Elmer Ave – Just Four Skateboarding Graffiti Artists Making Clothes for the Edgier, Artistic Dresser!

Elmer Ave is a design team consisting of four members:  Sean Murphy, Jonny Day, Collin Pulsipher, and Ward Robinson.  All four work and live in the compound located on Elmer Avenue in North Hollywood.  When I was getting directions to interview them, I was surprised to learn that’s where the name came from.  I had met the angst-like-rocker-formal-wearing designers a couple of years prior to our actual interview when I attended an event put on by Pure Consulting PR firm, where I met these very talented guys.  I spotted a distinctively edgy sports coat and proceeded to meet its owner(s)—the Elmer Ave design team.

Since that initial meeting, Elmer Ave has shown twice at Smashbox Studios during Fashion Week in LA.  They have sold their jackets to Marilyn Manson for the Marilyn Manson Dressing 2007 Tour, Tommy Lee, Dave Navarro, Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi’s Richie Sambora, Goo Goo Dolls, and Def Leppard.  They were featured on “America’s Next Top Model.”  You’d think after all this success there’d be a few inflated egos.  Well, you’d be wrong.  Sean, Jonny, Collin, and Ward are probably the most down to earth designers I have ever had the pleasure to interview.  They’re just four “regular guys” who ride skateboards, play punk rock music, and oh yeah, make clothes, too.
 
Customized and painted by the Afroman Design Team (back at the compound), these couture garments are characterized by a variety of existing elements, ultimately transforming the garments into rare vintage rock n’ roll wearable art.  

I met you guys a couple of years ago.  It was the first time I heard about you guys.  How did Elmer Ave come about?
 
Afroman was a skateboard company that started making apparel.  As they were creating clothes to wear on stage, it evolved and became a high-end fashion line called Elmer Ave.
 
Did any of you attend fashion school?
 
We all separately attended the school of hard knocks, never attending fashion school.
 
It’s such a niche of a design.  It reminds me of what rockers would wear.  But it’s really defined.  How did you come up with this particular style?
 
I think the whole Elmer Ave style was created out of our own lifestyle.  A lot of the stuff we made from day one to now was stuff we just couldn’t find.  For example, how do we come up with five striped jackets for five dudes? How do you make that happen with no money?  You just kind of make it on your own.  All of us coming from skateboarding, graffiti art, and creative backgrounds, and just being interested in clothes in general—having a hard time finding exactly what we felt like we were looking for—that really brought about a whole look, and it continues to.  It’s very genuine.  We all play music and it started on stage. That’s how it maintains the edge that it does.  It’s really an extension of what we do every day. 
 
Tell me about your music.
 
All of us at one time or another played in a band called Numchuck, which is straight ahead old school punk rock.  We did that for a long time.  It was a lot of fun and currently a band called Royal Heist [with only two Elmer Ave members involved].  It’s also straight ahead rock music.
 
You guys are gigging now?  Where can people find you? And do you have a CD out?
 
Visit www.myspace.com/royalheist.   You can find us around LA, playing Hollywood. We have a CD out, the Compound Collective CD, which is put on by Elmer Ave and is a combination of people that have worn Elmer Ave or those who have lived at the compound (the place where we all live and work).  We do this whole collective thing in music, fashion, and art.  We always collaborate with the music.  We don’t try to push it in your face—it’s just what we do.  It just so happens that people like it.
 
What are the price points?
 
We have a custom line that we generally reserve for our private clients:  Def Leppard, Tommy Lee, Marilyn Manson.  We do one-of-a-kind custom that’s reworked vintage.  We gear that toward our private clients.  We do a production line that obviously is for boutiques and retail accounts.  Elmer Ave retails for about $500 and our custom line is around $200 more, depending on what it is. 
 
Would you call it couture?
 
