happened a bunch of times where a mill has told me something can’t be done, and then I go to a different mill to push them… to propose different ideas… angles… very few times have we come up with an idea that does not get made.
Was there an idea that you really got beat back on? Something that you really wanted? Denim out of Jujubes? Something like that?
Yes! I wanted to make denim out of milk! And, it's possible, because you can extract a protein from milk. Using that protein, you can make a fiber, and from that fiber you can spin a yarn. So I wanted to make a cotton and milk blend selvedge denim. It's possible, but the minimums to make that milk yarn are so high. We'd have to make 4000 to 8000 jeans…
You're developing a new technology at that point… or have people done this before?
Did you hear about spider yarn? There’s a company… Japanese… I’ll have to look it up. Spiders spin silk, and per gram, it has an incredible strength. Scientists have been trying to harness that to see if they can make something even better than the Aramid fabrics that are out there. So what they did was: they took a goat, and injected spider protein into the goat. I forget how they did it exactly, but they found that it infused the spider protein into the milk. Then they were able to spin it into a fiber like you would any cellulostic fiber!
What would you gain from doing this… other than the fact that it’s insane?
It makes this incredibly strong yarn. We contacted the company and they said no. It's a major scientific achievement, but it’s not yet commercially available. We just wanted to see if we could get our hands on enough to make even one roll just for the sake of it – to make something crazy and amazing. So… the moral of the story is that you can make yarn from milk protein!
I'll jump back to the idea we were discussing before, about digging back into childhood for inspiration. You were just on face time with your five year old and...
I have a five year old and an almost two year old!
Do they influence the design process? Do they advise on your board?
They have not advised, but I have shown stuff to my boy, and he has been very excited over it. You know the friendship jeans? With the rainbow colored interior? When he saw that, I think it just reminded him of a pack of Lifesavers or something, and he just said : “oh my god, daddy I want that one!”. I like that he's bold. Some kids want the plain ones, but he wants the crazy ones. I know he's my boy!
Yeah exactly! Has he ever had an idea that you wanted (as a denim)?
He likes to talk about Sponge Bob Square Pants and Lego and whatever. I don't usually have business conversations with him. I listen to the stuff that he wants : “I like superhero this” or “I want the fastest that”. I’m always digging into his mind. Perhaps it will turn into some jeans one day.
That imaginative element is refreshing. We sell a bunch of great brands that make very high quality and useful clothing, but I always think Naked & Famous is the most fun to sell. I take people over to the denim section and surprise them, because I've just been telling them about all of these technical, or heritage fabrics, and all of a sudden I mention that these jeans “glow in the dark”, and they ask : “why?!”.
We have a weird mix. We are very serious with our fabrics, but at the other end, we are also very silly. People used to ask me : “why would you make scratch and sniff jeans? Would that really cover the smell? Does that mean I don't have to shower?”. No no no! It's because its funny! We just made it ‘cause its funny, and if we don't do it, nobody else will.
“We just made it ‘cause its funny, and if we don't do it, nobody else will.”
I'd imagine that this humour translates into to other aspects of your life. You were telling me about an insane table you had built for your dining room at home?
I have a 10x4 foot amethyst rock table!
Did you bring it down from Sudbury or something?
I got it from a company called Caesarstone. They make regular stuff; a core collection. Then they have a psycho collection with exotic materials. One of them is amethyst. It’s a bunch of amethyst stones, epoxied together, then shaved, sanded and made into a giant piece. There is a basin inside that lights up the sides too - which was my idea. Then we run power from the basement. The base is cool too. It’s steel, all slotted together. No screws or nails or welding.
Does it make your food taste better?
If you believe in power crystals and stuff… which I do not… but if you do… one of the properties of amethyst is that you can't get drunk! If you have an amethyst chalice… you don't get drunk! Perhaps the table keeps us sober. Though I don't believe in the hoo-hah magic... but you can! Come over and we will try it with some whiskey!
You also mentioned that you had imported a few right hand drive vehicles from Japan?
I have a couple of right hand drive vehicles. I have a 1990 Dihatsu Hi-Jet Jumbo. 3 cylinders, 660cc engine, 45hp.
What does this thing look like?
It’s a Japanese mini truck. It's called a Keitora (軽トラ).
Do you actually use it? Or is it a perpetual work-in-progress?
Yeah! One of my kids’ friends’ dads… now… I guess our friend too… is a builder guy… and he built a bunch of climbing walls and a slide at his house, and didn’t have a truck. He needed to deliver it to our kids’ school. He asked if anyone I knew had a pickup truck, and I said : “hell yeah!” So I drove it over, and we strapped everything down. I was so excited! There’s a picture of us that day making the delivery. That’s the only work so far… otherwise, I’ve just been messing around with it.
But it works.
Yeah, so far… I've had some trouble with the carburetor. It’s from before fuel injection, sadly. But it’s pretty easy to get parts. There’s a good support industry for it.
Yeah, of course. Behind all of these niche interests, there’s always a small, diehard community.
Yes, there’s that… it’s also very popular for farmers.
Oh yeah? What’s the advantage?
The advantage is that it’s cheap. It’s that vs a side by side… like Polaris or Bombardier… they have two seats, and a bed in the back, and usually all wheel drive, and ATV tires and stuff. They are great for farmers and hunters. You can go shoot a deer, and put it in the back of the bed, and drive it home on the trails. I'm not a hunter, but a lot of hunters like this car because it’s street legal. With a mini truck you can go into the woods, get your game, and drive on the highway back home. Side by sides are not street legal. This has 45hp - side by sides have less than that - and they are more expensive. They have a lower payload and less towing power than a mini truck.
“I had a Honda Prelude, and I souped it up like a maniac. I’ve always loved Japanese stuff and the customization aspect.”
Have you souped it up? You said you used to modify Japanese cars, before “Fast and the Furious” ruined the culture…
Yes! I had a Honda Prelude, and I souped it up like a maniac. I had the Altezza tail lights… 18 inch wheels… which back then was quite big… a body kit… shifters… emblems… cold air intake… cat back exhaust… no graphics! Zero graphics! Had some carbon fiber… People used to joke that I stole it from Batman! I've always loved Japanese stuff and the customization aspect, though I wasn’t going around racing people at drag strips.
Right, but the idea was that it was your own… you wanted to create something unique.
That's what always impacted me. I was born to create something that was not there before.
