Roe Hodgson, co-founder of No Maintenance Interview.

Q: “Would you like to start off and introduce yourself and your brand?”

Roe:  “Yes, absolutely, I’m Roe Hodgson. I'm the co-founder of No Maintenance and we are a contemporary menswear label based out of Los Angeles, CA.”

Q: “Where are we at right now?”

Roe: “We are in our showroom right here. This is a retail space that we have been building out for the past 6 months now. We moved in here in January of this year and we’ve been in this building for three and a half years at this point, but we decided to upgrade to a significantly larger space so we have almost 3,000 sq ft here now, about half of which is this retail environment that we built out. We kind of built this out in our design ethos, and there are a lot of Japanese sensibilities that you feel from the branding here, the rock, the Japanese maple tree, and kind of stripped back to be this beautiful world that encapsulates our brand here.”

Q: “You spoke a lot about the upgrades and about having a natural environment to work properly, in your opinion what is needed in order to run a successful workspace?”

Roe: “I mean I think to answer that question properly we have to dive back into the history of No Maintenance. We really started by selling vintage that was thrown on the ground of our dirty driveway. It was just, yeah, vintage tees and Russell crewnecks and Levi’s jeans that we were curating and reselling. Then we very much knew it was always in us to create a brand and that is why we approached vintage from a unique perspective. We really treated these iconic vintage items from legacy brands, heritage brands, such as Levi’s, Russel, as our own in a way because we wanted to merchandise it and curate it in a very specific way that hadn’t been done before. We looked at the landscape of what was going on in vintage and saw people put up like 5, 10, pairs of good 501 xx’s in their webshop and we asked ourselves, “Okay that’s great but how can we get 100 pairs? How can we get 1000 pairs of all made in USA 90’s Levi’s and how can we brand it from an identity perspective that is very unique and hasn’t been done before?” So, to get a space was very important for us to be able to just scale and grow and not do it out of our apartment. We had so many funny moments because the brand and the identity of our curation had proceeded even the space that we had grown into and just operating in Silverlake we had a lot of celebrities and just very very interesting designers that would come to our space and so I think it was time to outgrow our home essentially and move into a much more formal, commercial environment where there was a bit more separation. We could have our design studio where we could have all of our references and pin up all the looks and have ecommerce done on the cyc wall that we built out. It was a big exercise of everything that we had seen over the past couple years traveling. All the inspiration taken from so many trips, consecutive ones, over to Japan, now 5 or 6 where we draw most of our inspiration from the brand from. Then to be able to repurpose everything that we have learned and create this space here that we are very proud of. 

Q: “So you spoke on the repurposing and sourcing of vintage Levi’s, can you tell us what goes into finding that and how much of a trek it can be to source all of that to make it a part of your own curation afterwards?”

Roe: “Absolutely, yeah, countless.. Countless hours of just hunting. I mean and that is the most beautiful part too is just it is like a treasure hunt, you know? Searching high and low and reaching the far corners of the United States. I can recount a time that there was this collector and he just had shipping containers of Levi’s in the middle of a field and it was simply word of mouth that we got connected to him. We had to drive an hour outside of San Francisco to be able to go pull up to what felt like an abandoned field full of Levi’s. It was this incredible experience and sourcing here locally in Los Angeles. We'll also tap in with the community here and you know it could be just kids that you know are selling at the Silverlake flea, or selling at the Los Feliz flea. Or it’s hitting up vendors that we’ve met that do wholesale bulk that are in Glasgow, India or Thailand. We’ve met so many crazy characters working in vintage because it’s just like that level of obsession with old stuff takes a very unique personality type.

Q: “Can you walk me through that? For someone who wants to follow in your footsteps what advice would you give them about going about repurposing/sourcing? Or if you could recall the steps of how a certain product was made?”

Roe: “I think it is very much a game of telephone, you know? You meet one person and then it kind of becomes this domino effect. Once you begin to align yourself in a community and like I said before kind of that treasure hunt just having that desire to not only learn more but also just make more friends in the community and to be able to align yourself with people that simply you just find interesting or enjoy spending time with and it is from those, like I said, very eclectic individuals that you meet that it just becomes this domino effect and they introduce you to the next person and/or you find a phone number from a yellowbook or like white pages or something and you are like “Aw I should call this person up!” and you have that one serendipitous moment where you have that conversation and just you know it’s like a snowball effect.” 

Q: “When you were talking about Thailand, did you ever go out there and source?”

