LUKAS KUBEJA
James Folgarelli Interview (unedited)
October 5, 2024
L: How'd you get in all the Snoopy stuff?
J: Childhood. My mom and my aunt both worked at Hallmark cards, which has a huge Peanuts collection and hallmarks based in Kansas City, where I'm from. So there was a lot of Snoopy themed stuff growing up. Then I kind of tapped out of it until I got older and met Mo (Momo Gordon). We both are kinda obsessed with Snoopy and comics. So that's where that came from.
S: Lukas said, you know, all of Snoopy's siblings' names?
J: I do, yeah. Andy is the fuzzy one who is based off of Charles Schultz's real life dog who's like an aerial character or something. And then Spike is the one who lives in the desert, Olaf is kind of like a Russian caricature. He's a big fuzzy one with a winter hat and then marbles is a dalmatian, which is weird because they're all beagles, so I don't know how that happened. Infidelity, perhaps. And there’s Andy who has brown ears and a white body. Snoopy has a sister named Bell as well. I don't remember his parents' names but that’s in the lore.
L: What attracted you to Portland?
J: I never really intended on living here, but my sister went to college here, and, stayed and lived in Salem. I only applied to two colleges, and one was PNCA here, and one was SAIC in Chicago. And I got a full ride to PNCA. So I was like, I kind of have to go. Chicago gave me a huge scholarship too, but it would still be, you know, $200,000 of debt by the time I was done with it. And I had lived in the Midwest for 18 years s I didn’t need to stay there and endure an even colder winter than Kansas. So yeah,it feels weird to live in Portland because I didn't seek out living here, but it's become home in a lot of ways. Yeah, and you feel like, like, culturally
L: And, you feel culturally supported here?
J: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people doing similar things here, and I think the scale of the city is small enough that you're not competing with every single person like in LA or New York, but at the same time, you know, I think there could be a lot more ambition. Or a sort of mutual energy that I'd like to see more. And at the same time, I don't really go out trying to meet other people who are sewing but I have friends who are sewing.
I was primarily here for the art scene, when I was done with school, and I was trying to work in museums, and I worked at several galleries, and I thought that was my trajectory in life. And it still is, in some ways, but it's become more complicated because I have maybe too many interests, and I feel complicated about being a generalist instead of a specialist. I'm pretty good at a lot of things, and I'd say actually good at a few, but I'm never gonna be, in this current trajectory, the best clothing maker ever. And I don't think that's my intention either, but yeah, it's nice to have all of the skills and components to fully flesh out something like daag. A full brand, my creative outlet, and not just like visual fine art. So it was a really good way for me to transition from like, the idea that I'm gonna make money off of photographs and paintings which is a cool fantasy, but it's not exactly what I want to be doing. So yeah, I don't know that was a long winded answer to something just about Portland lol. I guess I would say I feel supported.
S: You said you were doing sculpture in school? How does that influence the brand (daag)?
J: Yeah, the sculpture had a pretty easy transition into clothing, because I was really interested in fabrics and materials and softer sculpture forms as well as resin casting… and furniture as well. But even making clothing racks out of wood that I can hang clothing on or something that's a soft, textile based, sculptureI was informative. It was nice to be in a place where people were trying to sew and do other sculptural mediums more seriously.
I feel like that's the beauty too of being kind of good at a lot of things but maybe not an expert in any one of those things. It allows me to curate the whole of a project rather than feeling I need someone else to do certain components which means relying on their artistic input. And also from a financial perspective, I break even on what I'm doing that way. But if I had to pay someone to do all of the photo work, or the E-commerce it would become purely a passion project instead of a supplemental income. It has been that a lot of times in the past: just something more passive that I can keep putting money into when I can. It's not just like never ending money suck. Although it does feel like that sometimes too. I have to be wary about the level of ambition and wanting to position myself as a brand among certain types, and recognizing that there’s a team of 10 people working on those. My expectations have to be tempered a little bit. But at the end of the day, I don't want to be waiting to finish something because I have to have another person come into play. Sometimes it's good to just finish something in one sitting. Be like, Okay, this is done. I can have my headspace back and move on to the next thing.
