Please, Don’t Touch My Wywy

Once upon a time, on a brisk Saturday night in Brooklyn, I was shivering on the sidewalk with my friends, impatiently awaiting our chariot back to the penthouse. Well, the chariot being a disgustingly priced uber and the penthouse being the one bedroom AirBnB that the 5 of us booked for one person (shhh don’t tell our host). Despite all of that, I was able to ignore the reality of a college kid’s budget, because, underneath my painfully average Target brand puffer, I was absolutely DRIPPED out in a brand spanking new, purple acid tie-dye skull tee. My very first Wywy Cloth original, but certainly not my last, gifted to me by the brand's gracious and talented mastermind, Wyatt Fedora.

I had met Wyatt that night at the Brooklyn Ethical Society while sifting through his Wywy clothing racks like a kid in a candy store. I was attending Les Petites des Flood, an event focused on showcasing local creatives, which aimed to bridge the gap between fashion, music, and art in the community.

Upon first sight of his clothes I was immediately intrigued. As we got talking about it more, I knew I had to delve deeper into the story behind Wywy cloth. So we set up an interview, and here I am, telling it! Grab a snack and get comfy; it’s a good one.

Visual art has been Wyatt’s main vessel for self-expression since an early age and held prominent significance in his life growing up. “Customization of things, in general, has always been a facet. When I was younger, I’d pull out my bag of markers at the skate park and draw on peoples grip tape. So, I’ve always been with the idea of taking whatever medium you can to individualize your outward appearance.” He used to do a lot of graffiti before attending UMass Amherst, but eventually he had to put the spray paint down to avoid any trouble that could risk his financial aid.

Although college prevented him from doing graffiti, he took his art in different directions. UMass Amherst was the birthplace of Wyatt’s first involvements in fashion design and business. He mentioned that he had done some screen printing in high school, interested in the idea of fashion, but never fully getting into it until college. He recalled, “I was hanging out in my dorm and I drew something on a table and some drunk kid was like, ‘Woah that’s really cool actually.’ And I was like, ‘Well would you pay for it on a shirt?’ And it started turning up really fast in the dorm. Kids just started knocking on my door with a blank shirt and $20 in their hand.” As word spread and his designs became more popular, he started selling shirts at house parties and set up his dorm room as a pop up shop. The money from his sales was used to fund the cost of living as a college kid: pizza slices, concert tickets, toothpaste, and all the other essentials.

Despite his success, he strayed away from fashion design as life called him in different directions, “I kinda fell off after a little bit cuz I was getting a lot of commissions from different sources. I’d do the art for local bands and stuff like that. So the clothing thing got kind of pressuring. I got more into the organizing side of things like music booking and party organization.” After graduating he moved to Burlington, Vermont and “into the real world,” facing crossroads, switching fields of work, and just figuring it out. Fashion wasn’t in the cards during his transition from college to life after, but it was always part of the conversation. “I kinda forgot about the clothing for a while. I’d still pay attention to drops and I have a lot of friends who are models so I’d get to hear about fashion and talk about it all the time and it was always something that intrigued me.”

His reintroduction to the fashion world came about only a few years later. While designing pieces for an art show, he decided to hand paint on shirts, jackets, and other vintage wear. “That was my first try again at screenprinting and it was very rudimentary. I was just screwing around with it. I took fabric and stretched it through embroidery hoops and painted all sorts of things and I made these really archaic, kinda gnarly prints. From there I got invited to do clothing pop-ups in the area. I realized I wanted to get into screenprinting and really go for it.” He was planning on taking design classes and joining fashion clubs at Champlain College, but they were all either too expensive, or not exactly what he was looking for. He came to the conclusion that he should simply just begin, thinking to himself “It's gonna be better for me to just buy the 4 color press and the sewing machines and just start failing immediately.”

Since then, Wyatt has connected with other people in the area, building a community of creatives that contribute to different aspects of Wywy Cloth as a brand. “All of us grew up in various situations where we had free reign at a super young age. We were latchkey kids. We were totally those nefarious little shits causing mayhem and skating around at age 10, 11, 12 and getting in trouble. So I’m speaking to demographics of folks who are separating themselves from society in one way or another whether it be music, academia, or whatever. Anyone who’s trying to break out a little bit more.”

Heavily inspired by urban decay, skate culture, punk music, and graffiti, Wyatt’s designs are committed to the idea of finding beauty in the things that aren’t so beautiful. The brand’s street style grunge essence is clearly embodied in the classic Wywy graphics. From the Branches Metal ‘W’ Logo and his digital rendition of Wallace’s Bee to the “Hype Scythe” and the combinations of these graphics on various articles of real tree camo, every piece is unique yet cohesive, remaining effortlessly consistent with the brands image and message. Every single piece is individually printed and made in the Wywy studio, adding to the philosophy of “keeping everything as organic as possible” and making every creation independent from the one preceding.

Even in its infancy, Wywy Cloth is a brand fully self-aware of it’s identity and committed to expressing it with authenticity. With the meticulous construction of every piece, the brands focus on individuality of clothing reflects its belief in the individuality of people. Bursting with potential and snowballing towards success, Wyatt and the rest of the Wywy team are staring at a blazing bright future. Sooner or later everyone and their mothers will be flexing their Wywy, so hop on quick! Don’t let me drown in the drip alone!

Photos courtesy of Wyatt himself and the Instagram: @wywy.cloth