Roe: “We didn’t go there directly.”

Haile: “The vintage game out there is insane! We were out there last winter and it was crazy, the collections people have and all of the stores.”

Roe: “The level of curation and scale too is incredible there. 100%. For us too it really was that domino effect and being incredibly inquisitive with the people that you are working with. It was very interesting that a lot of people that we were sourcing from by the end of it was very evident that we were like family to them. Sebastian and I were like the highlight of their week. To be able to have an opportunity to share their stories excited them so much that they were very forthcoming with information and where their stuff was coming from and how often shipments were coming in. They are also the kind of people that the community attracts. Having the opportunity to listen to them and get feedback from them in terms of knowing what you should do with your business. When they notice that something is unique and that you have a very special perspective on something and they remark on it it’s like cool lets double down on this. I think there are several instances like for example one of the big collectors of Levi’s would import product from all over the world and we would go visit his warehouse. He was the one who suggested that we do some tinting stuff. He had a small rack of overdyed Levi’s that he had done and he was like, “Yeah you know I’m testing some washes, I used to be in the denim business, this is something that is really cool and maybe something that I could do for you guys. I own a dye house, why don’t we just test a couple washes and see if you guys like it.” and so it was that one conversation that opened the door for us to feel a lot more creatively activated as well.

What we have here at No Maintenance is looking at the context of vintage, the history of design all together ranging all the way back to the 1930’s and looking at what are the iconic uniform statement pieces that have always existed since pattern making was created for the American market and contextualize it with the same treatment processes that our favorite designers Helmut Lang, Yohji Yamamoto, Rick Owens, Girbuad, they’ve done to all their denim and how can we spin it in a completely new hyper contemporary narrative in a way that people haven’t seen before. And so, it was very much seeing these Levi’s that had been tinted and me and Sebastian were scratching our heads, looking at each other, and we were like, “This looks like 1996 Helmut Lang, this is so cool!” Or “this looks like a tinting that Rick Owens had developed here for Dark Shadow here in Los Angeles.” So let’s take it one step further and do it in a way that feels No Maintenance. 

This is the interesting part too. I'll speak on collaboration as well because we have been extremely guarded about doing collaboration but the most authentic collaboration has always been the ones that we’ve done with the people that have been supplying us vintage and just ourselves too. Sebastian and I working together is a constant state of collaboration to other people that we brought into the narrative for upcycling vintage. That was that constant state of collaboration that felt like we didn’t need to work with other brands. 

More on the topic of what I was saying before about upcycling too and just finding inertia in certain products we were passionate about. We had, well, I will leave his name out for this but, a certain someone who is the right hand man of Kanye West. And he visited us at our home and we just had this one bedroom that was stuffed to the gills with Levi’s and archive, a lot of designer runway stuff, that he would love to come look at and try and pull for references. And we had this small stack of Russells at the time because we were like it would be great to just have blank cotton crewnecks that are in the right fit that people can build their wardrobes and just uniforms with. 

It has always been about street style and it's always been about what is actually going on, boots on the ground. What’s going on in the ecosystems of these communities that people are engaging with clothing? What are the kids wearing? What are they selling? And what do they think is the next coolest thing? That’s what matters. And at the end of the day being able to go to the flea markets in 2020/2021 coming out of covid, and not really seeing a lot of people selling Russells, or at least in the price points seeing them for $10, $20, $25, all day at the flea.

I don’t want to give too much credit to No Maintenance but seeing just how other people came in the space and seeing how us uplifting this heritage brand that yeah their product wasn’t necessarily in high demand at that price point and then revisiting those flea markets and seeing Russells for $80, $100, $150, for a faded black Russell hoodie and saying to ourselves, okay.. you know, are we the prevoir of this? Maybe not. But did we contribute to a refined perspective and just the value system that people create on these products? Potentially! 

There have been a lot of incredible people in the space that have been able to help show vintage in a new way, you know? No Maintenance, Unsound Rags, Akimbo Club, all kinds of I guess what people regard as almost industry giants in the vintage world, as kind of this new wave of people that have been, and I should say brands that have been presenting vintage from a different perspective. The progression of vintage into this kind of full circle moment for us because touching upon like our roots before we ever curated Americana, or you know, 90’s we’ll call it like minimalist wardrobe builders of Russells, Levi’s Carhartts, stuff like that, Sebastian and I’s passions always lied with runway archive Japanese and European designer clothing. Some of those designers that I mentioned before, Comme de Garcon, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Helmut Lang, Raf Simons.. 

