Blood Bath Project Clothing Interview

How would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?

What up Khaled this is Rome One representing Bloodbath (clothing), we also go by BloodBath Project located out in the Orange County / Los Angeles area on the west coast.

Cool, how did you guys come up with the name BloodBath?

Yeah, I had a feeling this question was going to come up. It’s kind of a long story, I will try to keep it simple. I was at a KRS One show a few years back, so I was chillin at the show and I saw a clothing label on someone’s shirt, a small woven label, and it said ”Blood Bath,” and that immediately caught my attention, as I looked closer it said something completely different.

I forgot what the label actually read, but I always remembered “Bloodbath”.  The name Blood Bath, what it did to me there, was that it was completely different than anything else out.

As a name it’s very aggressive yet the styles that we’re attracted to are very clean and simple. We decided to go with the name to create some type of irony. To create something more than what matches our market, something that balances each element. Definitely the name is hard to forget whether you like it or not. It’s really hard to forget the name once you hear it.

The second reason we chose this name is because the blood aspect represents the sacrifice, the love, the family, the life, the death, all of those aspects that come with the word blood. The word bath represents the cleanliness, something soothing, some type of meditation, and like really immersing yourself in something you do meaning jumping in head first into something that you love.

With that being said, the last aspect of the name, we have a mission statement that is also our acronym which is

Breaking Locks On Open Doors – Boundaries Are Through Habit.

The locks are the limitations and obstacles. The doors are your opportunities, and goals.

The lock is within yourself.  It is something that has been trained into you from growing up, from society, from history and we’re here to break that mold. That’s basically our mission as a company.

Damn man, you really made me fall in love with the company. This is only the first question, but it’s really interesting.

(Laughs) Thanks. Yeah, to be honest it all started off with just a moment and as I thought about it and as it progressed I realized there’s a lot more to it that we can encompass within our work.

Off the bat you can tell that there’s no band wagon thing with your brand. Most of the styles right now are more of an 80’s look, but the reason why your company caught our attention is that you guys have a simple and clean style. That’s my opinion, but what do you want people to know you guys as?

Before we initially decided to take this brand seriously, I was doing whatever I wanted. But when we decided to take this brand to the next step we did research on other brands that were out. We researched the trends that were out on the street market right now and what we saw was just a lot of the same stuff over and over you know? And in a way it was hard to differentiate one brand from another and I feel that creativity – it always recycles itself.

You mentioned 80’s style. I feel that the youngsters growing up in the eighties, they grew up and become 20 something and those 20 something year olds will be taking a hold of this market. They’re growing up and actually starting companies and they’re starting to influence the younger generations. And what happens is that they kind of look back into their roots, its nostalgic to look back to their child hood and they kind of reinvent what they were influenced by when they were growing up. So I feel as time keeps passing the “eighties” are turning more in to the early “nineties”.

I remember the bright colors and all that kind of stuff– there was some of that in the eighties, but we didn’t really see too much of that. And we’re kind of going back to early nineties, mid nineties kind of style where there’s like cleaner earth tones, a more serious, a more aggressive type of look and to be honest we’re still finding ourselves too.  But one thing is for certain, we defiantly don’t want to go pop or look like anyone else.

Recently brands have been doing the whole “girls” on shirts thing that sells very well because you and I know sex sells. I see that you guys have also done this as well, so what’s the story behind that?

We put a lot of thought into our shirts. The shirts are called Material Girl. There are beautiful women out there that just devour these designer brands, and gorge on these materialistic things until it eventually become them. In a sense, the objects are used to define themselves as being beautiful or being on some type of higher social status because of what they wear.

On a more playful note, when you see the piece it’s a beautiful girl, she’s sexy, inlaid with a pattern inspired from a well-known designer.  You can wear it casual, or at the club.  Whether you’re young or older we just wanted to reach both ends of the market.

Most of your clothing I can see myself wearing it, you know skateboarding, going somewhere serious, and wearing it anywhere which is a great thing about your shirts. I mean I can’t be rocking a pink shirt to something serious. And you guys have some nice stuff on your website.

Next question, the prices man, now seeing as how your site has much higher prices, are the customers getting a much higher quality product?

Well one thing about our shirts is that we didn’t want to price them too low where it doesn’t hold value for our customers. As for the quality of our shirts, of the actual garment, we went through 3-4 different manufactures until we stuck with this type of shirt.  Basically the fit is not too tight, it’s not too baggy, it’s right in between. It shrinks proportionately and it’s 100% ring spun cotton. Every season we’re going to be adding new details to it.

The first season we had the basic woven labels on the inner and the outer hip, this spring line includes tonal embroidery on the sleeves, as well as the original woven labels so it has a lot of attention to detail. We’re going to start putting in a lot more stuff in the process that I can’t completely reveal, but something along the lines of adding hidden messages inside the shirts.

