Care Label #9 Arnold Park Studios (Part 1)
with Andrew Beller
Welcome back to Care Label! It’s been a little while since I delved into the mind of one of some of Ireland’s best brands and makers. Apologies for being MIA. But to make up for the literary tardiness, Andrew Beller of Arnold Park Studios is the upcoming Gem for Care Label #9.
For those of you who don’t know, APS is the apparel and accessories brand founded by Andrew in 2016. Andrew hails from Worthington Ohio, one of those nostalgic American suburbs that we all know from the movies. It’s only natural that APS is named after a typical cul-de-sac in leafy South Dublin suburbia.
I’ve been lucky to get to know Andy in recent months and he’s always been on the Care Label radar. For most of these profiles, I speak to people in the infancy of their craft. It’s always a thing of beauty speaking to up-and-coming makers and doers. But with Andy, he’s been selling garb across the globe for a minute now. So he’s had some years to let things Marinade, reflecting on the beautiful minefield that is running your own brand. And the best part? He tells us all about it in this week’s profile.
Slattery’s Pub on Dublin’s Capel St (feat a pint of Guinness) was the location for Care Label #9. What started as some poster designs in 2016, has turned into an international apparel brand spanning Japan, Italy and the UK. From the leafy suburbs of Worthington Ohio, American Eagle and being stocked in some of the World’s best Menswear stores, Andrew reveals all in Part 1 of the interview below.
Enjoy!
Care Label: Andrew, you’re from the USA originally hailing from Ohio. Tell us a bit about growing up there.
Andy: “I’m from Columbus, Ohio, specifically a suburb called Worthington. It’s one of those postcard idyllic American suburbs.”
Care Label: How did growing up in the Midwest shape your interests?
Andy: “It worked out pretty well in that Columbus is a University town, so there's a lot of youth culture and some really good record stores. When I was growing up, big bands would come through and play shows because of the University. It's a legendary thrift store city. In terms of how the fashion around music was shaped, people would dress out of the thrift stores. It was less about brands, and more about putting together interesting looks with pieces that you can find for cheap. Especially in the Indie and Punk scene, you know, your vintage graphic T-shirts skin tight, which in the early 2000s were a big thing! You just see a lot of really clever ways to dress well for cheap and dress uniquely and I think that bled into my thinking about how I approach fashion and graphics.”
Care Label: You said you'd always been interested in fashion or clothes. So how did that start?
Andrew: “I think I always had that thing where you start to look around and notice what others are wearing. I always had an awareness of what clothing meant and signified and tried to find ways to express myself with them. I'd say from a pretty early age, I knew that I cared about what I wore and sought out clothes that felt like me.”
Care Label: And how about actually dipping your professional toe in this world? What did Columbus offer at that time?
Andrew: “There were a bunch of fashion brands operating in Columbus. A friend of mine used to house-sit for a denim designer for Abercrombie & Fitch. We’d go over to party when my friend was housesitting, and knowing that somebody was making their living in my hometown working in fashion lit a light bulb in my head. I've always had a passing interest in fashion, and knew that I wanted to go into design - so that suddenly appeared in my consciousness as a potential career path.”
*Forest Green Cable Knit Fantasies*
Care Label: What would be your first clothing memory for you?
Andrew: “There would be two distinct memories. The first one, and I think this is my designer brain switching on, but I have this weird memory from probably age 10 or 11 where I wanted an oversized cable-knit Forest Green jumper. I had not seen this anywhere. I just knew I wanted it. I wanted to wear it with a pair of Umbro Shorts. This is so embarrassing, I’ve never said this out loud, but I had this vision in my head of me twirling around falling into a pile of leaves like I was imagining something out of a catalogue. It was the first time I went to seek out a piece that I hadn’t seen somewhere. I need to find this. I'm sure it exists. I eventually did find it!”
