In summer 2020, I was able to get in contact with Chicago’s own Justin Mensinger. We would eventually hop on the phone to talk about his career in 2020 and where it was going.
This was my first lengthy interview over the phone, so we ran into a few technical difficulties before getting things set up. After making sure I was able to get transcribable audio, we began to talk about his fashion endeavors.
How was your 2020? What are some things that you were able to accomplish over the year?
2020, I feel like, has made me more level-headed because I got flown out to New York and I finally got credit for my work, came back home, and right away I had pop-ups in February and March that were going super well. I had like three pop-ups back to back, then I had dropped a collection too at this hotel downtown, and I only made six pieces and sold all of them in an hour and a half. That was the most success I’ve ever had I feel like, personally, without working with a company, because I made the design and everything, it was my own clothes, so that was great. The beginning of the year was phenomenal then everything happened with corona and it kinda got weird.
I was about to sign a lease for a storefront, I’d signed half the paperwork but I didn’t follow through with all of it, and as I was signing the paperwork everything started to surface more that we might go [into] lockdown. It was really the beginning, so this year’s just been kinda keeping me level-headed. I was really ready to take off and explode and go full force, and I had the means to do it. I feel like coming off those pop-ups I had a lot of energy, and I was just planning to take pop-up energy and have a storefront, but it didn’t really work out that way. So, I’ve just been finding what the hell I want to do exactly [for] the last few months. I know what I want to do, it's more so exploring new routes of what I’ve already been doing.
I got into woodworking a little bit, I found this place where I’m able to basically create anything I want and I really invested myself in that over the last month. Now I’m at a place where I still want to do that and then I’m starting to get work picking up again, and it’s kinda like I’m scattered between multiple things now. I’m trying to build furniture and at the same time this fall I have a lot going on with my clothing that I have to be ready for. I think the difficult thing is that you’re not always gonna get paid right away for things that are gonna pay off in the long run, so the hard thing I feel like as an artist, entrepreneur, or someone who works for themselves is to balance out short-term and long-term things. Some people can have a really good run on-short term and some people could have a really good run long-term, but it might even be after they die [that] they get credit for everything they get done, so the balance everyone needs to find is ‘how do we get credit for our work and get what we’re worth in the moment, but also leave a legacy.’
How have you been able to find that balance?
Make sure the short-term things that you’re doing are adding up to something bigger. Whatever it may be, not even in the creative realm but even as a person who works. No matter what you’re doing, whatever job you have, or whatever you’re putting your time into, you gotta make sure you’re doing things for the right reason. If you’re not doing things for the right reason it’s never going to lead anywhere, so even though you’re having all these short-term wins, in the long-term it’s gonna hurt you. I’ve seen people get on that path and that’s why I take it very personally. I saw my dad’s life and people in my family when I was a really little kid, and the things they did might have paid off in the short-term, but in the long-term it ultimately hurt them more by taking shortcuts. That’s one thing I’ve never wanted to do in my legacy, is take shortcuts. I think that’s the goal for anyone, to figure out how what you do day-to-day adds up to something bigger in the long run.
What has been the hardest part about creating new clothing during the pandemic? Has it been harder to get your hands on certain fabrics or other equipment that you need?
I was really lucky because I’m a hoarder, lowkey, so I was actually in a good spot when everything got locked down because I had been moving. Going in I didn’t really have any problems with material, I think the biggest problem I’ve had is with my quotes. What I’ve been wanting to do more is use my own quotes instead of reusing people’s logos, so I haven’t been able to screen print. The place I was screenprinting at I can’t go up there, so I still have my screen burned that has my logo and a tag and I’ve been messing around with doing more plain pieces then having a simple little logo, like a Ralph Lauren piece or something, since I haven’t been able to print my quotes. Before the pandemic the things that were going best for me were my quotes, the way I would have a play on words of some sort, so that’s been the hardest part, is not being able to screen print or get screens burned.
You’ve definitely still been working a lot this year, I’ve been trying to keep up with you as much as possible. What’s been your favorite piece this year? You’ve released masks, a bunch of new patchwork pieces, what’s been your favorite?
This parka I did in March that I released at the pop-up. The back of it says “Most artists are only appreciated after they die. Most artists’ work only appreciates after they die.” So it’s saying most people never get the credit that they deserve when they’re alive, and they never get the financial reward. It’s always when people die that they are like ‘wow, this person was such a great artist,’ and then everyone’s trying to buy their work and then it’s worth millions, but while you’re alive a lot of the time people just don’t care. That’s what I was really trying to say.
Is that something that you take to heart? The idea of trying to make sure people are put on while they’re alive and get the proper respect they deserve before their deaths. Do you really take that personally in your everyday work?
