Both a fashion label and an art project
Designer Thomas creates own path with Gallery Dept.
As the number of abandoned storefronts and closed retail outlets continues to mount, the once unremarkable activity of shopping at brick-and-mortar stores can feel like reality askew. As this glum new normal becomes, well, the norm, signs of life can be almost as jarring.
Take, for instance, a pair of storefront windows in West Hollywood. Just recently they were lifeless reminders of an upscale furniture store, now defunct. Then, in August, they began to fill with seemingly unconnected objects: bluejeans piled in a mound, a lounge chair upholstered in denim, a mannequin in a jumpsuit with an eyeball for a head standing amid drop cloths.
Hand-painted signage in the other window offered only that this “Appointment Only” storefront with the cryptic displays, and the retail space behind them, are the domain of Gallery Dept.
Despite the name, Gallery Dept. isn’t a gallery or a department store but a hybrid clothing label that sits somewhere in the Venn diagram overlap between streetwear label, denim atelier, neighborings fill the spaces between clothing racks skills to create a life in Los Angeles. For a hood tailor and vintage store. Just as and bright brass shelves heavy with the short time, his father even ran a private accurately, you could call Gallery Dept. brand’s thick hoodies and sweatpants. womenswear label. the personal art project of its founder Over the chug of sewing machines, one Similarly, in his early 20s, Thomas
Josué Thomas, a designer whose own can hear snippets of bossa nova Muzak, a worked at Ralph Lauren. As one of the few creative urges are just as layered. vinyl-only mix also made by Thomas. Black people in creative roles in a predomi
With so many small brands in a state of Gallery Dept.’s new space was financed nantly white company, he soon realized retreat this summer, Thomas’ label has on the strength of e-commerce sales from that the only way to survive in the fashion thrived. In less than two years, Gallery this past spring and not with the help of industry would have to be with a project of Dept. has moved from a crowded workventure capital or outside investors, his own making. shop to its new space in part because its Thomas said on a recent walk-through. “I was the ‘cool’ Black guy, but there was hoodies, logo tees, anoraks and flare-cut This freedom gives him and the label the nowhere for me to go,” he said. “Best case jeans — each designed and hand-painted ability to operate on their own esoteric would have been sourcing buttons for by Thomas on upcycled or dead-stock terms. And there are a few. In the store’s women’s outerwear or something.” garments — have become unlikely objets dressing rooms, there are no mirrors to Gallery Dept.’s spontaneous inception d’art in a crowded streetwear market. survey a fit. (“We’re going to tell you if a came about in 2016 when Thomas sold a
Gallery Dept. is something of a bespoke piece works or not,” he said.) Nor are hand-sewn denim poncho off his own back operation, offering streetwear basics that there price tags on its garments. to Johnny Depp’s stylist. At the time are blessed with an artist’s singular touch. “If the first thing you look at is the Thomas was focused on making beats and
Thomas began to cut jeans and screenprice, it’s going to alter your thinking DJ-ing, but after selling all of the pieces print shirts as the mood struck in 2017, about a piece,” he said. “I’d rather people he’d designed for a small trunk show, he and since that time Gallery Dept. has engage with the clothing first.” realized he’d discovered a new creative lane.grownfromanundergroundcultlabelforThomas,whoturned36inSeptember, collectors to one with atmospheric clout never studied fashion or garment making, Working with heavy vintage shirts, after being worn by Kendall Jenner, Leand he can’t work a sewing machine. But hoodies, trucker hats and bomber jackets, Bron James, Kendrick Lamar and two of growing up as the son of immigrants from Thomas would frequently screen-print the the three Migos (Offset and Quavo). Venezuela and Trinidad, he watched as brand’s logo, adding paint or other flour
Thomas’ abstract paintings and writ- his parents subsisted on their raw artistic ishes as the feeling struck.
Josué Thomas, the founder of streetwear label Gallery Dept., at his emporium Sept. 5 in Los Angeles.
Today that extends to long-sleeve tees, sweatpants and socks. At the time, he also began blowing out the silhouette of vintage Levi’s 501s and Carhartt work pants into a subtle flare, accented with patches and reinforced stitching, resulting in a streetwise update of the classic boot-cut jean.
“You can feel the warmth of Josue’s hands on each of the pieces,” said Motofumi Kogi, the creative director of the Japanese label United Arrows & Sons. An elder statesmen of Tokyo’s streetwear scene, Kogi found the label on a trip to Los Angeles last year. It’s not only Thomas’ artistic touch that stands out to him but his vision for remaking a staid garment into something that Kogi believes has not been seen before.
“He took this staple of hip-hop culture and refreshed it,” he said, referring to the Carhartt pants.
Getting the people who make that culture to buy in was another matter. “The first year we did the flare, in 2017, skinny jeans were in,” Thomas said. “Rappers would come into the shop and say they’d never wear a flare. Now, everyone is wearing it.”
On Instagram, fit pics by rappers like Rich the Kid, along with the aforementioned Migos, Quavo and Offset, Gallery Dept.’s flare has become a familiar silhouette.
One fan of the jeans, Virgil Abloh, sees Thomas’ “edit” of the classic garment as the next chapter of its history.
Abloh considers Thomas’ work to be the fashion equivalent of “ready-made” art. He suggested that he and Thomas come from a lineage of Black designers that is still in the process of defining itself.
“He’s a perfect example of someone creating their own path from a community that hasn’t traditionally participated in fashion,” Abloh said. “I see Josue as making a new canon of his own, showcasing what Black design can do.”
Thomas didn’t argue with that. But he was also preoccupied with whatever was taking place at the tips of fingers to get lost in the thought. The future of his brand, after all, depends on his ability to stay in that moment.
“People want things that aren’t contrived,” he said, pulling at his own shirt to drive the point home. “This paint came from me working. I wanted to recreate this feeling. Once something is contrived, when you can see through it, it’s ruined. There’s only so much you want to explain.”