We like to concentrate on things that you can see and elements that you don’t notice right off the bat.  Let’s say you wear a shirt for few months, and as you wash the shirt, you’ll see something in the design that you haven’t seen before – that right there renews that piece. So, it’s like you bought it a year ago, but it feels brand new because you never noticed that part of the shirt. And we want to keep that process in our label.

That’s bad ass right there! You told me a few questions ago that you used to do other things before this?

Basically my whole life I was just caught in the strut of being practical and being artistic. I was naturally artistic my whole life. I was supported by my mom to be a leader and to be creative.  While other kids were doing sports in the summer I would be going to piano and calligraphy classes, or painting or some stuff like that and that really led me to where I am. I grew up in Southern California where there’s a lot of skateboarding, a lot of graffiti, rock music, and hip-hop. I was always attracted to rebellious art forms that you can take into your own hands like graffiti. I started really falling love with text and typography. I went to school for graphic design and after that I just started pressing up tee shirts on my own, just to sell to friends, to wear myself, and things like that. I was sewing my own labels on there and about a year deep, a few of us decided to link up and take this seriously.  That is how Bloodbath emerged.

Everything happened pretty much by accident man. Nothing was really planned or sketched out.

We are now just trying to make sure we set up these accidents to happen in our favor.

Wow, that’s amazing, you know the best master pieces come from accidents. What would you say the hardest part of opening up your company?

Well, the hardest part I’d say is how lucky you get and who you work with.

If one person has a vision, the drive and ethic and it’s all there and you meet someone that is not on the same level as you on different planes, sometimes it’s really hard to connect.

And I feel it’s not just talent, it’s not just discipline – it’s a mixture of both. The hardest part was luckily given to us. My partner and I as well as the people that we work with everyone meshes together really well. So we become this really forceful machine when we work together.
The second thing definitely would be along the lines of not jumping on the bandwagon: Making things you know would sell.

It takes balls to be different and design for the future when you don’t know if the public will accept that. The balance of making money, staying alive, thriving and progressing on a monetary stand point, versus being true to yourself and making sure that the message you want to convey is executed in your designs, I think is one of the hardest things you have to do.

Yeah man, I think you hit that on the spot. What about you man, what’s your favorite shirt? Which one do you like the most?

Personally, I’m a real tonal-subtle type of a person. I like black on blacks, I like things that you can’t see initially and you can see it later. You know I would say that some of my favorite shirts are hand drawn work like our RainMaker. I like that shirt.

Yeah, that was actually drawn by one of my close friends his names Andrew Huerta. He’s been in the comic book / graphic novel game for a minute, and those are hand drawn raindrops that take you back to comic books in the nineties of how rain splashes. We went with that because it gives you a really peaceful yet aggressive feel. Like the slow drizzle before a storm.

The concept is along the lines of an industry that is mad desolate like there’s no creativity, no originality anymore – and we just want to refresh things and start something new. Those subtle pieces that carry a heavy message are what I’m drawn to.

Which one would you say is the best seller on your site?

I would definitely say our Argylin shirt; basically that shirt is classic argyle pattern, broken up to become something new. The thin lines spell out our mission statement.  The design just comes up from the bottom in a jagged fashion.

This one is selling really well – one of the reasons why I think it’s doing well is because it hits a wide range of people. You can see youngster skateboarders with it. You can also see someone a bit older getting classy with it. It’s a classic pattern, thrown into a contemporary blender.

Our Material girls also sell pretty well also. We actually introduced another Material Girl in the Spring because of how well it did in the Fall. The Fall material girl has a Burberry flip – that one’s is still flying off the shelves so we’ll see how long that goes. I’m thinking in summer we’re going to be stopping the Material Girl’s so they’ll be limited.

So, any new projects that you want to give us a heads up with?

Yeah, in the near future we will be developing our initial Cut & Sew collection. Also, we’re doing a T-shirt collaboration with Fly Society.

As you may know we tend to ask random questions at the end of every interview, so here we go.

Which one do you find yourself to be more concerned about when wearing; Shoes or Shirt?

This is kind of ironic coming from someone that designs shirts, but I would have to say shoes. The shoes complete the outfit.

Would you wear the color pink?

Yes, if it were very small on a black shirt. I think all colors are very important in their own right.

Are you an ass man or boobs man?

Definitely an ass man.

When was the last time you visited Sneaker Maniac?

I would have to say last week before I left for Cabo.

Anything you want to say your readers?

One thing that I would like to say to the readers: Much, much respect to people out there following their dreams.  Everyone lives once and some people can settle and some people go for the gusto.

If you go for it, no matter what – even if you fail it’s better than not trying anything.

Another thing is big ups to Sneaker Maniac. Thanks for putting us on. Thanks for reaching out to us, we truly appreciate that. I want to give out a shout out to all our supporters, all our homies, everyone that is showing us love. That’s the main reason we are here, why we do it, and why we will keep doing this in the future.

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Text / Khaled Tajzai