Yeah, I think so, because I feel like we have the means to not starve. Like Van Gogh or whoever else, there’s always those stories that the artists who were so famous in the 1800s and early 1900s, they never got any credit and only sold one painting their whole life or something like that. I feel like that shouldn’t exist nowadays if your work is good enough because we have the internet. The only problem with the internet is that sometimes terrible work gets put on a higher pedestal than good work, based on outside people. When you break down a segment, like a market, real people who know luxury wear understand things that are handmade and understand the little details. They can look at something and understand why it’s worth a certain amount, but then there’s the mass population where if you put a colorway or a fucking name on a pair of slides that represents a high-end brand, people buy into it even though it’s not quality because they think they’re buying an expensive brand.
That’s the problem with social media, because if I post something that I spent three days working on, someone else might spend five minutes working on something and it’s not even good, like the actual construction quality is bad, so many people [can] see it and [if] they don’t know anything about clothing, they might be like ‘wow, that’s cool!’ I don’t know, sometimes the way the algorithm works, it feels like you’re fighting a crowd because so many people are putting stuff out, so sometimes it can be over cluttered. I think ultimately that the new dilemma that we deal with is that anyone can get their work seen, but because everyone is trying to get their work seen, sometimes people don’t get the credit they deserve.
It kinda saturates the market with everyone having a platform to put their work out. It’s great that everyone has that platform now, but it does open a way for more bad work to get recognition where good work should be. That’s definitely something I feel should change, as well. You touched on pieces from your own personal brands and future pieces and I noticed with the Lakeshore Drive hoodie that you did, you used fabric from your old ADNS brand. How do you plan on utilizing brands and your own work in your pieces?
I think my more valuable work and the work that takes more time, and is also the most rewarding, is when I make my own graphics. I make everything, besides reusing the material, from my own head without any outside imagery, [and] I feel like I enjoy that the most but it’s the hardest to do. When I make something that’s one-of-one and I have a custom quote on it, I’m going through the entire screen printing process that most people would go to to print 100,000 t-shirts for one piece. So it could take a day or two of setting up that screen before I screen print that graphic, and from the graphic being screen printed onto one piece of fabric, then I might work on all the sewing for a week, it’s just a lot, you know. But, I think I like to still use other people’s graphics when I come across them because there’s some things that I relate to personally, or I feel a connection to, that I feel like I would like to express my ideas mixed in with another idea. For example, I just did this piece this week for somebody where they wanted a black and yellow t-shirt. I didn’t mean to do this intentionally, [but] I was dyeing a bunch of white t-shirt scraps that I had a pile of, and I was dying them black and yellow like tie-dye, then I dyed some of them plain yellow. When I was washing out one of the white t-shirts I had dyed yellow, it had a Nike swoosh embroidered in it, [that] was black, and the person had wanted a black and yellow t-shirt, so I was like ‘what if I put the Nike logo on the chest but I still had my graphic on the arm so you know it’s a piece that I did, but I put my own spin on it.’ So, I kinda feel like it’s important if you look at artists’ work that’s more contemporary, like Basquiat and Warhol, if you look at their work, especially Basquiat’s work, there would be so many things going on at once, but he would always throw in a random logo of some brand.
He would have something that was so ‘his own,’ but he would randomly throw in a logo of something, and I feel like it makes people connect with it more. I feel like sometimes with everyone reusing stuff and people loving vintage, people, myself included, have an emotional bond to brands like Nike, or even artists. I’m gonna do a piece soon that has Lennon on it, and another one with Juice WRLD. I’ve noticed that some of the pieces I’ve done that have done really well are the ones with Tupac, because I feel like people relate to what he represented as a person and his voice, and I did too when I was younger, [so] I feel like reworking a piece that I found with his personality in it is a combination of his personality and my personality.
At this point the call had started breaking up, only giving me glimpses into what Mensinger was diving into. Luckily, this only lasted a few seconds, so I didn’t miss too much. After dealing with the struggles of using Zoom during a pandemic, we reconnected the call, and Mensinger concluded by saying...
... Ultimately in the long term though I’d like to use my own graphics.
I loved the masks that you were creating in response to COVID-19. You took bigger brands and made something that they weren’t at the time. Can you walk me through the process of creating them?
I feel like with the masks I was really reluctant to do it at first, because I didn’t want to make them and have people just think I was trying to capitalize on people needing masks. So I was really reluctant, and I didn’t really have a design idea, and then I had to make 25 of them for my family. Once everyone needed to wear masks and all of them were sold out, they were like ‘you know how to sew, you need to make us masks.’ So I made the first prototype ones through them so I was able to figure out what I needed to fix. This first batch I did was not that good, and once I made those I had a lot of people ask me about them [from] just posting on the story. I wasn’t really planning to sell them, I just posted the ones I made for my family—
At this point, we continued to encounter connection issues. The perils of using Zoom, I guess. But once things picked up again, Mensinger continued.
—After sewing, I knew I could make a decent amount of them with the materials that I had. All of the fabric stores were closed and everyone was trying to buy materials like masks too, so it was really difficult at that moment, so me and my girlfriend figured out how to set up a little assembly line to make the initial 50 masks, and they were at a lower price point, I think they were like $45. So those went really well and went really fast, we would make like 10,15 20, put them up, and they’d be sold out the next morning, and once I had done a decent amount of those and made probably six colorways with no logos or anything, I knew my goal was to serve the audience I normally serve who wants something unique and custom.
