This week I’ve got a fun mini-series I’m calling “An homage to the t-shirt,” where I feature some of my favourite t-shirt lines. Each line is unique in terms of its aesthetics and production process. However, each uses the t-shirt as a canvas for art. These lines are not about putting a trendy slogan on a shirt. Rather, the creative process is important. Each designs with great integrity and craftsmanship.

I enjoy children’s wear for the way designers creatively combine function and beauty into a wearable piece of art. But art comes in many forms. In fashion there is a lot of emphasis on designed garments (“constructions”), more so than on textile, print and graphic design. I want to put a spotlight on graphics and the (almost) universal garment: the t-shirt. I like to think of t-shirts as a democratic garment; they are affordable, widely available, come in every possible size and aren’t exclusive to a particular age, gender or body type.

Today, I share an interview with my friend, Ellen, from Pop Kids USA, along with photos of Ro and Sen, over the years, enjoying themselves in her shirts. I met Ellen through social media, and was instantly drawn to her t-shirt line simply because it was explicitly not trendy. I really liked and appreciated that she was doing her own thing…and I hope you will too.

Ellen, tell me a little bit about yourself. What is your background?

I grew up in New York City in an artistic household (my father was a fashion illustrator for a major department store) and I can’t remember a time when I, myself, wasn’t immersed in drawing. In college, I studied fine art but later on, through various evening classes (one with the legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser), I discovered that my true love was graphic design (art that has to do with ideas).  I worked as a freelance graphic designer for several years (and at many boring, dead-end jobs as well), I also published some of my own illustrated writings in various magazines. And I self-published a graphic novel (it is called Ice-olation and it’s the allegorical story of an ice cube that doesn’t fit in) that was distributed at bookshops around New York. Finally, I had an adult line of “conceptual” tee shirts that sold at various gallery and museum shops, including the Whitney Museum of American Art. Oh, and I’m an obsessive writer of Letters to the Editor — I’ve had many published in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and other well known periodicals.

Do you have a hobby?

I have never really grasped the concept of a “hobby”.  Instead, I believe in interests and pursuits that consume one’s entire being – I guess you would call them “passions”. Hobbies are things that you do in your spare time – passions, on the other hand, permeate your life and define you. For me, these passions include photography, reading, walking, designing, listening to music, film-going, and thinking. The other thing that occupies me in a rather obsessive way is the Past – I am haunted, not only by a time that is no longer, but by the vestiges of that time that are to be found in the present day – for instance, urban ruins (and particularly old and weathered signage) completely have my heart. Like this beautiful old clock below– I found it in a NYC junk pile and photographed it.

What are you passionate about?

In terms of life in general, I am most passionate about cities, nature, animals, and ideas. I love to walk – I’m what you call a “city hiker” and, whether in my own city, or a new one, there is always so much to discover.  I also feel passionately about “community” – by that I mean, not the geographic community in which I live and not any professional community either.  I mean simply a group of people (most of whom I’ve never met and never will meet) who are bound to each other by their clear-sighted and down-to-earth values, their compassion, and, perhaps most important, their freedom of thought. This is not an easy community to find.  But you never know where you will find it (for instance, I met you [Danielle] and your family on Instagram). And I “meet” a lot of “my people” simply by reading the Letters to the Editor of The New York Times.

In terms of my passion for art and design, here too ideas play a central role – I love graphics that incorporate strong and original concepts.  I love, in addition, typography, color, black and white, and a certain vintage style of illustration. But as much as I embrace the world of design, nothing compares to my love of photography, film, books (including children’s books), music, and history. They are the passions that have shaped me the most.

What part of the world do you live in?

I reside in Chicago, though I was born, raised, and lived until 14 years ago in New York City (and was your typical die-hard New Yorker).  I also spent a lot of time in San Francisco and Los Angeles – all these places have my heart.  It’s probably worth noting that all the places I’ve come to love had figured to a large degree in the books I read and the films I had seen.  So I had “nostalgia” for these places before I even visited them.  I even had nostalgia for my own hometown of New York because the literary and film versions of the city had a good deal more intensity than the real place (and people would burst out in song (i.e. West Side Story), which they never do in real life :).  And though I no longer live in New York, I think it’s the latter version that I hold in my heart.

There is a part two in terms of answering this question as to where I live (I actually love this question).  The other answer is that I also live in a place that is not geographical at all.  The thing is, as mentioned above, I have an obsession with time.  And, for better or worse, I feel the place I inhabit most strongly is not the here and now, but somewhere in the Past.  Which is to say, not the Past as it actually was, but more as I have recreated it in my mind through the mining of books and films and music.

