Apliiq - Los Angeles

March 2010. Los Angeles, CA ... Apliiq is a new media clothing company in downtown Los Angeles. Founded by Ethan Lipsitz and Emily Gruber, Apliiq is based on the process of appliqué. They source fabrics from different locations and time periods to create unique garments that speak to and for the individual. From their online site to their retail location their process is one of collaboration and discovery.

Intisar: What is Apliiq?

Ethan:  Apliiq is a new media fashion company. We work on fabric as a basis for self-expression. So we have a fabric collection that we keep here, and we encourage people to customize their own garments. Or we sell garments that are adorned with this fabric. It’s about making a product that is more about pattern and texture and color than it is about branding or logos or screen-printing. We really value fabric and the stories that fabric has to tell. Fabric is based around certain references within itself, and even though we wear fabric every day we don’t often think about it. So sometimes it’s nice to just cut out a little piece and put it on something and let it tell a story. That’s what Apliiq is about.

Intisar: What’s the background story on Apliiq?

Ethan: When I was in high school I used to have sweatshirts and they were kind of boring.  Just simple colored sweatshirts. And so I would take my mom’s fabric and hand sew things onto them. I did that a little bit and they became cool sweatshirts I’d wear. I had my hand in it so it was cooler.

In college a friend gave me a karate kid headband—which was like Mr. Miyagi, Karate Kid.   So I put it on top of a hood, almost like a headband. Hand-stitched it on. Some friends saw it and thought it was pretty cool and I was like “Alright, well I can make one for you.”  So it started out really simple like that.

I started playing more and more with real fabrics and I realized I could be lining whole hoods with fabric. I was in Philadelphia at the time, where I went to school, so I started going to the garment district in Philadelphia. I’d find these old mom and pop shops that had been there for years. It was this kind of dying little neighborhood that you could tell used to be booming. Philadelphia used to be one of the biggest industrial centers in the United States, and a lot of that was around textiles and production and the manufacturing of garments. There was a huge hat industry in Philadelphia; all this history there.

I’d ask the people who worked in the shops to show me where their hidden stash was. Sometimes they’d take me to their basements, or I’d go to their backrooms and find these fabrics under piles of fabric that had been there for 30 years or 60 years. And they were just collecting dust and amazing. [I] felt like a record digger looking for vintage records to remix and put insome sort of cool beat. But it was a graphic representation of that. So I would buy these fabrics and I’d only buy a little bit.

I’d have this collection and friends would come into my room in my house at school and choose fabrics that they liked. Then They’d say, “Alright, I want a black hoodie.” And I’d get it from a local manufacturer of hoodies at wholesale. Then I started hand sewing the fabric into the lining of the hoods and then onto the sides. I think my first fabric was hounds tooth. From there we did a lot more with different styles and fabrics, just playing with different patterns.  Once one friend got one, someone else wanted one. By my second semester of my senior year in college I was like, “This is a kind-of business that could be a real business…”   I had been studying design and architecture and the history of art, and here’s a way for me to make something physical instead of just learning about this stuff.

I took it to a local store in Philly and one of the guys was like “Yeah, I’ll buy some of these.” Like right on the spot.  And a magazine contacted me and said, “Hey, this is really cool. What’s your story?” So it started to evolve and all these little signs were saying, “Hey, this is something that could be good.” Also, I realized this was a business that really relied on friends and family—which was great, but you can only go so far with that. So I had this inkling: Here’s a business. It can work. You can buy a little bit of fabric. If you run out of it, it’s ok.  It’s a limitededition.

I ended up leaving the country for a couple of years. And I had a website built where people could buy, but it was kind of low-key. Like, this is a side project. In April of 2008 I moved to Los Angeles to give it a shot one hundred percent. The reason I chose Los Angeles was because the resources were all here. I knew there were factories that were producing garments. There was a huge fabric district where I could buy everything I needed to make the product. I could be here and I could get everything I needed to make Apliiq without having to invest a lot of money in having it produced in one place, shipped somewhere else, manufactured somewhere else. Everything can happen really locally here.

So now we have this business and since 2008 it’s been kind of a full steam effort. Emily joined me in June of 2009, we have a third member of our team who just started with us, and we’re really starting to grow pretty quickly now. We have some energy behind it, and people who believe in this mission and support it.

Intisar: What does fabric /  travel / symbol mean to you?

Emily: Fabric is really what drives this whole platform. To us the fabric represents a different time or place.  So there are some fabrics that are really representative of the 80s, like this pink one with the blue squares, or the 60s.  Or they’re from different places in the world, like Africa or Israel. So I think that people can relate to the different types of fabric and where they come from.

Ethan: Emily and I both have backgrounds in architecture and so when we think about how we express ourselves or the things that are art it’s much more on a functional level. But also we think a lot about branding and how we’re kind of inundated with brands and messages everywhere we go and stepping back from that and looking at the materials that compose the things we use and consume—you can actually get some real beauty in that.

I think a lot of architects think in that way.  They think about material—about brick, or marble, or stone. And it’s kind of architecture on a clothing level. It’s saying, “Alright. All clothes are made of fabric. We get that. But let’s start taking a look at some fabric that maybe references an emotion, or references a time and a place, and let that do the talking, let that be the expressive piece.”  There’s so many stories to tell and there’s so many different pieces to look at, just using fabric as a lens. It’s kind of like art history. We use fabric as a lens to learn about ourselves—to question how we express ourselves, and what we wear. Look at people as buildings. The materials we put on ourselves—what are they saying about us? 

Intisar: How does collaboration / cross-pollination figure in Apliiq?