S: When you look back at the work that you were doing when you were in college, do you see a through line from that to what you're doing now?
J: Yeah, I think at least at the very end of it, I was thinking about printmaking and sculpture in ways that they applied to real world objects, or how they could exist not only in a white cube setting. In that way, like for my thesis work, I sewed an outfit and made this fiction, sort of scenario where I would… oh, God, this is going to be challenging to explain. I don't need to reread my whole speech and paper… But essentially, I made clothing. I became a character figure in this scenario. I photographed the whole thing. I printed it as real artifacts that were artworks, but at the end of the day, also, the clothing that I made was still wearable. And that seems like a through line, because I'm still making clothing now, and I'm still photographing it, and I'm still thinking about it in terms of materials at the forefront, instead of just making clothing as a brand. Like, I don't really know if what I do is a brand, but I've branded it with a logo, so it kind of exists in that space.
L: How do you source your materials?
J: Generally, I used to source everything here when I was getting started, just at Mill End, the fabric shop here. And I love it but it has become really limiting. I realized the price gouging on stuff, not saying anything bad about them, because it's a business, but yeah, I source a lot of stuff from LA now. I have one vendor that imports things from Turkey, Italy, Japan, a lot of Made in the USA. It's really amazing, because they don't have minimums, so you can order just enough for one project, which has always been a component of my work. I don't want to have too much stock that I can never get through. And also being able to buy $50 worth of fabric, versus having to buy 300 yards.
I think in terms of running a small brand or project where I don't want to have waste. I don’t like the clothing industry, it's so gnarly, and the biggest polluter. So I try to keep it small that way it's not going to go into a landfill necessarily. I only make maybe 50 things a year, and hopefully people are wearing them for a long time, or giving them away or donating them. I have a minor in ecology from Art School, which is really funny. I think that also influenced the way I think about clothing and sort of regenerative sources of creativity. I'm going to tangent way too far off this. I'm not going to talk about this haha
I’m just trying to be as intentional as possible without compromising too much of the final product or vision which is always a challenge
L: I'm interested in the way that skating has informed your design practice, or, if you feel like it does it all?
J: I mean, I think it's the reason I'm obsessed with clothes for better or worse. You know, growing up watching skating, I want to look like this person. How do I get the right jeans? How do I have the same sort of style or the way you carry yourself through life, and so that's definitely been a jumping off point. And I touch on skateboarding as a reference all the time, but it's not the primary focus. I don't want to be a skateboarding brand, but being skateboarding adjacent makes sense.
I'm just not going to do a campaign where someone's holding a board. There will definitely be something where someone's skateboarding. My next collection is titled pedestrian so it's very wearable, very unassuming. Just seeing how people actually move around and live in the garments. So it's like skateboarding, biking, walking, hiking, which is a very simple concept, but has a lot of legs to make something beautiful in terms of the campaign.
L: I feel growing up skating, it's like, the pants obsession. You know, you get a pair of pants, and then you are constantly looking in the mirror. Are they too long or too short? Are they too baggy or not baggy enough? I feel like all my experience sewing is just like pants alteration.
J: The obsession doesn't go away. It gets worse. Yeah, it only gets worse. I buy pants as references. Well t's not really a reference, I just want stuff but that's how I'm validated. It's actually a business expense. But when I got it now I don't want to cut it up, because it's so good. But there's definitely ways to pattern off things without totally destroying them. But I mean, the first pants I made are like a Dickies bootleg, just with an elastic waist instead. They were pretty fucked up looking, to be honest but they've grown. Everything kind of goes back to, like a very simple silhouette that just minor tweaks over the years. The latest iteration of pants I feel like I finally made something that I really want to wear.
L: I guess I kind of want to transition in talking about, like, your day job, and the way that your day job is informed by your work with daag and vice versa?
