From starting with the idea of making a hoodie for a friend to creating full collections, animations, NFTs, and more, Southern California-based creative Seaggs has certainly caught our attention. I had the chance to sit down with him via Zoom and discuss both of his brands, how he started, what he does to make them unique, the story of Magdalsade, and clothing in general. Hopefully, you all learn as much about having your own clothing brand as I did from Jacob. Enjoy!
Max: So, you obviously use blanks and stuff, but I've also seen you do these hoodies with the kind of velvet interior; I've never even heard of someone trying to put velvet interior in a hoodie, which is awesome. Is that you doing like a cut and sew thing where you're designing the actual hoodie? Or did you take a blank, get a velvet interior, bring it to a manufacturer, and went like, "I want this on the inside?"
Seaggs: There's two hoodies that I guess I sourced with non-normal material. It was the fluffy Sherpa fleece and the velvet interior hoodie. So, I'll do the velvet... not the velvet, the fleece one for us. So, the Sherpa fleece one, I bought it from like this one brand a couple years ago for retail price. Yeah, it was a hoodie, and then I embroidered some Dr. Seuss stuff a long time ago. I was on Alibaba, and you can search for anything on Alibaba—custom duffel bags, custom shirts, 500 GSM hoodies, whatever. And I found the same fluffy hoodie and I found their wholesale site. I guess they have a main brand, but they have a wholesale site on Alibaba. That's where I got the Sherpa fleece, and I haven't really seen anyone use it, so I was like, "Oh, I can be the first to do that." I found it on accident; I was looking for a super high GSM hoodie. The denser the threads are woven together in the hoodie, the heavier it should be, so I was searching up 400 GSM, 500 GSM, 600 GSM. I received the hoodie, and I initially had reservations about it. But it helped educate me how GSM doesn't mean it's the density of the threads; it's a whole other kind of calculation. But the interior was velvet, and I had no idea that the interior would have been velvet; I thought it would be cotton fleece or French Terry. So it's like, "Well, I already have the samples." I bought like five of them at the time, so I used them for one-of-ones. I posted on my story like, "Yo, I got this velvet interior hoodie." And people were like, "Wow, that's so cool; I've never seen that before." So I did the one-of-one stuff; three of them were the velvet interior. I made them as a part of the Brother Star collection. People loved it. It was like a happy accident; I didn't really mean to look for velvet interior—it just kind of came to me.
Max: Are there big plans coming up in the near future that you would love our viewers and your fans to know?
Seaggs: Yeah, mostly for Magdalsade, because for Seaggs, I just do the one-on-one stuff and then the collections. I'm doing a sweatsuit for Seaggs using a French Terry fleece; it's so fucking soft. I had a sample made and it's thicker than fleece but it has the grain of French Terry. They call it French Terry fleece; it's from my overseas manufacturer. It's one of the softest kinds of materials for this price range that I've ever felt. So for Seaggs, the ultimate sweatsuit is getting made. For Magdalsade, I've been working on some more NFTs. I'm doing a token system where if you own this NFT only from Magdalsade, you are guaranteed any item from my collections indefinitely—any one item. So, if I have like a $100 hoodie in my next Magdalsade collection, and I've already released one NFT, that owner can say, "Hey, I want that hoodie," and I'll say, "Great, send me your seed link to prove you own the NFT, and then I'll send it to you; you pay nothing."
So, I want this to be another way that consumers can have an advantage—a way that they really love and respect and support the brand. They could buy the NFT; I sold it for like 0.2 Ethereum, which at the time was like $400. When you're doing crypto stuff, you're focusing on the Ethereum or the Bitcoin number rather than the US dollar amount. Someone goes to the current owner of the NFT, and says, "Hey, I'll give you an offer of one Ethereum to buy that NFT token off you which is now like $2200." The current owner can either keep the token and get Magdalsade indefinitely or could get this Etherium and get the money right now. So hopefully, the tokens over time will increase in value as my brand increases.
Max: So, when you say indefinitely... say I own one of your NFTs, you do a drop. I'm guaranteed a hoodie from that?
Seaggs: Anything for a year from now. I make 10 collections; you're guaranteed at least one item for each of those collections. The only way you won't get the item is if I go bankrupt or if the brand just stops existing.
Max: Yeah, that's a cool thing. I've never really seen people use NFTs as a utility like that. It's almost like a subscription, in a very basic way.
Seaggs: Yeah, like a one-time payment subscription. I think NFTs are cool. Do you know a bit about them?
Max: I've looked a bit.
Seaggs: When I first heard about them, I thought it was kind of wacky, you know.
Max: It was a hard concept to grasp, especially for someone in art. It's like, "Okay, I buy a sculpture; I put it in my house, I can display it." It's like, if I own this NFT, do I just show someone on my phone and be like, "Hey, I have this image that I own." It's obviously a brand new concept that just blew up recently; people aren't necessarily going to understand it.
Seaggs: Some people have been getting little screens, like frames, and they plug them into an outlet. Your electric bill will go up, obviously, but then your artwork that you own will be perpetually on your LED screen. Some people sell their NFTs, and there's also a physical version you get, as well, just so you have both options available. I know the art aspect of NFT is super poppin' right now...
And to wrap up this question, I'm working on a duffel bag for Magdalsade and it is a castle duffel bag, so it's going to be very boxy and it's going to look like a black castle with embroidered windows and a secret zipper pocket with a drawbridge. It's going to be so fucking cool and it's being made right now, overseas. It might be done in like two or three months—a very long time. That's going to be the biggest thing I've ever done; that's the most ambitious project. So that's something to look forward to.
Max: Are there any last things you want our viewers and your fans to know from this?
Seaggs: Embrace happy accidents. Fail forward. Everyone has peaks and valleys. If you start doing something, it's going to suck. And if you do it the next day, it's still gonna suck. But one day, it'll suck less. That's it.
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