Learn to Forget turns rebellion up to 11
The fashion brand follows the instincts of its founders, both punk musicians
Reilly Herrera's spirit of rebellion manifested long before his days spent in the counterculture skating, graffiti and punk rock scenes of Orange County and Los Angeles.
“One of the first times I got in trouble at school was drawing on a lunch bench when I was already in trouble,” Herrera said with a laugh during a recent phone interview. “I didn't realize I couldn't do that because I was still a kid, and then the teacher came out and was like, `What are you doing?!' and then I got sent home.”
Herrera, who grew up in Fullerton, had a knack for drawing as early as age 3, and as he got older he developed an interest in graffiti that intersected with his love of skating and punk. In college, he took an oil painting and graphic design class to learn the ins and outs of the mainstream art world. As the bassist for rock band Night Versus, Herrera designed the band's merchandise, but some of his other work had a different style that didn't always fit within the group.
“I had all these extra graphics, and I wanted a separate creative outlet, so I just started printing shirts,” Herrera said.
One of the first to receive those shirts was his longtime friend Mike Cambra, drummer of Death by Stereo. After sporting the shirt on tour, Cambra proposed that he and Herrera partner up and create something more official, paving the way for their Fullertonbased fashion brand, Learn to Forget, which the duo established in 2013.
“I was the earliest fan before it was really that much of a thing,” Cambra said. “I remember when I came back from the tour, I was curious about what new stuff he was working on or had going on. At that time, my band was doing pretty good, and I'm a very simple person who had a little bit of money to put in, so that's how it all started.”
What began as a do-ityourself operation, selling merchandise from a garage and the trunks of cars, expanded into over 400 stores worldwide, including a partnership with Zumiez. Herrera said the
A pit bull-adorned trucker hat and a standard logo brown hoodie are among the brand's products.
shop tries to keep most of the designs printed locally, and if it has to outsource, he prefers taking them to Pakistan because of the quality.
Items from Learn to Forget include trucker hats, some of which use old English and other fonts commonly found in death metal and hard-core band logos. The jackets and flannels include anarchy symbols, spiderwebs and skulls.
Other pieces in the store express the direct challenge to authority prevalent in the scenes that Herrera and Cambra grew up with. Punk has historically had its own fashion sense, with a DIY mantra that drove the spirit of the subculture.
Are you seeing a trend? A pit bull makes another appearance on this long sleeve black T-shirt.
Before the genre became commercialized, it was common to see fans put together their outfits by sewing patches and reconfiguring their clothing.
“I think punk fashion was born out of necessity, and I don't think it was intentional for the most part, but just a repercussion,” Cambra said. “Most punks grow up with little to no money, so I think a lot of punk fashion was born out of thrift shops and making your own clothes. Like back in the day before tight jeans were a thing, people literally cut their jeans, unhemmed them and made them tighter.”
Statement pieces on the
Barbed wire is the motif on this cap, among Learn to Forget goods found in more than 400stores worldwide.
brand's website are also inspired by community values that are a foundation of the punk scene. Some items include slogans like “Never Above You, Never Below You, Always Beside You” and “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.” Herrera said the influence of some of these statements can be traced back to Canadian punk band Propagandhi, which helped jolt his political awakening.
“They're a super political band, and I don't even agree with the extremism of some of the stuff they talk about with veganism, and maybe I'm just not knowledgeable enough, but it opened the doors for Mike and I to
think about questioning things that you necessarily wouldn't if you didn't listen to punk,” Herrera said. “If I was listening to Top 40 music as a kid and didn't listen to Propagandhi, I don't know if I would have thought about the George W. Bush White House years as a teenager. It allowed us to figure it out on our own, whether we were right or wrong and be more of an individual in that way.”
When they started the collaboration, Herrera said, they weren't aware of what they could and couldn't design, so they pushed the boundaries of shock value by printing T-shirts with photos of some pretty subversive content. The first design they put out, however, was a T-shirt with The Doors vocalist Jim Morrison that declared he was the first punk. The shirt's message divided fans who agreed and others who claimed he was a hippie. Another shirt design included a rapper and a punk rocker Photoshopped together, but they were sued for it and had to drop the design.
“While we did get in some trouble, I think that mindset just traveled through the brand,” Herrera said. “It's how we approached everything, and then it became a part of the brand without us even doing it consciously.”
Learn to Forget has also collaborated with beer company Pabst Blue Ribbon and bands like the Adolescents, when the Fullerton-based punk band celebrated the 40th anniversary of its selftitled blue album.
“That was the first album that was one of the first visual influences I had as a kid, and it was the first album that I ever heard, so it was a full circle moment for me,” Herrera said. “Mike went on to be the drummer of that band, which is really just random, but it worked out that way.”
Herrera and Cambra hope to collaborate with more bands, musical acts and other brands such as Dickies and Obey. The thought is that different collaborations will help the brand grow into a more sustainable independent venture.
“As unpunk rock as obligations are, we do have them, so we want the brand to grow as a business for life so we don't have to get another job,” Herrera said. “We don't have to spend our whole life on the road because we've done that, and at different levels, touring your whole life is just a bit of a nightmare.”
“For people like me and Reilly, it is important because growing up skating and playing punk rock and eventually being musicians that tour, there's no 401(k) for us,” Cambra added. “If you want longevity, you have to do things and make things for yourself. My mindset for a lot of things is to wish for the best but expect the worst, and trends and styles are all subjective, so it's hard to predict what's going to be cool. I think that we're doing a decent job by just doing what Reilly and I think is cool in hopes that if we think it's dope, I think other people are going to as well. And that formula seems to be working for us so far.”