J: Yeah, It's an interesting question, because just as of six months ago, I started a new job where I'm actually doing apparel design. But it's at a much different scale and a different approach than what I do for myself. So I work for CCS, a skateboarding company, got hired to be an apparel designer, but spend, I'd say, 80% of my time doing graphic design, which is not my background, despite working at a design studio(Fisk) for five years.
But the process is really interesting for the apparel patent, because in some ways, it's similar to how I started, where you find a reference you really like, and make alterations or tweaks and call out certain changes you want, and then send it off to get sampled at a factory elsewhere, and then get it back and sort of go through that process as a traditional clothing brand or manufacturer. But I'm not sewing samples for them. I'm not making everything from scratch, which feels like a cheat code. And I think a lot of brands operate like this. They'll find some vintage silver tab reference and then, you know, we got polar big boys from that and all sorts of very effective trendy clothing that is in the cycle. So yeah, it's interesting doing that now, and I feel like it's changing the way I approach daag, because daag feels pretty sincere in comparison. Not that designing for another company doesn't, but having full control and not having to compromise for materials or where it's manufactured, I can really hone in on that. But at the same time, I'm learning how to work with a factory, in case I ever want to scale in that way.
L: Do you think that you would?
J: I don't think I would do it for daag. You know, if I was in a position in the future to start another brand that had some sort of investment, I'd see it as a chance to actualize certain ideas that wouldn't work for my current operation. But I'd be open to working at a different clothing brand that feels aligned and to working with manufacturers and leading with material sourcing and actually having hands-on experiences with the people who are fabricating things. Yeah, I just don't know what the trajectory looks like in my life to get to that point now, but it is something I'm interested in.
L: What was the first Daag item? Was it a dry bag?
J: It was like a pullover shirt and some shorts that had an elastic waist. But yeah, the bag was the first thing that was officially a Daag product. That had the tag on it. yeah. And it's a very ubiquitous design. It's in REI or any camping store, you know, it's existed forever. But this is sort of in a strange design space, where it's really simple but it's not functional for outdoor activities necessarily, depending on the material chosen. So maybe it's a fashion item, maybe it's a function item, but it's somewhere in between that. I think that's why that product works. I'm like, this is just weird, and it's easy enough for me to make, I can sell for a lower price point. People can engage with it if they don't want to buy a $300 jacket.
S: How did you come up with the Daag logo?
J: So back when I was doing printmaking in school, I found this little letterpress piece of lead type that is basically the logo one to one besides a few tweaks I made. So I printed it, I scanned it in, and then basically image-traced it and added some different details, removed some of the smaller, finer aspects, and kind of ran with it. And I've seen it pop up in other places. I think it's old enough that it's maybe really old glyph. It;s like creative commons by now, but I've seen other people use it very rarely, and I'm like wow maybe I should have changed this even more. There was a 90s Stussy graphic that has a chunkier version of the same dog. And I was like, whoa. Maybe I need to re approach this. But I think it's cool that it exists in a way that has a legacy, even if I don't know all the other artworks or ways it's been printed in the past.
L: I feel like because you found that leadtype and didn’t know the previous uses, you get a pass.
J: I have a friend who works at Stussy and I sent him the photo of the shirt I found with the dog on it. And He's like, “Oh yeah. I thought that's what you based your logo off.” And I was like, “Damn! No, I've actually never seen this.” I wish I owned that shirt so I could just look at it and kind of dissect it a little bit more.
L: So I noticed that none of your shirts have shirt-tail hems? Is that just a taste or style thing?
J: Yeah, we were talking earlier about skills I want to develop. But just because all of this came from like a self taught place, I mean I absolutely can do it, and I've done it before, but it hasn't made sense to do for some of the garments I've made in the past. Because I don't really do shirting. Everything is more of a jacket layer or slightly heavier. Not that those garments can't have a curved hem. It's something I'm interested in doing in the future. I've just been stuck on the flat hem crop because it was luckily easy to make when I started, and then it became very fashionable. haven't had to adapt it enough.
