Both a fashion label and an art project
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, neighborhood tailor and vintage store. Just as accurately, you could call Gallery Dept. the personal art project of its founder Josué Thomas, a designer whose own creative urges are just as layered.
With so many small brands in a state of retreat this summer, Thomas’ label has thrived. In less than two years, Gallery Dept. has moved from a crowded workshop to its new space in part because its hoodies, logo tees, anoraks and flare-cut jeans — each designed and hand-painted by Thomas on upcycled or dead-stock garments — have become unlikely objets d’art in a crowded streetwear market.
Gallery Dept. is something of a bespoke operation, offering streetwear basics that are blessed with an artist’s singular touch.
Thomas began to cut jeans and screen-print shirts as the mood struck in 2017, and since that time
Gallery Dept. has grown from an underground cult label for collectors to one with atmospheric clout after being worn by Kendall Jenner, LeBron James, Kendrick Lamar and two of the three Migos (Offset and Quavo).
Thomas’ abstract paintings and writings fill the spaces between clothing racks and bright brass shelves heavy with the brand’s thick hoodies and sweatpants. Over the chug of sewing machines, one can hear snippets of bossa nova Muzak, a vinyl-only mix also made by Thomas.
Gallery Dept.’s new space was financed on the strength of ecommerce sales from this past spring and not with the help of venture capital or outside investors, Thomas said on a recent walk-through. This freedom gives him and the label the ability to operate on their own esoteric terms. And there are a few. In the store’s dressing rooms, there are no mirrors to survey a fit. (“We’re going to tell you if a piece works or not,” he said.) Nor are there
price tags on its garments.
“If the first thing you look at is the price, it’s going to alter your thinking about a piece,” he said. “I’d rather people engage with the clothing first.”
Thomas, who turned 36 in September, never studied fashion or garment making, and he can’t work a sewing machine. But growing up as the son of immigrants from Venezuela and Trinidad, he watched as his parents subsisted on their raw artistic skills to create a life in Los Angeles. For a short time, his father even ran a private womenswear label.
Similarly, in his early 20s, Thomas worked at Ralph Lauren. As one of the few Black people in creative roles in a predominantly white company, he soon realized that the only way to survive in the fashion industry would have to be with a project of his own making.
“I was the ‘cool’ Black guy, but there was nowhere for me to go,” he said. “Best case would have been sourcing buttons for wom
en’s outerwear or something.”
Gallery Dept.’s spontaneous inception came about in 2016 when Thomas sold a hand-sewn denim poncho off his own back to Johnny Depp’s stylist. At the time Thomas was focused on making beats and DJ-ing, but after selling all of the pieces he’d designed for a small trunk show, he realized he’d discovered a new creative lane.
Working with heavy vintage shirts, hoodies, trucker hats and bomber jackets, Thomas would frequently screen-print the brand’s logo, adding paint or other flourishes as the feeling struck.
Today that extends to longsleeve 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.”