In this issue, we welcome PRETTYNICE from Taipei, a streetwear brand that continues to change with a love for culture. Focusing on contemporary youth culture in Taipei, PRETTYNICE deconstructs norms and create them into their own identity with their designs.
Nana : Can you gives us an introduction to PRETTYNICE?
Warren : Let me introduce myself first, My name is Warren from PRETTYNICE. PRETTYNICE is a streetwear label from Taipei. In addition, we throw parties and various music-related projects from time to time, yet provide visual design, video production, and product development for other units. In 2019, we have been invited by 上官喆 Sankuanz the (YOHO! Magazine), to write a series on Taiwanese underground youth and we will actively continue to participate in interesting projects. The PRETTYNICE team puts together the rich heritage of street culture, through the use of music sampling techniques. We record the vivid images/ musical/ story/ apparel and the characteristic of the street. Through the use of the unique ingenuity of the concept and our re-interpretation of the shared memories of the golden age, we present these different elements in the overall garments. We form the styles that belong to the contemporary street scene, displaying the various faces of a unique style of clothes that belongs to PRETTYNICE.
Nana : Why did you initially create the brand and name it “PRETTYNICE”?
Warren : Back in the days, I was really into the hip-hop culture, I began selling goods that I bought from the US on the Internet such as merch, albums, and streetwear. They were called“Regulate the Corner” on Yahoo Bids Taiwan, but you can’t find it no more on internet. In 2012 I started to try to print my own t-shirt and make my own cap. At the time I come up with the thought that I want to start my own label, and BCW a good friend of mine wrote down 100 names for my brand, in the end, I chose “PRETTYNICE”, it’s been 10 years, PRETTYNICE innit!
Nana : What are some of the inspirations behind the brand?
Warren : PRETTYNICE is a small team, each member who works at the brand all are designer. We all worked together to create our design, the inspiration came from our conversations, hobbies, and our experience. We are fascinated by the reinterpretation of the cultural codes and the good things of the past, using clothing as the carrier to deliver PRETTYNICE’s unique brand visions. There are too many things to mention that inspire the brand such as Cult film, Exploitation film, P-Funk, G-FUNK, and Blue-eyed soul, is that a lot to mention? We have more!
Nana : What is something that your brand value the most?
Warren : I set my own goal very clearly at the beginning of PRETTYNICE.
Focusing on contemporary Taiwanese youth literature and local culture, we deconstruct and re-build them in our own vision to connect to the world as well as show a unique brand culture and establish an irreplaceable brand value.
Nana : In what way do you use social media as a platform to deliver your products and designs?
Warren : We do not use Social media to deliver our concepts or inspiration for our design often, we use the platform mainly to share the events, parties, exhibitions and various things we think are worth sharing.
Nana : Can you tell us about some of the most challenging experiences you have had during the process of building your brand?
Warren : The most challenging thing that we always have is that we can not always bring up a season collection as a brand. As a small team we have a lot of things to conquer, and we have put a lot of effort into it, and we are still fighting with it.
Nana : How do you come up and decide on the themes for your collections?
Warren : We don’t work like other brands, normally they came up with the theme and then start to brainstorm to create their collections. We design each item individually first and once we have enough amount of designs we start to assemble the design into a series, and the appearance of the series modifies the design as well as the theme to give it a complete concept, cultural background, and music, video style.
Nana : Is it possible to let readers know a little about your next drop (collection)? If so, what has
inspired the theme and the pieces in them?
Warren : We have not decided on the name of the upcoming collection, yet the overall design is influenced between the 90s, Millennium, and Cyber, using Lo-fi image synthesis technology, colorful but low-saturated color aesthetics combine with the fashion accessory to present our next collection. The image content will base on the beautiful things we have found in that era, through the methods of image transformation, content conversion, and concept extension to reinterpreting the Cyber style of the year from our perspective.
Nana : Is there a particular artist, movie, place, book that you would recommend our readers to check for
inspiration?
Warren : Recommended artists are CHOU YI, WU MEI CHI
Musicians are DJ Didilong、GorDoN、BCW、Sunset Rollercoster
Movies are all the Taiwan New Wave Cinema Projects especially Edward Yang’s (楊德昌)’s movies
The place that I recommend will be The bar called “Fucking Place” in Taipei
The book is gonna be Black16bit <SEGA Mega Drive>
Nana : Do you have any advice for our readers who are seeking to find a way to build a brand
like “PRETTYNICE”?
Warren : I don’t have much advice for the reader, because I’m still exploring and trying different methods to build PRETTYNICE, yet there are way too many attractive and wonderful things in this world that are waiting for us to discover and dig into it!
.
I set my own goal very clearly at the beginning of PRETTYNICE.
warren from prettynice
2 comments
Comments are closed.