Alyasha Owerka-Moore Interviewed by Singularities

New York City-based clothing and accessory company 3sixteen has decided to bring back its interview series, Singularities. However, it will now be relaunched as a standalone digital publication, with the inaugural interviewee being influential designer and streetwear pioneer, Alyasha Owerka-Moore. The in-depth interview covers a variety of topics, including his involvement with PF Flyers, his thoughts on the relationship between fashion and the internet, and an introspection on his career as a whole. Enjoy the excerpt below and head over to 3sixteen to read the full interview.

Looking at your general social media activity and your Tumblr, in particular, it looks like you’re focused on propagating a certain kind of imagery–that is, people of color in classic styles. I suspect this is what “The Other 1950s” refers to. What should we make of this? What are you trying to say, if anything?

The Tumblr is largely me digging a hole to research something, then tossing out little pieces of what I find for people to see. I do have a point, so there’s usually some trail of breadcrumbs to find.

It’s interesting. I’ve had art directors and creative directors ask me: ‘why is your Tumblr so fragmented?’ But what they don’t realize is that it’s actually really concise. A Tumblr is, at least in my estimation – people will use the platform for whatever they want – for sharing things about oneself and personal inspiration. On the flipside, Tumblr makes it really easy to propagate the status quo. Ninety-percent of the brands out there look the same because they reference each other instead of having their own voice. It’s like those boilerplate mission statements I mentioned: take any handful of clothing lines, swap the labels, and you would never know the difference. A brand is supposed to have its own handwriting, and the people behind it should have the same. The things I put on my Tumblr are genuine sources of inspiration.

This brings me to a weird shift in design and in the sociology of design, if you will. A lot of these younger cats say, ‘I want to make stuff that is just like that guy’s stuff but my version,’ or, ‘just like what he does, but my way.’ Because of this, there’s a ton of reference points that people don’t even bother to look at. They don’t care about what was actually going on in the eras they draw inspiration from. You always need to go to the root if you want to understand why stuff was the way it was—what was happening economically and culturally.

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Our cultural tendency, and this isn’t limited to fashion, is to appropriate and sample different cultural aesthetics, old and new. Contemporary music is very similar in this regard. That being said, where do we go from here? Are we trapped in a vicious circle, or should we still expect something genuinely new? If so, how do you envision this change coming about?I think two things are going to happen, and this is the way history generally works. First we’re going to get full-on branded people (like in Idiocracy): the “7-11 guy,” for example. And as much as I like Uniqlo, you’re going to see it there. Then, and this is the way history always works, someone starts something new. It’ll start small and then, like a single-celled organism, split. And then split again. Streetwear happened like this. A bunch of kids around the world that were sick of The Gap and Ralph Lauren had a lot to say, politically and musically. These people gravitated toward each other, created an industry, and eventually became the status quo. This is the cycle. That being said, I think the “traditionalists” will always be around—the skinheads, the mods, the rockabilly revivalists, goth kids, etc.. They will always be in their own worlds living as they always have.

I think two things are going to happen, and this is the way history generally works. First we’re going to get full-on branded people (like in Idiocracy): the “7-11 guy,” for example. And as much as I like Uniqlo, you’re going to see it there. Then, and this is the way history always works, someone starts something new. It’ll start small and then, like a single-celled organism, split. And then split again. Streetwear happened like this. A bunch of kids around the world that were sick of The Gap and Ralph Lauren had a lot to say, politically and musically. These people gravitated toward each other, created an industry, and eventually became the status quo. This is the cycle.

That being said, I think the “traditionalists” will always be around—the skinheads, the mods, the rockabilly revivalists, goth kids, etc.. They will always be in their own worlds living as they always have.