Here’s the problem (everybody laughs), the problem with us as opposed to Fashion Week, words like couture, Smashbox, fashion school . . . we don’t fit inside the typical fashion industry box at all. We started a totally different way from music and skateboarding.  We started doing it on our own without any knowledge of knowing what we were getting ourselves into.  We started doing our own fashion shows, bootlegging it with different kinds of styles and dramatics within the show that people had never seen before.  It’s not that we were trying to go against anything.  It’s just that we were doing it our way.  And it didn’t necessarily fit the categories that people often want us to be fitting into.  The stuff is exclusive and it’s not cheap.  So I guess it is couture.
 
There are very few men’s lines that have actually shown at Smashbox during Fashion Week.
 
Smashbox was a big deal for us.  Men’s fashion has gained a lot of speed.  Men’s lines have always continued to grow.  We want to be the ones who are known for that.
 
I think the industry does need more designers that design for men’s lines.  And especially the ones like yours.  It’s very niche-specific.  I have a rock producer for a husband, and I know for a fact if he saw your line, he would like everything in it.
 
We make clothes that we want to wear.
 
I think that’s how you will continue to keep moving ahead, because you’re doing what you like.  You guys are obviously on the trend.
 
Well, we’re not trying to be trend-setters.  We’re just doing our thing.  If we’re driving the trend, then cool.  On one hand, we might be setting the trend and it can be really cool and romantic and flattering as far as press and media—only a certain kind of person is going to wear it – rock n’ roll or somebody who has an edgier opinion of fashion.  A lot of people are going to look at it and say, “That may be a cool art piece, but I’m not going to buy it and wear it.”
 
What fabrics do you use?
 
Mostly wool.  Our whole line is basically a suit and the components thereof.  We also do velvet and leather in the custom line.  There are some cotton blends.  The shirts are permatex, which is a mixture of spandex, polyester, and cotton.
 
Were there any struggles in putting this line together?
 
(Everybody is laughing hysterically.)  No, it’s been easy.  We’re being sarcastic.  Elmer Ave is not easy.  It’s a struggle.  But we keep doing it because we believe in it and we enjoy it, not because it’s a cash cow.
 
What were your biggest hurdles when producing your line?
 
Money is the biggest hurdle.  We’ve always been a self-funded company.  The whole thing about fashion is money.  If you want to be what’s big, you go for what’s trendy and mainstream, not for what’s setting the trend.  But we don’t have a choice because none of us are about that.  So we do what we do.
 
Highest High
 
There are three big standout moments:  (1) being accepted to do a show at Smashbox; (2) the first fashion show ever that we produced at the compound.  It was amazing to be able to pull off a fashion show; and (3) the first time we got back our first cut and sew sample of a production jacket. We were able to look at it and [know that it was] completely from scratch [and it was] something we made.  We’d been doing one-of-a-kind stuff, reconstruction and deconstruction.  Just having something that came from our heads that actually became material was fulfilling.
 
Lowest Low
 
The last six months.  Ask anybody that owns a business.  We’re the four people that own this business and the economy is really bad.  There has been a trickle down effect from the housing market to oil prices all the way down to four idiots that make clothes.  This is a difficult time.  I’d say we’re probably at one of our hardest times. We’re really blessed.  We’re a group of retards that make really cool sh_t!  We have so much to be thankful for.  People have been really nice to us and people seem to like what we do.  Even though we’re not thriving right now—and who really is at the moment—we’re going to grow.  We all want to be rolling and living large and feeling good.  But that’s really not what we’re doing this for.  We’re four friends, and we are really enjoying what we’re doing.  The highs and the lows change every five minutes.
 
What advice would you give to someone who’s trying to start their own clothing line?
 
Don’t do it the way we have.  Work at 7-11.  You have to decide from the start if it’s a dream of yours and you are going to see it all the way through.  Or if it’s, “I’m going to give it a shot and if it doesn’t work, bow out of it.”  We’ve had a few options to bow out, but we believe in our product and want to keep doing it.  One day you can be at Smashbox and everybody’s patting you on the back, and the next day they want to turn your power off.  Decide if the dream’s worth following.
 
Any last words?
 
Be looking out for the upcoming seasons of Elmer Ave for Men’s Rock n’ roll awesomeness!  Visit us at www.Elmerave.com.
 
Interviewed by Kaylene Peoples

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