And we encourage people to just buy less. BB: I kind of don’t, honestly. There was one incident when I was young, I was probably fifteen or sixteen when my boss at the time, who ran the shop, was talking to me about the surf industry in general – Quiksilver, Billabong, these big companies who in the 80s were really cool and coming up. Because there are people who study, learn, and spend a lot of time cultivating their skill. He also writes for 3sixteen and other brands. The clothes themselves, the role they do play, is that they can be used. So I think it’d be really unfair to say I’m a designer. H: Do you think sometimes the feedback you get can be helpful though? You could walk down the street and not talk to anybody all day, or not look at anybody in the eye. Is he still involved in The Brethren? Because when you think about the way politics works, politics is pretty much driven by business, right? “But we’re not really thinking of it … So if you want to make change, if you want the laws to change or if you want the system to change, you actually have to impact the business. For instance, we want people to buy the clothes, go use them, and if they ever feel like they don’t want them anymore, they can bring them back. Sign up for our free newsletter below! This was before the beard trend and all that shit. You want to model a physical space after the surf shops of your youth, right? It’s really, really simple, but to get to the reason is very, very complicated. I think what’s more important is – what are you doing? And that starts with the CEO, whose brother, Brendon Babenzien, is a … Will it be as prominent, the usage of those kind of things? But are we really willing to sacrifice? We’ll see if it’s actually the real thing, in time. This looks like stuff you see on East Coast guys who surf, fish, work on the docks, who do all of it. That’s usually the goal for businesses – they start and they want to be as big as possible. And the guys who are making all the money don’t have any incentive to change because they’re making money the way they’re already making money now – and they don’t want to make less money. Look at Patagonia, right? Like I said, I’ll do the occasional e-mail to a customer, but I don’t really worry about it that much. Some people think that’s a great thing, some people think that’s a bad thing. Are people being paid a good wage? I have a phenomenal amount of respect for James, what he does, and his ability as a leader with that business. We’re not going to be like, “you’re terrible,” because we understand how hard it is. Wal-Mart, Kmart… people are participating in that culture. Last year, Brendon Babenzien launched Noah, a menswear retailer on Mulberry Street in New York. Miami Beach at that time was like the Wild West. I’m here. It seems you can’t go anywhere without the word “sustainable” popping up – in fact, on the way to our chat, I walked by a window display triumphantly touting a pair of jeans as “our most sustainable jeans ever.” I’ve seen the word pop up so much that it’s become somewhat of a buzzword, and I know Babenzien has voiced similar concerns. I said to them, “That’s ridiculous.” Because up until very recently, the whole world revolved around nautical culture. I’d rather they take that short, wait until they’re going to send me another big shipment of a whole bunch of stuff, put it in there and send it to me.” You think they ship this box all the way across the country, this big box full of styrofoam peanuts for one set of shorts that doesn’t really need to be packed in styrofoam peanuts because it’s a pair of shorts. For those in the latter camp, throwback styles, high-profile celebrity collaborations and boundary-pushing production techniques all play a part in the Three Stripes’ appeal. It was completely ignored. We’d introduce ideas to each other through it. Because if you’re the board of directors of a big company, and your executive team is not taking advantage of every opportunity to make money, then you can basically tell them that they’re not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility. H: So, following the course of the brand and looking at your blog… I recall pretty early on you talked about integrity a lot. Once you have to change the way you operate, change the way you think, change the way you behave, then you shouldn’t get any bigger than that. Image via Shrimp News. We know we’re going to fail in a lot of ways, and we’ll fix one thing at a time as we go forward, as we can. Brendon Babenzien is the founder of clothing brand Noah and the brother of Ryan Babenzien. Yeah. A lot of businesses just make money for the owners or the investors or whatever, you know? They do the best they can. Because I assume that has to be on-site visits – having people go in and inspect. Maybe we listen to the same music. This is a brand. It’s like electronics are all precious metals that are mined by people in Africa and places where they’re not treated well. This is the same thing. This is the second part of a two-part interview with Noah founder Brendon Babenzien, talking about his approach to trying to run a brand in the right way. Because anybody can wear a fucked up shirt, anybody can dye their hair, but what do you do? I don’t know if you know the story, but he kind of lost it and has become a religious person. I mean – I guess I’m old enough – where, at 46 years old, I know