We had just seen so much. We had been avid collectors for so long and this is the very unique thing about not being classically trained in fashion, but having so much historical context to just design and the journey of fashion in the contemporary world is you see so much that you are like all right we have it in ourselves, WE KNOW WHAT WE LIKE! We know what we like, and it’s been refined and developed over time. Sebastian and I have such a shared perspective and on the things that we like that the nuances of maybe a perspective of how we approach things is that, that’s that beautiful collaboration and synthesis that I mentioned where we just get to world build all the kinds of designs and garments that we think are part of the No Maintenance world.

Haile: “That you want to reintroduce through your own lens?” 

Roe: “Exactly, yeah 100%. And just like have fun, continuously push the envelope too. I think we can be critics at times, we can be critics. And you know, I think there is a lot going on, there is a lot of noise. There is just a lot of noise and I think for us we just want to pierce through the noise and just.. I don’t want to say take it simple, keep it simple, but just.. have it make sense. Have it make sense and not be too tethered to one thing and I think that’s why No Maintenance is so incredible is that we are able to have such a refined brand identity, but then as a result of that I think we can navigate and explore new things conceptually, constantly, and No Maintenance is very much a reflection of Sebastian and I’s personalities and our interests in just the world going on around us, film, television, music, art, everything that we consume it affects the way we see the world, and turn it affects the way that we see how we are going to develop our clothing and I think it is very special that we have the opportunity to just constantly the needle forward, and I think if we delve into new concepts constantly it doesn’t feel alien. It feels like.. it always feels right. 

Haile: “I think you guys do a good job of introducing your pieces at the right time.”

Roe: “You never know when it’s going to work. I’ll talk about the cardigan. That was an idea that we had a long time ago. It was when I was curating for archive sitting on our couch and I had this intern in Mexico City, Ricardo, and we were doing short form research about things in the art and design world that fascinated us and complimenting essays with images in the very nascent state of what was mood boarding on Instagram in you know 2020. 

It was then that we discovered Clyfford Still I had seen his work but it had never quite resonated with me in the way that it did up until that moment. I think it was very much contextualized by knowing that so many designers had looked at Mark Rothko for color field references for their work but maybe there were some other unsung heroes of that post war, post WWII color field movement that their art and just their designs hadn’t been reinterpreted by fashion designers quite yet. So it was a painting that we stumbled upon, his work is incredibly striking.” 

Haile: “Is that the color palette of the original orange one?”

Roe: “We reinterpreted that color palette, so none of the original colors were, I can say, pantones, that are in that painting are actually in that cardigan. They’ve been highly saturated to bring this very vibrant, fiery like color to it. Clyfford Still’s work is a lot more subdued to the way that Rothco’s is. It is much more ethereal and he utilizes, in that specific painting that we referenced, he utilizes a lot of blacks and burgundy, the color of the sublime. And so we kind of wanted to push it a little bit more energized and push it into that really vibrant red with the orange.

Haile: “Especially compared to the color palette you guys have going now, behind you, super different.”

Roe: “Yes. I think that is also why it works so well too because you know when you are swinging right for so long and then suddenly you just swing all the way left. People are like, “woah where is this coming from?” You know and you need to know when to show and when to fold and I think in that moment we knew what we had on our hands when we created it because when you look at the context of everything you’ve created and the entire body of work and then you see this one thing and it stands out so much and it almost feels in a way ridiculous when you look at it in some light. People like things that they have never seen before and I think that cardigan was certainly a moment where we had reinterpreted that kind of aesthetic of Kurt Cobain, MTV unplugged, the shaggy cardigan that you know people have been wearing since the 1950’s. There is a Japanese brand called “blackmeans” that I was an avid collector of for a while and you know as a Urahara brand they have always paid homage to just the punk aesthetic and we were thinking how can we combine that element of punk of just counterculture. How can we bring it into the avant garde with looking at the art world and artists that have just inspired us. It’s a very very unique synthesis of just different concepts. I think we have had a point to prove as well after that too because you know fashion is very similar to music in that you can have a hit record and your hit record can kind of superseded the idea identity of what you are doing especially for us in early stages it’s like it is crazy to say this outloud but we have only been making clothing for 3.5 years. No Maintenance was founded in 2020 and it was just tee shirts on a dirty driveway and it has grown into what it is today.