St Vincent - Paris is Burning

My Latest Novel - Sister Sneaker Sister Soul (from Wolves)

.
My favourite t-shirt of all time is “Ghost Ship” by Enclothe. Enclothe for anyone who doesnt know are one of the webs best small labels and the brainchild of just one man, Derek. I chatted to Derek about the future of the brand and how it all came about. Derek was also kind enough to provide an exclusive 20% discount for hiphipuk readers and gave me the exclusive on three new enclothe designs.

.

About Enclothe

Delivery: International = £5×1 ($9.25, €7.30), £9×2 ($16.25, €13) & £10×3 ($18.25 €14)
T Price: $16 (£9, €13) normal, $35/30 (€23, £16.50) hoodies
Contact: via Contact Panel here
Site: osCommerce based so the navigation is familiar and simple. Clean layout and smallish range makes navigation easy.
Promo: use the exclusive coupon code “hiphipuk” for 20% off.
The Interview

How did Enclothe start?

Enclothe actually started with the launch of my ‘warmonger’ shirt as a way to protest the invasion of Iraq. I was selling the shirt before the invasion and so it was one of the first anti-war shirts available. The place I worked at had just gotten a screen printing press so I printed the shirts after hours. I didn’t really have any plans to do a full label until I moved to
San Francisco to go to art school. I loathed the thought of working some shitty part time job so I put together the enclothe website and started selling my first shirts.

Whats planned for Enclothe in the future?

While future world domination sounds like fun, I’ll probably just keep making cool shirts. So far Enclothe has really been a one man operation, since I do all the designs and the website maintenance and order fufillment, but I’m bringing some guest artists on board to help increase the variety of designs available. I’ve sent you images of the next three shirts I have coming out (at the bottom of this post. This is an exclusive just for hiphipUK, nobody else has seen these yet.

Where do you get the inspiration for your designs?

All kinds of places. I’m a media whore so I’m always reading magazines, watching movies, tv and playing video games. I try and draw out inspiration that might just be on the periphery of popular culture. Something that may seem familiar but is still new.

I know that when I last checked the site there were copy cat design on
ebay. How did you react to it and are you aware of it being a growing problem amongst other t-shirt sites?

I had a few issues with some ebay guys selling my Bleedbot designs, and
Ninja Pirate designs, but most of that has blown over. I think there’s so
many shirt companies out there now that the copycat problem isn’t that big
anymore. At least for me, I imagine for Threadless it’s a different issue.

What is your favourite online t-shirt brand.

Threadless always has some good stuff, but lately i’m getting kind of burned
out on them, plus they get enough love already anyways. So i’m going to say
‘White Frog’ they’re small and have some neat stuff
http://www.wfshirts.com/index.php

The New Designs

451 remix - I love this design, the dragon on the back is a new addition. As soon as payday comes around I’ll get this.

Press Conference - A entirely new design, uses the back to good effect with the fingers crossed. Really neat concept.

Strange Fruit - Another new design, this ones creepy. A beautiful illustration. Available soon!

Thanks alot to Derek for taking the time out to talk to us!