I had stuff laying around with Carhartt logos and Nike logos, and I knew people wouldn’t be able to execute a mask like that on that level with that quality. I hadn’t seen it done, I had only seen other people use designer brands, and I don’t really connect with designer brand the way I do with a Carhartt or a Nike because I grew up around Carhartt and Nike, I didn’t grow up around Louis Vuitton, so I wanted to make something that fit how I felt, or how I would look like. I think in the end the custom ones came out of creating what I would want.
Can you describe the creative process that goes into making some of your pieces? Do you create everything with the same sort of mindset or do you try to take a different approach with each piece?
[I] definitely take a different approach because I feel like even though my clothes from an outside perspective are in their own bubble, I think within my bubble I try to really capture different audiences and different touch points. I really try to break down the brands I’ve looked up to my whole life and emulate them through my own work with a new spin on it. Like the simple t-shirts I just did where all they have is my logo on the sleeve and they were just colored, I feel like that to me is more like a Ralph Lauren polo where he would do stripes, he would do plaid, he would do colors, and then he would just make that same polo in 100 different patterns but it would always be the little pony. Then if I do something like a kimono or an anorak, I feel like I’m drawing from— well for one military-inspired stuff but also higher-end stuff. Like when I went to RSVP, a lot of the stuff we had was very elaborate, and [with] the cut-and-sew process, it’s a lot of work to make a piece like that, and I just kinda draw inspiration in my creative process from all those different styles and make it my own. I know some people would never wanna wear something with a graphic on it, they just want [something] plain, minimal, not even colorful, so I feel like sometimes I’m able to take a person like that, bring them into something maybe a little more loud, but maybe with no graphic, no logos. There’s also people who love crazy, wild vintage stuff with a million colors and tie-dye, and I’m also able to hit that person. When I’m designing each of those pieces, I’m going into it with my design perspective, but I’m trying to hit a different customer, a different personality.
Would you say your creative process goes along with your emotions?
Definitely, I feel like at the time I made some of my favorite pieces and they were more toned down, refined, and high-end looking, I was in a moment of clarity and deep thought about life. Where[as] sometimes when I’m doing something quick, even like the Lakeshore Drive one, I wasn’t in that same thought process. The Lakeshore Drive one to me was more so playing off my beginning designs and I feel like the tie dye wasn’t as serious. I could see someone wearing that on Lakeshore Drive at sunset, on the lakefront or something, and it was more like quick [and] sporadic in the way I designed it, and that’s how I felt about the piece too, so yes it would definitely affect what I make.
How do you plan on tackling the rest of the year when it comes to creating different and unique pieces, and further carving the way of your own style?
I think I see a lot of people emulating one another, and I’ve even seen people directly rip off my ideas that I’ve told them, and I just think it’s funny that there definitely is a generalized idea of reworking or reusing things, and a lot of the time it comes down to a lot of pop culture brands and loud graphics. When I feel overwhelmed by all of that noise on Instagram or whatever outlet it may be, looking at what other brands are doing and other people are doing I just feel like I tune away. For awhile, even, I was just focusing on how to make furniture because I was just kinda getting annoyed at stuff. I don’t know, I just kinda wanna approach it as making things when I feel they’re necessary and trying new outlets.
Some people want a quick response and wann basically just do something for the hype of it, and I don’t feel like I need to do that. I feel like even the last four pieces I made were kinda toned down and refined with the solid colors and different tones, it’s inspired by this artist from the ‘40s, so I feel like I’m just gonna try to do my own thing and keep pushing in my own direction and not really look for feedback right away from it.
Everything will come if you put yourself into it and really believe in what you’re doing and you make something good, all that feedback will come. But, if you go into it with the viewpoint of only wanting that outcome, your work is gonna ultimately be a short-term thing that has no long-term relevance. That kinda touches back onto the very first question, you know just doing things that add up to something bigger.
What’s been your favorite part of 2020 so far?
I think the favorite part of 2020 is just being able to relax. Corona really slowed things down and I moved, and I feel like just being able to figure out what I want out of life and what am I trying to do, like what are the things I need to learn long term? Also just enjoying day to day more, because I feel like everything that’s happened this year has made everyone more appreciative of what they have in their life, and that’s probably the best part of the year.
Touching more on that topic, how did quarantine impact your work? Did you find yourself working harder on some things or did you really take it as a chance to just let your foot off the gas and relax a little bit.
I think a bit of both. I feel like for a little while, like a month at least, I was just learning woodworking stuff and I really took my foot off the gas with clothes, but it allowed me to start venturing off into other ideas so I could connect them back into the bigger picture. So in a way, it was kinda like both. I wouldn’t say I necessarily was going with more force in the same way I was before, I think my energy shifted [to] where I’m kind of a little scattered, but making sure that everything I’m doing is going to further pay off down the line.
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