Everard Best met Téla D’Amore on the streets of New York City’s Lower East Side. Years later, the duo would helm a defining fashion brand of the times.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You know, when people feel our clothes and they purchase them and they see them,
00:04we want them to feel the love that we put into it.
00:07I always draw a reference to home cooking.
00:10That's how I feel about our clothes.
00:13It's that feeling when you go home after not being home for a while
00:17and your mom makes your favorite dish.
00:19We want to evoke that same feeling.
00:21My grandfather was a First Lieutenant in World War II,
00:32so I grew up, you know, just being educated about that at a very early age
00:38and having to see a lot of that kind of communication,
00:42but also I was always into all of the Americana and all of the military clothing
00:49and I always thought that the heavy canvas was so special as a textile
00:53and so to bring that over to denim and a lot of the things that we manipulate,
00:57a lot of the textiles that we manipulate today are very derivative of that.
01:02As people of color, you know, we're not to be put in a box of pigeon holes.
01:07So especially with this last collection, we really wanted to delve into the fantasy
01:11of what Who Decides What is what that world is that we're creating.
01:16And yeah, it's just to show people or to us to express like we're not to be held in a box.
01:23We could do couture-level gowns, even though we don't have masters from Carson's or anywhere.
01:30But, you know, we give that amount of attention that these houses do.
01:37So why not be mentioned in the same vein, in the same breath as they are?
01:42This past collection, we developed our womenswear, you know, to match the men's,
01:49to let the output that we were creating with the menswear.
01:53Our menswear has been our baby for so long, the both of us.
01:58And with that, there was this whole kind of connotation that, you know,
02:03Ev creates the menswear and I create the womenswear and really everything is so 50-50
02:09and he came and stepped on big time for the womenswear.
02:12And so there's just been this huge exchange and this conversation of making sure
02:17that we were both represented equally on that front.
02:21From day one, we've always reached out to younger designers to give them a hand,
02:26the same thing that Virgil did for myself and many others.
02:30You know, because coming up as a person of color, a black man or a black woman
02:36in this fashion industry, it's quite hard.
02:39So you got to lend a hand whenever you get the opportunity.
02:42And we do our best to tell the stories that make us feel something.
02:48My whole team has been having this conversation, friends, family,
02:51that like I've got to, you know, really step outside and put on for that.
02:56You know, so that's been the biggest thing is putting out for my community
03:00and making sure that there is a voice.
03:02And with that, there's been already so much outreach.
03:06I don't care about what celebrities in the stuff.
03:09I don't care about who, what event, you know, that's all cool.
03:13But the coolest thing to me is when someone is in my DMs asking me,
03:18yo, just tell me where I can get a shirt made, tell me where.
03:21And I'm giving those resources and those are the people that I'm answering first.