But, you know, the goal is to keep pushing myself and make things so I'm not just doing two main silhouettes. There will be a time when this is a special, new product that's released, and there's a reason for it but I don't know if I'll make men's shirts. Everything is sort of as it is now because It works really well gender neutrally. The elastic pants are pretty inclusive. The raglan sleeve works if you have broad shoulders or narrow shoulders. So those features have been really nice to work with and meant that I don’t have to size everything for so many different body types.
But that becomes a crutch I'm using. I could get better at these things, and I will eventually. And when I have time, I'm gonna really dial and learn those things. I don't want to make elastic pants forever. It's fun and easy and it looks really good, depending on how you style it. But, you know, I only really buy button fly jeans, and why wouldn't I make the thing that I want to wear the most? So that's definitely on the list of things that's happening. Hopefully next year.
L: It's interesting though to hear about your design language being informed, not only by your strengths, but also your limitations.
J: I think it's good to have, you know, constraints that are either within your control or outside of it. I could buy an industrial machine too and somehow get it up these stairs and in that room. But at the scale I'm working at now, just having a couple tabletop machines has been so nice. I can't be moving a 2000 pound machine all the time. I mean you can get them not super expensive and I’m sure it'll happen at some point because I do want to start making more leather bags. But I've been able to get away with thin leathers and suedes for now.
L: What's inspiring you or motivating you within the realm of Daag right now?
J: It's a good question. I think, getting better technically, like seeing other people in this space, or, around my age doing things, I'm like, “oh, I should be able to do this thing”, and not necessarily in a negative way. I don't feel bad about the stuff I make. I'm really proud of it, but I want to push it to the next level in a way that doesn't feel like I'm breaking myself off every time I have an idea and getting stressed out. I want to approach it organically and sustainably. When it makes sense to learn those things.
And I think always materials. It's what I'm obsessed with, how I really wanted this to go from the beginning is having a priority on those things and earning through understanding which materials work for which silhouettes, and subverting people's expectations of what would work. Well, yeah, so it's those things. And then, working with more people doing collaborations where it's not just one person making something, and not to say that I have to work with someone else who's fabricating, but working with friends who are videographers or photographers or writers just making things that have a wider audience and sort of bring more people access to not only my project, but whoever I'm working with has always been fun.
And you know now that I don't work at a very public gallery and, design studio space, I have to go out of my way to make those connections, which I think is a really good growing point in my personal sewing career, and also just life in general. I feel like I've met so many people by proximity of just being in a space, and now I have to be intentional and put in the effort to meet people who are interested in the same things, which can happen very easily and organically somewhere small as Portland, but making a point of doing that, instead of thinking, “I’ve met all the people I’m going to meet in Portland.” There are so many people here I've never met doing cool things.
L: I guess we probably shouldn't wrap it up before talking about your time at Fisk.
J: So that was definitely a keystone event in my life. I graduated from school. I was trying to work in galleries and kind of trying to do Daag at that time too. I didn’t know what I was going to do for work. I was doing all these part time side hustles. And I thought “ maybe I'll just make clothing”. And I'm glad that wasn't what happened, because I wasn't really ready, and I didn't have the experience, or all of the references that would really change my perspective for the better. And working at Fisk, originally being hired on to manage the gallery space because of my background in installing artwork and working in museums, it felt like a dream. Leaving school, fumbling around for like, six months. Then me working in this field that I've wanted to work in, feels like a real blessing. And then, you know, the pandemic closed the gallery multiple times, things shifted. I ended up doing product development for our apparel and whatever other things we were selling in the store. And then, you know, kind of learning to do design work accidentally. And thankfully, it's helped me in a lot of ways. And then reopening the gallery, it was a whirlwind of five years. It feels like it was 10 years of my life, honestly. And very thankful for it, yeah.
S: Do you feel like you spend a lot of time seeking out sources reference material or do you feel like you’ve curated your social media accounts and internet presence to the point that those things just come to you?