Ethan:  Collaboration is a key point for our business. Collaboration for us is about celebrating involvement of an idea with others, sharing ownership of something, relinquishing control. Say someone buys a  product from us and they customize it. They choose the fabric and the color and the size and they wear it. That’s a collaboration to us, because we might be producing it and providing the pieces, but they’re doing the combination and the design and they wear it and it’s theirs. They can say this is my design. And that’s an element of collaboration that’s important to us.

Then there’s collaboration in terms of organizations collaborating, where we work with other groups that we think are likeminded or have followings that cross with our following.. to create products that speak to that group through the fabric. We’re looking for fabrics that basically speak to the demographics that we hit. Say [ for ] an artist we want a fabric that somehow references that artist’s interests or their sound. Or maybe it’s a nonprofit that is working in a certain area.

Emily: On a larger scale.. Our whole company is kind of a collaboration between the retail and wholesale and fashion realm.. then the software and new media.. the online user generated content of eBay, Facebook, Youtube. Any of these social networks.

Intisar: What are some places in the world that you really are inspired by or want to travel to?

Ethan: Spain’s an inspiring place, just because we’ve spent some time there.  And architecturally it’s a really a great place, a place that is design-centric. A place that respects the public environment in a way that some other places might not as much. There’s a lot of real design history and art history that’s really inspiring to us. I’ll also say that the cities are really conducive to art, and there’s money for the arts.  It’s public money that funds cultural projects and things like that. Not to say we would necessarily get involved in that, but it’s a very inspiring place to be and I think in terms of this business.

I love the idea of travel and fabric. To go on fabric missions all over the world. And when I’ve traveled in the past that’s something I’ve loved to do. I was lucky enough to go to Dubai a couple of years ago and I discovered an incredible fabric district there.  I had like ten minutes to check it out and I bought some fabric, and if I could go back I would go nuts and buy tons of fabric—if I also had the resources.

Then there’s also places that aren’t necessarily import centers, but are actually where the fabrics are coming from. For instance, kente cloth, which is coming from Ghana.  That’s a really interesting, beautiful fabric, and we have a little bit of it here. It would be really cool to go to these places where people are actually making these patterns and can tell the stories.  South America, the Aztec textile. Things that are being loomed and woven.

These processes are happening all over.  And I think what’s interesting is that this industry has kind of globalized to the point where you might get an African fabric that was produced in Japan and you get it in Los Angeles. You could have some things that reference something but aren’t necessarily from that place. So there’s the idea of fabric for importation and for exportation.

 
Intisar: Who are some artists or creators that you admire?

Ethan:  Ethan: I’ve always had an interest, maybe even an obsession, with functional art.  Product design, things like furniture, and cars, and clothing. Things we use on an everyday basis, but that also have elements of creativity built into them, vision, design, and aesthetics.  I’ve always been obsessed with that since I was a kid. I love cars. I love planes. I love cool furniture. I started collecting chairs I found in the street—like the one I’m sitting in, I found this in a dumpster. Finding things and re-purposing them.  That extends from small things like furniture to big things like buildings. I love old buildings—the kind of history ingrained in an old building, and taking that and re-purposing it. Making it have a new story. I guess when it comes to clothing or Apliiq it’s the same thing. We’re kind of taking something and changing the way people think about it. We like to think of this as a disruptive business model. But yeah, I love art.

Emily: Yea, of course I love art too. I studied visual studies and  art history and fine arts. The neuroscience of how you see and perceive the world and architecture of course.

But I think the creativity that I really love in Apliiq is the business side of it. Learning how to actually make a business successful and function on a day-to-day basis. There’s a lot of effort, determination, passion, and definitely creativity, because we’ve found a lot of ways around things, jumped through hoops, and made this business what it is. We have a very different thought process and I think that is what really draws me to Apliiq more than any other company.

[I like] Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollack. And I think I like them for the same reasons. One is very structured and one is completely freeform.  They inspire you to have both sides in everything that you do during the day. You have to keep track of things and be very organized, but at the same time you’re building something that nobody has ever done before, and you have to take that as far as you can.

Ethan: I think what inspires me is passion and emotion. Thinking about Mies van der Rohe. “Form follows function,”—that was his saying. And you could see that in his buildings. It was all about the materials, and simplicity, and the minimalism…everything was thought out to a T. And very modern. He was kind of like the godfather of modernism. Like the fact that his buildings have this kind of starkness to them, and there’s a beauty in the minimalism, but it’s also just very refined.  And that allows an open palette for your own emotions.  It doesn’t really guide your experience.

But then I think about traveling, and someone like Otto Wagner, this architect from Vienna. You think of Vienna and you think of Otto Wagner. He did these incredible buildings that were over-the-top, but also had this other emotional character to them that makes you happy and excited to see them.

Intisar: What does flight mean to you?

Ethan: I was on a plane a little while ago and there was a lot of turbulence.  And I was sitting in coach class and it was not a comfortable plane. Sardine-style, middle seat, and the type of turbulence where the plane’s jolting.  Your heart’s up there and it falls down.  And I was thinking, there are those people in first class, and there’s us and it doesn’t really matter. We’re all experiencing this turbulence together. We’re all going through this craziness together.

The earth is so much bigger than us, and the world is just so much more powerful than we are as individuals. Flight has always got me thinking about where I stand in this bigger picture of where we are and how we experience it.

Interview & Photo: Intisar Abioto

Edits: Chantal James

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INFO:

apliiq.com

548 S. Spring Street, Shop 114. Los Angeles, CA 90013