Adam & Eve

How it all began by George Gorrow

We were living in Narrabeen, a small town on the northern beaches of Sydney — a kind of town that isn’t really a destination other than for some good waves. For me, it was more of a place on the way to somewhere else, nothing really to do other than what you created. We had a bunch of buddies all living within three blocks of each other, all either painters, writers, photographers, filmmakers, graphic designers, dope smokers, drunks or, of course, surfers. Together we entertained ourselves, kind of pushing and inspiring each other. It was our little bubble of action.

We looked for projects that would combine the talents of the group constantly. Australian Fashion Week came around in 2000; we thought maybe we could attack that. Throwing yourself into the deep end is exciting. The thought of playing in a medium we technically knew nothing about was perfect for us. We were never taught the rules, and we figured that if we didn’t know the rules we couldn’t get in trouble for breaking them. So, we locked ourselves in Oscar Wright’s garage studio on Park Street in Narrabeen for three days, stocked it with an endless supply of wine that ended up being not endless enough, and a bunch of other stuff like film, paint, fabric — everything a DIY wannabe fashion designer could want. At the end of three days we came out the other end with a look, a range and a name. We were somehow accepted into Fashion Week and given our own show.

In trying to work out what to do, Dan was organising the models and asked who should come out first, etc. I jumped up and said, “I’d prefer if a plague of rats came out!” That was it. It took us three weeks of searching, but we found 300 rats. Then we had to forge documents from so-called “rat specialists’ that stated we knew how to control and contain them using a new oil repellent spray that made walls slippery and unapproachable to rats. Of course, our invention didn’t exist, but the documents passed and we were on.

The night before the show, we hadn’t finished the clothes. We were all out at a party and everyone was saying, “We can’t wait for your show”. It scared us to death. Not only didn’t we know a thing about putting on a fashion show, we hadn’t finished half the clothes, so we raced back to the hotel.

To be honest, I was so freaked out we were going to fail that we decided to call the show off and do a stunt instead. For a while there we were going to form the band we had always talked about and do our first show. The idea was to learn a song overnight and smash all the instruments up three-quarters of the way through the first song. It sounded like a good idea at four in the morning. Dan and I called and woke Oscar, told him the show was off and that we needed to do the band because it was the only way to escape complete humiliation. He agreed and stayed up all night writing the lyrics. Then we called Johnny Justin, the greatest rock god we knew. We figured if anyone was going to have all the instruments we needed and be able to teach four idiots how to play in one morning, it was he. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a hold of him, so as a backup Dan kept sewing all night — just in case. At 8 a.m. on the morning of the show I had to see the lighting guy who was a good 30 minutes away. We were planning on having rock show lighting, not fashion show lighting unless I was told otherwise. Luckily for us, Dan gave me the call as soon as I got there. “The band’s off,” he said. Oscar arrived tired and relieved. He sung us what he had written and, fuck, it was good, but we still hadn’t gotten a hold of Johnny Justin. We had no instruments and none of us could play a single musical note, not to mention we had forgotten about the 300 rats we had on the way.

Finally, the show started and, wow, what a trip! Management soon found out the rat repellent spray didn’t work; the curtain fell down, one of the models stood on a rat, killing it instantly right in front of the RSPCA official who had been sent to make sure we were nice to the little guys. The rest is kind of a blur. After that, the rat thing got so much attention; it was crazy. No one even saw the clothes, which was great because they were terrible. After that, all the doors kind of opened up for us, and the opportunity to do the clothing label was too great to pass up, so we took it. And here we are, wherever that is.

How it will end by Dan Single

Almost as quick as it took for the rat’s little heart to stop beating, the orders came rushing in. Hong Kong, Tokyo Paris, Dubai. The more stores we could pick up around the globe the better we thought we were going.

Paying for production by piggybacking credit cards we started filling our orders by sanding head-high piles of jeans on my balcony.

Realising that we weren’t going to get through them all within the space of a year, we got a room out the back of one of the laundries we used and employed a bunch of kids, friends of the family, etc., to sand the jeans. We called them our Smurfs. After being stuck in a room sanding jeans all day your skin goes dark indigo so badly that you swear the dye is bleeding out of your eyeballs.

So…

While we struggled during the day with more inquiries, more orders, more production, more staff, more banking, more taxes, mo money mo problems… we spent our nights planning what we could do to make this journey more exciting and more rewarding.

The daily grind of running a business was taking its toll.

We moved our headquarters to Manly, into an old doctors. studio we called “The Skull Club”. We were four twenty-something Andy Warhol wannabes, creating this dream factory by the beach in Manly.

We had a shop in the front, which we would sell absolutely anything out of; we had a painting area, a sewing area, a warehouse space and an office all in one little studio.
We went about finding the cutest young work experience girls we could and called them our sexetaries. trying to make the most fun out of what was becoming a serious day-to-day business.

By night we would explore the streets of Manly, stencilling plagues of rats coming out of the gutters and drawing chalk outlines of ourselves on every surface we could find. Most nights would end with us jumping from roof to roof to escape the polizi.

We decided that it was time to take our brand overseas, so with a suitcase full of samples strapped to a skateboard and duffle bags filled with our coolest looking band outfits, we got on a plane to NYC. Should have seen our faces when on the second day of our trip, the Twin Towers went down. Holy shit, fringes flying from side to side, we didn’t know what to think. I will never forget that night, George and I skateboarding down Broadway with not a soul in sight. Just giant white lights illuminating this smouldering hole in the ground, out of it pouring this insane amount of smoke and ash.

We thought it was quite exciting sneaking down to Ground Zero, until fire fighters, tired, surrounded us, drunk and grieving over the mates they had lost. One of the guys turning to us and saying how he hadn’t killed since the war but could kill tonight. He then asked us why we didn’t ride our skateboards right through the middle of the damn thing. See what we can see!
Shit man, heavy times.

We have had many adventures like this while travelling, also many more stupid adventures right on our doorstep.

ksubi has been around for nine years now. If I were to try and account every adventure in some kind of order I might as well call our story “a million little jeans”. it would be impossible.

I don’t even know really where to start, where to end, or what to tell you.

It has been an amazing time with friends and family. Business is sometimes tough but we have grown up fast. The whole thing I have realised about ksubi is that it’s very schizophrenic. There is a side of utter stupidity and complete disregard for anything normal, balanced by serious daily business dealings. There is the most expensive denims paired up with the most expensive finishes, yet our techniques are almost primitive. There is no proper order and nothing has to make sense.

To get here we have gone through 4 ex-girlfriends, 3 general managers, 5 passports, probably over 50 credit cards and a lot of staff. But still we have managed to keep our ksubi family together, with a lot of our core employees being with us from the beginning.

I don’t know what else to write about or where I can say we will be in the future. All I know it has been one hell of a ride and I wouldn’t want to swap any of these experiences for anything in the world.