How do you spend most of your days?

I spend my days either in front of my computer, at our printers, or sitting at a local café (I’m at home in any café anywhere). I work on new designs, supervise the printing of them, or less excitingly, tend to the administrative parts of running a tee shirt company. Sales is a big part of what I do, though that is my least favorite part of all (understatement).

What is Pop Kids USA all about? And what does the name mean?

The name Pop Kids just came to me one day – I suppose it is a reflection of my love of Pop Art and, in particular, the art of Andy Warhol, one of my personal heroes. I adore him not just for his art, but for his unique way of embracing the world around him – he was truly one of a kind. Pop Art is fun and it is cool and it is rooted in American popular culture (which, in my mind, is quite different from here today/gone tomorrow “trends”). The pop culture of Pop Art is classic, not trendy. If you look at Andy’s work, you’ll see that the things he painted (like Marilyn, and Elvis, and products like soup cans, and dollar bills) were deeply embedded in the popular culture — they were not popular in a fleeting way. That’s how I see our line.  Our graphics celebrate the Beatles, and Hendrix, and baseball, and Batman, and motorcycles, and peace signs, and the iconic idea of the American Rebel — American culture of the timeless variety.  So we are very Pop in our vision – thus our name and what we are all about.

How did Pop Kids USA get started? How long have you been in the business? How has your business evolved?

I got the idea to do a tee shirt line for kids the first day I moved to Chicago from New York 14 years ago. As mentioned above, I had had a line of “conceptual” tee shirts for adults that sold to gallery and museum shops in New York, so the idea to do kids tees evolved out of that. At that time there were not, as now, 5,000 lines of kids tees. Hard to believe, but there were not even five.  So I got the idea to do what seemed unique at the time – to put conceptual graphics on tee shirts for kids just as we had for adults. Our first season we got an order from Bloomingdales and some major catalogs as well, so that was quite encouraging. That first line was called Pluto tees – Pop Kids came about 2 years ago when we decided to focus on a slightly different type of graphic.

It is hard to say how our business has evolved as there have been many ups and downs.  I can say, for sure, though, that our designs have gotten better and better.

What is compelling about working with t-shirts that keeps you interested?

Tee shirts are, for me, the perfect artist’s canvas — it is the most satisfying medium I have ever worked in. Of course, as canvases go, they’ll never hang in a museum, be put up for auction, or placed inside a frame. Yet tee shirts are ART that does not take itself too seriously – art that is fun, and can be worn by kids the world over. On a personal level, we love tee shirts because they allow us to play…to have fun with words and ideas and images, and the challenge of visual thinking.

But I can also look beyond the personal pleasure I get in designing. Because looking at it from a humanist point of view, I see tee shirts as a democratized form of art.  Unlike the paintings that hang in galleries and museums and that often fetch millions at auction, a tee shirt is something that is relatively inexpensive – something that most everyone can afford. I should also add, that while I am drawn to the couture-like clothing I see these days for children (which I definitely view as “art”), I don’t believe that children need couture – I feel that that is geared to the parents and, unfortunately, very much about status. Kids don’t need much to be happy – mostly they want to have fun. And what can be more fun than a colorful, whimsical, tee shirt?

Tell me about your graphics, who designs them and what are they inspired by?

The line is designed by my husband Luke (a painter) and me.  We both work on the concepts, the color palette, and the typography. I, however, am the one that does all the illustration work on the computer. Our design style is clean and bold, though I do wish I had more of a talent for a looser and more linear type of illustration (as that is something I have always been very drawn to). For this reason, I would love to collaborate with other illustrator/designers. One who I’ve met and befriended on Instagram is Emma of Pax and Hart – I think her illustrations are amazing.

What has made you the most proud of yourself and your business?

I’m most proud of designing a line that I love, that I can honestly say I have put 1000% of my heart into, and that fully incorporates my love of design, color, typography, and ideas.  I’m proud of designing a line that I see as both fun and cool. I’m also proud that we are original – this is not always easy in an arena, where trends rule and conforming to them seems to be the norm. I’m also proud of the fact that we have persevered – this can be a tough business, and the retail world has seen hard times, especially of late.

What are your dreams for your business?

My dream is pretty modest – it is simply for more people to know about us and to buy our shirts.  For that to happen, however, stores (and their customers) would have to care less about what is the new “it” line or the line that has won the popularity contest on Instagram.  Our talent and expertise happens to be in the area of design — it is simply not in the area of branding, marketing, and promotion.

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Thank you, Ellen, for sharing what inspires you and your graphic designs. Readers: you can find Pop Kids USA online shop here. Find the second interview in this series, with KLTworks, here.

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