The interview didn't play out like a formal interview but more like a chat between friends, Jon is a guy who possesses a wealth of experience. Starting his career in Investment Banking Jon quickly realised his love lay with style and design. His first dip into the world of clothing came with skate brands Girl and Fourstar which later led him into the position of Global Product Director at DC shoes. After a very successful stay at DC shoes Jon set up Gourmet (originally highend mens clothing), with Greg Lucci and Greg Johnson. While at Gourmet Jon is also Global Brand Director of LA based eyewear designers Oliver Poeples...
Where does a man like you get his influences from?
My influences come from where I grew up, how we grew up in NY from 1985 all the way through to the early 90's. This was an era where everything at a cultural level was going down all around us. All the history lessons of what came and went. The real Hip Hop movement, the grunge lifestyle from guys like Nirvana. We were designing t-shirts in the 3rd grade. Everyone has seen the kids in the Jamal Shabazz books....that was us! Fat laces in our Puma's, hemmed Lee jeans, Fila's, Double Goose, Scott La Roc hats. Its like Biggy said 'You gotta sew the Aligator onto your polo'. Saying that only 80% of my influence comes from our upbringing and the other 20% from ebay...looking at vintage Hermes or something. Then times all of that influence by 3, we are all critiques.
How does Gourmet benefit from you working at Oliver Peoples?
The guys at Oliver Peoples have been in the design game for many more years than me so it's great to learn from them. From everything they do and put out I learn from. The same aesthetic is applied to Gourmet we are very thorough.
Break for a Wu Tang debate...Jon reveals his favourite member is GZA "it's all about the whiny voice".
There's so many bad brands out there at the moment, how do you feel when you see another new bad brand?
I feel good when I see brands do it bad. In footwear we have to work extra hard to compete with the Nike's and Adidas'. People are smart these days, being at DC shoes and my other partner helped set up Adidas Originals people know where we came from. The information is out there so people appreciate our brand because of our history. We see this whole thing as a competition, we are trying to get after Nike. Nike and Adidas are not always gonna be the biggest out there...David & Goliath sort of shit.
What really went down with Gourmet and Nike a few years ago?
Obviously Gourmet is influenced by Nike, they were doing all this first. When we did that Jordan flip shoe they dropped a federal lawsuit on us. They said we had to change 30% of the shoe but thats all bullshit. Nike have a lot of money and some of the best lawyers in the world so we couldnt fuck with them in court so in the end we just said fuck it and discontinued the shoe.
Tell us more about working in investment banking. What was the catalyst for you to flip things and decide you want to be involved in clothing?
It wasn't a career type of thing, it was more of a lifestyle thing and like I said going back to my early years as a kid I would be my own stylist in the morning as a kid customizing my own clothes and sneakers back in the day. Where I grew up you needed a fresh pair all the time and you didn't throw them out. So sneaker collecting got popular like 10 years ago we been collecting sneakers from 20 years ago. Not on purpose it wasnt a sport it was more of a lifestyle, its not that revolutionary its just the way it got unearthed. We had just as many sneakers back then as these kids have today and that went on throughout my life all the way through college where I always had a love for designs or new collections from whoever it would be. Even before the internet we would know what would drop, we would know because we'd talk to the shop owner. I mean there was a time when there was no internet so it would be like "yo when are those fucking hurraches coming out ?" "let me see the catalogue".
So through that whole period I went to college for business and became an invest banker.
Was that more of a family inspired thing?
No lie I did it on my own, and one part of the reason was I wanted to make a lot of money so I could buy some clothes, I wanted to keep looking fly you know what i mean.
And the funny thing was when I was a investment banker you start to realize what you wanna do in life. Even though we made a lot of money as stock brokers/invesment bankers one day you just wake up and realize and ask yourself 'what the fuck am I doing with my life', I was 25 when that happened. At that point thats when ebay started like 97/98 and the stock market in the US just crashed and I stopped being a broker, so I took like 6months off and didnt do shit. After that things began to click. I started taking pictures of my sneakers for ebay. There was only like 10 of us on ebay "you got those Ewins that were made in france", we were like trading sneakers online back and forth and then it trickled down to everyone else but you know at that point it was like this was a whole world, dudes from France and London selling kicks. There were some big collectors in London.
At that point I had to get out of New York so I moved out to LA in 2000 and I put together this resume which was basically a picture of all my sneakers on this crazy wall with some writing and submitted it to some brands and then DC hired me to be a Trend Forcaster/Product Manager.
Would DC have been your first choice?
No definitely not.
And did you enjoy your time there?
I knew when I was there that DC was kinda wack but I went there and stole knowledge, like 'you let me in the door I dont give a fuck im in'. I was there everyday taking notes in the computer, getting contacts, they sent me around the world I went to like 50 countries with DC.
Whats it like being one of the first shoe companies outside the top four to be recognized and respected while a lot came and died?
Well we're happy...when those companies come around it makes us work a lot harder
but for us we're very humble and happy for the opportunity. But at the same time we're very competitive we work on this shit hard all three of us everyday. The answer to your question is we're grateful to be in the building.
I think alot of people dont work hard. Various brands have so much going on there just not focused. We stripped it down to just sneakers because we wanna be known as a sneaker brand.
What do you think of the Digital Boom (access to information through blogs/everyone having a t-shirt brand)?
We use that access to our advantage. Everything at Gourmet is consistent, you see what you get. We open our doors and you see it all. For other brands once you see behind that curtain there's nothing there, its like The Wizard of Oz. When the streetwear brands of yesteryear came out you got into them because you knew the owner, you knew where the store was. The access all areas mentality is beneficial if your brand is a real brand. Gourmet is born out of our American/Italian upbringing, Religion, Food, Music, everything we grew up doing.
Is there any particular shoe out there that you three wish you had designed from the beginning of time 'till today?
No, that wouldn't pop into my mind ever. We pay homage to alot of other peoples design but I dont think we're ever like 'oo i wish i designed that', that's not part of our mentality.
So what about the future what are the plans for gourmet? Have got any plans to open up a little boutique?
Our absolute main focus is on the retail side, we're probably not going to open our own store but maybe try and start doing stores inside other shops. We'd like to team up and do things differently but we wanna keep focusing on the footwear so we dont get caught slipping.
In regards to clothes we may do some really relaxed casual home clothing and then we'd like to move onto little houseware pieces, fine china espresso cups etc but the main focus will still be the footwear.
Check out Gourmet online and also dropping in Offspring.
2 comments:
Big up Ollie!
No doubt, great stuff!
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