that there’s no perfect solution. It could be, they’re going to help girls in India go to school; or they’re going to help clean up the ocean. Everyone was just down. It’s like people with all the good ideas don’t have the resources to execute those ideas often. He was already open, and he was already making product, but he didn’t really have an official product development guy or designer. “ The hard part is taking those simple items and making them matter for some other reason,” he explains. But that’s the world we live in. For one and a half decades, the Long Island native stood at the creative helm of Supreme, a position of unprecedented influence over the streetwear world and the subcultures tangential to the revered label. And that led Beau [Wollens], who’s a really good friend and who runs my company, to say – you need to talk about that, you need to put that in blog form. Brendon Babenzien, Supreme’s Former Creative Director, Talks His New Label Noah and Creating a New Paradigm It's been a wild, 30-year journey … Why the name Noah? But in making that choice, you have to make other choices – and the other choices you have to make are usually pretty negative. And that’s where it ends. Your outward appearance is an immediate and the most obvious signal for like-minded individuals. And to run it his own way. H: I understand what you’re saying. I’m not sure what I am. 5 – Early days: inside the Noah pop-up store in 2015, which effectively relaunched the brand. We don’t have to be a $100 million or $200 million company – we don’t have to be that big. Stay up to date with the latest on new releases, features, and new shop products by subscribing to our free daily newsletter. We talk about what we love and what we’re into – whether it be skateboarding, or the ocean, or music, or whatever. What’s the response been? If you met someone else who was thinking that way, it was really special. It’s largely inspired by two loves of Noah founder Brandon Babenzien: running and beaches, specifically the ones where he grew up in Long Island. Image via B Labs. It could be really, really interesting, you know? This is ingrained in culture worldwide. 4 – Cover of a 2008 report by the Solidarity Center, calling out labor practices at shrimp processing plants in Asia. They talked to me. People went and shopped with Dick’s that had never shopped with Dick’s before, to show them support. The early iteration of Noah was very much about the water. You had to drive to a special store that was the health food store, right? The German brand is the go-to for retro classics, terrace favourites and hip-hop ic… That cultural exchange was just starting—the trading of ideas—which now feels like the norm among young people. They’re saying that’s OK. And I was going nuts about it. H: It is. Maybe worse – maybe it’s like that kid’s peeling shrimp in some shrimp farm in Asia somewhere for no money, in a camp full of kids who are being abused physically, sexually, mentally, to get you fucking shrimp. Daniel Kaluuya on Chadwick Boseman Story, His Unimpressed Mom & Judas & the Black Messiah | 360 With Speedy Morman, Jake Paul Rips Floyd Mayweather for Taking Shots at Him, Best Hip-Hop Producer Alive: Hit-Boy on Working with Nas, Big Sean, & Benny | 360 With Speedy Morman, Benny the Butcher, Westside Gunn, & Deuce King Talk Griselda Films and ‘Conflicted’, Lil Skies Talks New Album ‘Unbothered’ and Shares Take on Lil Wayne Supporting Trump, How Music Artists Adapted to Covid-19’s New Normal, 24kGoldn Talks “Mood” Going Viral & Shows Off Rare Snack Collection, Pharrell Teases Rihanna Album, Lists Songs That Represent Him | 360 with Speedy Morman. Image via Noah. And how to get information across to people is something that we’re maybe getting a little bit better at as we grow. You’d see the guys clamming with a hoodie and a crewneck pulled over it. And it is still, but we’ve taken it a bit further than that. Are we happy? I'll do my best to entertain and answer honestly. So the older you get, the less fucks you give? I think every generation has their own way of finding their space and creating their freedoms. There’s always been fashion, which goes back hundreds and probably even thousands of years back. Both grew up playing team sports before fully embracing skating, surfing, and snowboarding. Keeping the ocean clean and that kind of thing. I don’t really know if it’s important or not. Skating, music, art, along with … If every single business – from the pizzeria down the street to the big massive corporations – all decided to do one little thing, the world would look very, very different because pretty much everyone’s in business in some form. I’ve always wanted to. I'm the owner of Noah clothing in NYC. It’s always been hidden deep inside of me, and I think it just welled up, and I realized I just need to be doing my own thing. It used to be an expression but also a barrier between you and your world. Use clothes in whatever way you need to that’s honest for you. It was primarily a reaction to everything that was happening. A firm favorite of Noah co-founder Brendon Babenzien, this hand-picked slimmer version of the Gazelle OG pays homage to the distinct aesthetic popular in New York City during the late 80s and early 90s. So there’s always going to be these voices out there. I didn’t do any of that. There are some policies we’ll have to encourage certain types