Screen Shot: Cpypst

City Based: Don’t really have a home base yet

WHAT INSPIRED THE BRAND NAME?

Well I started doing a lot of graphic design as a hobby, but really most of what I was making was just complete copies of other stuff I liked, so in a sense I was literally copying and pasting these ideas/designs and making them my own. I still do a lot of copying and altering but I think the name has to do more with how we copy the art that inspires us and then we make it something else, like sampling in music.

AT WHAT MOMENT DID YOU REALIZE YOU WANTED TO START A BRAND?

I’ve always been very into design in general and then slowly started getting more and more into clothing. Initially I started doing design for concert posters at my university and would occasionally make fan art on Redbubble, but I always wanted to give my designs a more tangible dimension—something I could actually grab or wear or own not just a design on paper or my computer.

WHAT HELPS YOU GET OVER CREATIVE BLOCKS?

Well if I ever hit a creative block I’ll just stop whatever I’m doing, I feel like doing work for cpypst should be fun and if I ever force anything its gonna look heinous. Then I’ll probably listen to music, talk with friends, watch TV or go for a walk and then eventually at some point something will bring me back to my laptop to keep working on stuff or I’ll usually feel ‘inspired’ when I’m doing other work and want to procrastinate.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU EVER MADE?

Well I’ve made a lot of mistakes and probably a lot more I haven’t even realized yet. The first one was to overextend myself on the first drop, I had way too much variety and made too much of everything, in hindsight I should’ve focused on a piece or two at a time to really refine it, and make sure it was exactly what I wanted to put out.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST SUCCESS YOU HAVE HAD?

Haven’t really had one super successful moment yet, although it’s been great to receive messages from strangers saying that they like my designs or my page.

A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION PEOPLE MAY FIND WEIRD?

I love fonts. I follow a lot of font pages and font designers and I’ll either look through their pages or websites, maybe download their font types and just play around with them for a while and see if I can come up with anything I like.

FAVORITE COLOR TO USE?

For designs mostly primary colors and for clothing white, black and navy.

ARE THERE ANY RETAIL SHOPS YOU WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU BRAND IN?

I’d love to be in Dover Street Market, I’d have an entire ‘cpypst’ floor in the NY store, and sell all my shirts for over a K, or maybe over 2K. Also went to this restaurant/café/streetwear shop spot in DC called Maketto—I wouldn’t hate it if people were checking out my clothes while drinking an oat-milk-dirty-chai or something elaborate like that. Finally, If I ever make any shoes, I’d love to be in Bodega’s Boston location, I’d go in there about once every two weeks and just look at their collection.

ANOTHER BRAND THAT INSPIRES YOU AND WHY?

There’s a lot of Brands that I look up too and for a lot of different reasons. First one is Amie Leon Dore, Teddy Santis really did an incredible job with this brand, I can’t exactly put my finger on why I’m into it so much but ALD playlists are incredible and I’d say it’s the quintessential NYC brand as of now. NOAH is also another brand I love; their NYC store is so well curated and the trouble they go through to make sure their clothing is sustainably sourced and their work with charity is admirable. I don’t want to make this section too long but I have to mention Sci-fi fantasy as well, I really used a lot of their formats as a standard for my page. Additionally, b_Eautiful is probably one of my favorite pages on Instagram and one of my favorite brands too, they were one of the top reasons I ended up making cpypst. Lastly, I need to give credit to ‘Semi Aquatics’ their clothing is insanely nice in both design and quality and their founder actually helped me a ton with launching cpypst.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AND THE BRAND IN 1 YEAR AND 5 YEARS?

I really don’t know, I think in the near future I’d like to start making custom shoes and kind of branch out a little more from just making graphic tees although I do love graphic tees. In 5 years I’d love to have a super high quality line, something a little more elegant and have a brick and mortar store and maybe a café too, oh and also have a whole floor in Dover Street Market where people can by my shirts for over a K.

IN 5 WORDS OR LESS DESCRIBE YOUR BRAND?

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