ORIGIN STORY: For me, I started on this process of designing in an organic way. I had done a few projects in graphic design. My friend Sarah who does t-shirts at Colette, she bought some of mine and sold them there in 2005 or something like that. So I was always doing these kind of one-off, very graphic ideas, and she really supported me. And then a number of years later, I had the idea of taking Champion sweatshirts from my high school time and screenprinting them and adding new ideas to them. And so I took the gamble and took the opportunity to curate a fashion film that I had sort of dreamt up—I wanted to show what was happening in New York, with these kids coming from uptown, being players in fashion but representing streetwear. It was called Pyrex Vision, and what happened with that is that it kind of took hold and made more of an impact than I ever thought it would. That’s what really involved me and gave me the confidence to do a full collection, which is now Off White.

SKATER BOY: Kids of my generation, there’s hundreds of thousands of them that all grew up skateboarding. They all grew up going to their local skate shops and buying a $30 tee. We all learned about our local screen-printer and tried printing our own idea, and then we’d try selling them to our friends, and then we’d give them away. That’s my era. Pbviously I grew up being really interested in fashion and the history and art of fashion. I saw this opportunity to be among the first of that streetwear generation, to actually elevate it to a high-fashion spirit. So what I’m doing is merging those two worlds, and trying to show just how Parisian our Lower East Side streetwear can get. [laughs] That’s my thing.

FASHION SCHOOL OF LIFE: I grew up as a self-taught shopper. All my education in fashion came from learning the difference between, say, Banana Republic and Louis Vuitton. And with that comes an understanding of different fabrics, fabric qualities, and construction. In that way, it’s very similar to architecture. Clothes are just things that are made. The same way that different kinds of wood, or different cuts of tile give a different impression—it’s the same principle with fabric. You spend so much time trying to get the right vibe.

BOYS VS. GIRLS: Women can wear any guy’s outfit, whether it’s a suit or jeans and a t-shirt. I would say they also have the range to wear something in a very boring way like men or to be full-on expressive. More of what my philosophy is is that menswear can learn a lot of new things from womenswear. Obviously there are many to learn, but I think that menswear, in its strive to become less boring, needs to pull more from womenswear, because I find it generally boring. But the boring side also plays to me, to my JJJJound side. [laughs]