of usage. It’s the biggest question in sneaker culture: Nike or Adidas? “I know intellectually that it’s a big deal,” Babenzien says of the collaboration. Eventually we might show up with a big stick, but we have to wait till we have that big stick, you know? First off was a matter of terminology. So there were a couple years during that time, when I came back to New York for a little while, and then I went back to Miami. It’s always been really important to me. I used to go so far on my skateboard as a kid. We’re going to raise the legal age to buy them from us to twenty-one.” And of course there was a backlash that was fairly negative, but there was more of a positive. My crew from my town and his crew from his town would all go to this carnival at night to skate and cause trouble. Your quantities are big enough, we’ll talk to you.” When you’re small, you can’t do anything. Are you willing to take it on the chin for your beliefs? It’s completely insane. So I moved to go work with him down in Miami Beach for a while. Fundamentally, bottom line: It’s about being yourself. How can you ensure that Noah is striving towards that? Maintaining a reasonable home life while running the business. That’s ’cause Brendon Babenzien, who spent more than a decade as design director at Supreme, is taking a unique route to building Noah into one of the most buzzed-about lines in NYC. It was a local shop called Rick’s, named after the owner. And at the time, the president of Quiksilver… and I think he quietly somehow started influencing them. And that’s more or less the reason they got involved. Whenever I think of Noah, I just think of the water. When I was 13, he was still selling cards, cigarettes, and magazines, and then he had a little part of the shop that had some skateboards and sweatshirts. It sounds like such an obvious and yet very underutilized return to what clothing used to be. Right now I'm focusing on living simply with a bit of flair, and all of these designers embody that. They’d just be out there digging clams in January with icebergs floating by. But it’s terrible for the customer because the shit gets everywhere when they open it, you know what I mean? But it will be there. Did you ever hear about this band?” I want that experience to continue and not just be purely about commerce. After years as creative director at Supreme — as it grew from a clubby skate shop with a small in-house clothing line into one of the biggest brands in the world — it was fatherhood and the state of the world that drove him to launch his own line, Noah, in his 40s. Brendon Babenzien, the founder of menswear brand Noah and an early employee of streetwear giant Supreme, says it's perfectly clear why high-fashion labels are … A lot of people go to work and their work is their work and they can go home and have a totally different point of view on things. All my friends are there. So we very simply say: we’ll grow to the point where if we have to make bad choices that we don’t believe in, we stop growing – that’s the ceiling. And they’re not getting good nutrition and everything else. It means a lot to how the world is run. [Laughs]. If everyone had to, if every business had to do something, it would be incredible what would be possible. This is literally inspired by my youth and the guy who used to go out clamming in the wintertime. So you can’t really change who the politicians are because the politicians aren’t really listening to you – they’re listening to the people who pay them. Our life is our business and our business is our life. Without that, what are we doing, if we’re not enjoying our day? I wanted to fully realize the best possible scenario with the brand. And there’s really no point in waiting. You can read the two pieces it inspired here. His endless questioning is what he brought to Supreme in the mid-’90s, and what was behind the first iteration of Noah, which launched in 2002. So how can you join in? They’ve been talking about these same issues with increasing frequency and precision through the lens of their own products and practices. There’s nothing wrong with that either, that’s just not my way. So that’s the stuff that our investors are psyched about. You know, you think about the corner store now, and being able to buy recycled [paper] toilet paper. Fig. And give him diabetes and cancer and everything. Maybe not. But not everyone is, you know? There will be some similarities, just because how couldn’t there be? The initial idea of Noah was to capture this spirit of life near the water and what that means. Are people being paid a good wage? It was weird for a few years when I was working with Don. I don’t know why I remember it that way, but who knows. They combine the freedom that Babenzien finds in running, while using sustainable materials that can ultimately help clean up our oceans. If I could just do swimwear and outerwear, I probably would. If you haven’t read part one , I strongly encourage you to do so, since he builds on themes he discussed in depth during that part of the chat. When I started this, I was like, just DO IT! I don’t even know, because we haven’t tried to become certified. We get an order in and backorder, say, a size 32. Whenever I think of Noah, I just think of the water. Everyone should be able to eat, everybody should be able to get clean water.
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