[Continued]: “I don't know that the payoff is as good as my daydream of spinning around in the leaves, but I rocked it. And that was my earliest memory of just having a very specific idea of what I wanted. And then I did also grow up where my Father accidentally had Dad-Core style.”
Care Label: So he’s on trend right now??
Andrew: “Oh yeah! Skechers, a lot of tech outerwear, zip-off trousers, things like that. But he's a fire protection engineer, so he works with a lot of equipment that had protective clothing and they gave my Dad so much free swag. There used to be all these merch caps sitting around the house with these industrial logos on them. Up until recently, it was an unconscious thing until I was a couple of years into doing Arnold Park where I’d look back, I’m like ‘Oh shit. I know exactly where this comes from!’ So that was something that lit the fire for me for sure.”
Care Label: The ‘Industrial-Core 2 Graphic Tee’ transition. I love it!
*Special Pieces*
Care Label: I'm not sure if you still have that green jumper or if there's another piece that's taken over, but is there any item that you could never walk away from?
Andrew: “So I have an uncle who worked for MACK Trucks back in the day. But he had all this free swag from working at MACK and their logos, had this Bulldog. The branding is (Chef’s Kiss). So I had a blue trucker cap with a MACK logo that I wore until I had to use a paperclip to keep it together. Unfortunately, it just got beat up to the point where it might be somewhere in my Mom's attic. But one of the T-shirts did survive. So my Son still wears this MACK Truck T-Shirt. Gorgeous Screenprint, water-based and it's just aged perfectly!”
*Mentorship*
Care Label: To change the pace a little. You’ve spoken before about your friend Willy Chavarria. I’m curious to hear how that friendship blossomed. But also how important was that friendship to your success or development as a designer?
Andrew: “I mean, massive in every sense. We met working at our day job in American Eagle. So we didn't work directly together, but we sat near each other and yeah, he's a pretty outrageous character so we got to know each other. When he began his own brand, he needed someone to model for him, so I ended up filling in for that. I’d get the odd free piece of clothing but I think the big thing for me was, even though I worked a day job in fashion, I didn't view myself as having any place in that mid-tier menswear world. But I think, both of us sort of shared an interest in it. So there was something about going on these trips and getting shot wearing the clothing and wearing things that I might not have worn personally. That was kind of when I started to feel maybe I did belong in this world.”
*Always Read Your Emails!*
Andrew: “Several years later he pivoted to doing clothes under Palmer Trading Company. That's when he started contacting me about doing graphics for his runway shows. But the funny story about that is, I actually f*c$ed up my first assignment for him because my Son had just been born. I did the graphic and sent it off as a WeTransfer. He didn't know to look for a WeTransfer email so he didn't see it come through. I then missed his follow-up email asking ‘Where’s the file’. So someone else did the job in the end. But I thought, ‘Oh God, that's it, I’m not going to get another opportunity like that’. What was really validating was, he came back and asked me to do more work the following season. I ended up quite frequently creating stuff that ended up in his runway shows.”
[Continued]: “Around the same time, I was doing a series of posters for the first year of the Trump administration. I was putting out these posters and he ended up seeing some of them, and then we did a series of T-Shirts with his favourite poster designs on them. So that was the first apparel I ever made with Arnold Park Studios on it. And then that just kind of blossomed into something. Once I did start APS, he's been there every step of the way. He can answer all these questions I’d have to save me from learning the hard way on a lot of things. So that's just been massive to have. For me, that’s what a mentor can give you is both that sense of confidence which I needed, bit also teaching you how to operate, sort of giving you their experience.”
Care Label: Would you encourage people to seek out those mentors? What would be your perspective after having that with Willie?
Andrew: “I think anything you can do to put yourself in positions to meet people that you authentically like and who have experiences that you don’t have is encouraged. I think the authentically liking the person has to be there. I've never had anything major come from people whom I knew solely for professional reasons. Once you have that authentic connection, people are much more invested and they are willing to not just forward your resume on, but also say, ‘This guy's the shit!’