Chicago artist and designer, Brandon L. Rials visited our cannabis dispensary in Chicago to discuss his leather varsity jacket that he developed and hand-stitched for Dispensary 33.
Rials is constantly merging and blending aesthetic perceptions that create his personal style of focus and purpose driven fashion. We interviewed him to learn more about his approach to creating his unparalleled Chicago pieces.
Can you give us a rundown of some of the materials you used for the piece?
The patches are chenille. They’re made by One Accord Custom Apparel, which is owned by J Boogie, a really prominent figure in Chicago for custom clothes. So yeah, he made the chenille, I designed the logo–which is a take on what you guys are already doing. The jacket design itself is actually like a traditional varsity jacket. So it has the leather arms, and a wool body, the snap closure, soft collar–all that. But it also combines one of my denim jacket designs kind of infused into a varsity jacket. So it has both looks when you have it on. Kind of looks like a denim jacket but you see all the elements of a varsity jacket, so I find it to be kind of a surreal type of design.
Material wise, I threw denim in there because I’m always working with denim and I was thinking of ways how I could inject some of my personality into the jacket and make it into a varsity jacket. I thought of where the denim could be applied so that it could make sense rather than just throwing it on the jacket. And it’s real subtle. You kinda have to really be up on it to see it.
Then I used the wool. The wool is heavy weight felt wool. Very high quality when you see it on like when you see most of your traditional varsity jackets. The leather is custom made–it was me, Richard and Jordan. And that was a cool process. We got to look at the factory and all that, the people working on it, which was actually really sweet. I never did anything like that before. The leather quality–I guess I’ve never actually seen fresh leather being made. I just remember seeing it and thinking “That’s the best leather I’ve ever seen”.
Earlier, you mentioned something about your Mom and your work?
Yeah, she taught me everything. She definitely taught me around a sewing machine. And then I took everything I learned at school in product design and graphic design. I had a working knowledge in drafting patterns and did that myself. But I really needed her to show me how the machine worked, like finishing techniques. Everything that I’ve ever seen in any store–she can do all of it. So I really was studying the things I wanted to mimic and focused on perfecting that.
What advice would you give an aspiring artist / designer in Chicago?
Advice? Really, just keep working. You never know where it’ll take you, where a doodle might take you. I’ve done so many things, gone to so many places, experienced so many wonderful things–just because of a doodle. So if you’re going to pursue that creative path, don’t just think you’re going to do a couple of things and it’s just going to happen. You gotta get used to doing whatever it is that you doodle–metaphorically, that is. Just keep going.
If you could change or improve one aspect of society through your work, what would it be?
If I could change one aspect of society through my work… Slow down and take things in. I’m into the subtle details. I like to people watch, I like to try and slow life down in my head just so I can take things in and appreciate things. We have to live in this fast-paced world. That’s why I like my designs. To make people double-take. Like, “Ooo, what is that?” Get up close on it.
We’re looking for artists around Chicago that love cannabis as much as we do! If you are interested in having your work featured or collaborating on something new, send us a link to your work.