J: Definitely. I mean, I think social media has really put information and power into people's hands, both in terms of being inspired by someone you see, and then also being able to go to YouTube and look up how to sew something, for example. I think it obviously can also be dangerous, because you see something and know you can make that but you have to constantly question “what am I bringing to this that isn’t just recreating something?”
So I think in a lot of ways, the algorithm shows me, you follow the right stores or other designers, and you get easy access to know what other people are doing for their process, and it's really helpful. But as much as possible I try to find inspiration outside of not only just social media, but also people doing similar things to what I'm doing. Like, I want there to be a reference that hopefully only I have.
And it's not always coming from a place of seeing a garment in the world. It could literally just be someone walking down the street, or the way someone describes something in a book that motivates you to want to make it. I feel that way with William Gibson's writing a lot, because there's a lot of strange secret clothing brands and aversions to garment labels and keeping things as unidentifiable as possible. But the way the materials are described and the processes and some of those books pattern recognition, I think that's what's kept me inspired to make clothing, because the way it's described does something for my brain. I'm visualizing something that just seeing someone walking down the street doesn't necessarily do, that's really cool.
S: Yeah, I feel like I spend a lot of time kind of almost consciously trying to avoid referencing things too much that I see digitally. Because I'm like, well, if I'm seeing this, how many other people are also seeing it. Am I thinking critically about what I actually like about this? Or is it just in my brain because it's right there in front of me? Yeah, or you see it enough times that it's stuck?
J: Yeah, is it just familiar and I don't know, easily accessible? Yeah. I mean, the question of taste too is really a whirlwind. I don't know what my taste is, and I don't think anyone should fully. yes, you have the things you like and the things that make you excited, bring you joy, but if your taste is static, that can become a problem.
S: That’s interesting because from an outside perspective, I look at your home and the way you dress and the things you make, and it feels like a very cohesive aesthetic. But when do you feel like this current iteration of your taste came into being?
J: Yeah, I don't know if I could pinpoint it, but now that my partner and I live alone, it definitely has become a more intentional space. Well, okay, this is kind of a tangent, but the thing that I worry about with really finding your style or having a uniform (because I love the idea of wearing a uniform and not necessarily having to make 10 choices every day of what you're wearing) is that there's a fine line between wearing something for function and wearing something and looking like a cartoon character or caricature of yourself, which you know you want to be cohesive and people to recognize you like if you change your style every day, that can be kind of jarring, and it's cool, like a lot of people do that in a way to find their own style later down the line but I think where I'm at with my esthetic or style right now is… if I say, “an appreciation for materials one more time” …
L: But that’s what you like though. Like simple silhouettes with nice materials.
J:Yeah and then like one unexpected move. I think this is why my next collection is called pedestrian, I don't want to make stuff that's too loud, but if you're really paying attention, you'll notice something that will stick with you. And I think back to the reference of William Gibson's writing, like, if I can actually make something that lends the sort of feeling that I get from those books. I want to give that feeling to people through some other medium. I want to create a piece where there's something people don't expect, and it stays with them, but it's not earth shattering. It doesn't have to be loud.
S: Yeah, What was your style like when you were in high school?
J: I was wearing skinny jeans and corduroys with some nice Lands End boots. Pretty much every day I wore some flannels. I really liked the color purple, and still do, but I was wearing purple sweaters. So I guess that mixed with like skateboarding style. Like, I was living in the Midwest, kind of trying to have a Pacific Northwest style, even though I didn't know I was gonna live here. And then I had to have a good hoodie and the right pants. I don't know, it was always a balance of being sort of the odd one out in school and balancing being into skating and also interested in clothes. But people were just wearing sperrys and, like, peach colored shorts. It doesn't work for me. I don't like that. I mean growing up being like Dylan Reeder is the coolest person, I want to dress like him. I want to wear black skinny jeans and cuff them and wear slip ons and that in the Midwest that means you're gonna stand out a little bit.