Create Yourself:
Create yourself is the main idea and message behind Monogram Apparel. It means simply what it says. If there is something you want to achieve, a place you want to go, something in your life you look at as a goal… you can make it happen. Everyone has the ability to apply themselves to the tasks necessary to make their visions a reality. Life is progression it is always advancing and changing, your goals will too. Go out and become who you want to be, create yourself.
Steer Your Own Path:
The saying, 'Steer Your Own Path' is a moral compass. It means to me that you have many options or 'paths' to take in life, it is up to you and no one else but you as to what path you take. You chose what happens with every opportunity and hurdle life presents to you and you have to steer yourself in the best direction for who you are happiest being.
STORY:
I started Monogram in 2010. I was on tour with my band in the fall of the year before and had a realization one night laying in our van that in one perspective I have "made it". We were somewhere in the south United States sleeping in a parking lot of a Walmart, a 'home away from home' for us on that and many other tours we did. I was thinking to myself, when I was 14 I started playing guitar and making awful noise in my parents garage with a few neighborhood kids. We wanted nothing more than to be signed to a record label and on tours all over the country… and thought it would come easy. Somewhere between becoming interested in playing the guitar at fourteen and having my realization that night in the back of a 15 passenger van when I was then twenty one years old, I had made that dream come true. I was on a full three week tour promoting a new album that was just released on a small indy label. It all connected in my head and I saw the path I took to get there and the decisions made for it all to be possible. It was all hard work and constant drive for what I wanted kept me working at it. I started to think even further and began to realize that it wasn't just with my music that I made it happen but with many other things in my life. I had visions and goals of different magnitudes and I have made them happen, or was in the process of making them happen. I have created myself into the vision I once had for myself, I felt almost complete (except for the few other visions I had going on for other things in the future)
It was for the band that I got into doing shirt design art work. I would design on my computer for hours coming up with ideas. Eventually somewhere along my path I had taken my new found 'Create Yourself' mentality and my interest in designing and combined them. I had all kinds of designs on my computer that would never get used for the band. It then dawned on me, why not do what I do for the band for myself? Make a clothing line designing shirts that will push a positive message to people. At this point I was fully engulfed in the Create Yourself mind frame, I wanted everyone to see things how I saw them and realize with the right amount of focus and vision anything is possible. Not easy, but possible.
In early 2010 I made this new vision of mine a reality and had saved up $1000 from doing web design work all winter for a clothing store and a restaurant. I took that $1000 and ordered my first run of shirts, payed for my own website and got my first box of shipping supplies. I started with 5 different designs. About two years later now I have had over 20 shirt designs, a few hoodies, a hat, some tank tops, gym shorts, stickers, and jackets. With a lot of support from friends, other bands, and family I had gotten things off the ground and to the current point I am at with with this idea. I am further with this adventure than I thought I'd be in the beginning, and I am not even at the point I think it has the potential for. From starting this all out of a bedroom closet and a tote box full of merch, I have graduated to a 15x15 room I call my ware house with shelving for my stock and a packaging/shipping table. Nothing fancy and not a real business location yet… but my vision is just that.
In the whole journey of this clothing brand that is indeed just one of my visions and goals on the path of creating myself to what I aspire to be, I really hope to take my message and instill it in other people to hopefully inspire some drive in them and help make other goals a reality. This may just be another clothing brand that says it is promoting a positive message to some people, but to me and anyone who believes this message it is more than that.
-Kyle
