Drew Joiner’s old flame wasn’t Japanese denim. Or footwear. Or style in any respect.
It was fossils.
When he was a child, he wished to be a paleontologist. He undoubtedly didn’t suppose he’d be simply shy of hitting 1 million cumulative followers throughout his YouTube, TikTok and Instagram accounts by way of movies like “12 Issues That Immediately Make You Extra Trendy” and “Classic Purchasing in Japan” to “Clothes I Remorse Shopping for…” and “I Wore the Similar Denims for 100 Days Straight.”
Rising up in Denver, the now-27-year-old digital content material creator didn’t change into obsessed with style till he was a senior in school – on the College of Denver the place he studied advertising and marketing and performed Division 1 basketball. The game sits as Joiner’s second childhood love alongside his segue into the style world.
“Basketball has a definite aesthetic worth,” says Joiner, an avid sneaker fanatic all through his school basketball profession.
“I cared about sneakers, however I figured, ‘I can’t simply have good sneakers and never have a complete outfit to match the vibe,’” he continues, evaluating it to basketball as soon as once more, noting that the sauciest basketball gamers’ swagger could be traced all the way in which all the way down to the headphones.
Joiner saved a detailed eye on these delicate particulars – pant silhouettes, sneaker lacing and audio equipment included – and commenced to develop his private fashion as soon as he graduated school. Sneaker tradition dominated the zeitgeist then, with Joiner staying tapped in with the hype heavy-hitters of the time like Supreme and Palace and emulating the appears of Kanye West, Virgil Abloh and Jerry Lorenzo.
Having determined that basketball wasn’t the profession path he wished to pursue, Joiner pivoted to constructing his profession as a style creator, educating himself the fundamentals of technical modifying and “studying all the pieces [he] may concerning the style world by way of the web.” Joiner says it was the web that invited him into the fashionverse, “permitting [him] to step right into a world that [he] in any other case wouldn’t have been in a position to step into.”
“I’ve all the time interacted with style in a web based sense,” he explains, setting a slightly sleepy portrait of 2010’s Denver, a mellow metropolis sans a thriving style scene. When COVID-19 hit, Joiner doubled down on his content material creation, impressed by the brand new inflow of approaches to digital media introduced on by the pandemic. Nonetheless residing in Denver on the time, Joiner – who discovered important inspiration in Bobby Lots of’ This Is Not A T-Shirt – launched his first foray into the style content material sphere in 2020 together with his Past the Garment podcast, which wrapped its fourth season in December. “I wished to be taught extra and ask the entire questions I had,” Joiner explains of his principal motivation behind the inventive enterprise, which gave him the platform to achieve out to inventive administrators, designers and small enterprise house owners he revered to select their brains on the ins and outs of the business. “I wished to know what it really meant to care about style.”
“The standard was poor, however the ardour was clearly there, however I wasn’t going to return to the house and never present one thing of worth.”
Joiner then locked in on constructing his YouTube channel earlier than increasing to TikTok and Instagram. After getting his ft moist with a number of unboxing-style movies – being one of many first YouTubers to acknowledge the potential within the New Steadiness x Aimé Leon Dore partnership with nearer appears at each the early collaborative 997 silhouettes – Joiner received in entrance of the digital camera for the primary time in September 2020 together with his assessment of the FEAR OF GOD x Vans Sk8-Hello sneakers. Whereas everybody was reviewing Nike and adidas drops, Joiner discovered New Steadiness to be a slightly untapped market, taking pictures evaluations of the 990 v5s and taking part in basketball within the 550s.
“The standard was poor, however the ardour was clearly there,” Joiner admits of his early movies, “However I wasn’t going to return to the house and never present one thing of worth.”
Julius Ignacio
In 2021, after buying a Rolodex of modifying abilities from YouTube, Joiner moved over to TikTok, the place he posted extra well timed, short-form movies, and, in contrast to YouTube, his follower development skyrocketed to 50K in only a matter of months. An modifying fanatic, Joiner enjoys seeing by way of his content material absolutely from entrance to again, whether or not or not it’s a minute-long TikTok on the brand new Levi’s Japan assortment or a 20-minute deep dive into the historical past of Japanese denim – the latter of which one thing Joiner is extremely obsessed with on the time of our chat.
Feeling like a “large fish in a small pond” in suburban Colorado, Joiner in the end bit the bullet to maneuver to New York Metropolis as a result of he wished to take his content material creation to the following degree. “What’s lovely about New York Metropolis is that there’s a lot alternative,” says Joiner, “but it surely’s a double-edged sword” when it comes to its extra of alternative.
“I discover a number of areas of style that you just may not sometimes affiliate with somebody who appears like me.”
An athlete first, Joiner explains that he needed to “unlearn his aggressive facet” instilled in him from years of taking part in basketball and as a substitute undertake an “all people can eat” mentality. As a social media creator within the aggressive digital scape of modern-day New York Metropolis, Joiner pushes himself to seek out inventive methods of slicing by way of the noise. He focuses on bridging the hole between his identification, private skills, and the issues that he finds attention-grabbing and making content material that establishes him as “a legacy determine in an area that’s all the time evolving.”
“I discover a number of areas of style that you just may not sometimes affiliate with somebody who appears like me,” he elaborates, circling again to his love of workmanship and Japanese denim. One thing Joiner is particularly obsessed with in his craft is discovering the very best garment in every class – which he firmly believes within the denim realm is, by far, Japanese denim as a result of love, consideration, and craftsmanship that goes into the design course of.
Julius Ignacio
Japanese style at giant is a scene that Joiner attracts heavy inspiration from, particularly drawn to its nostalgic references to the Fifties–Nineteen Seventies and recontextualizing of Americana. His travels abroad have additionally proved a key level of inventive catalyzation, having not too long ago hung out in 12 cities all through Japan in addition to Amsterdam and the South of France.
“If I method style like a scientist or a statistician approaches their work – creating hypotheses, asking questions – that’s after I’m essentially the most inventive and I’m having essentially the most enjoyable.”
A sentiment he shared in a video and echoes all through the interview is that style makes him really feel like a child at coronary heart, fueling his curiosity in contrast to the rest. “Trend isn’t sophisticated. It’s not science, it’s not math, and it’s not the medical world, however I imagine what you put on can have tangible impacts in your life and well-being,” he says. “If I method style like a scientist or a statistician approaches their work – creating hypotheses, asking questions – that’s after I’m essentially the most inventive and I’m having essentially the most enjoyable.”
In fact, Joiner does get to factors the place he feels slightly uninspired by style, saying he goes by way of “phases” with it. When he’s in a inventive rut, he doesn’t power it; he is aware of that gained’t work. “All it takes is for me to take my foot off the fuel just a little bit and begin to do the issues that I discover attention-grabbing and provoking,” he explains, citing spending time together with his companion, listening to Larry June, strolling across the metropolis, and figuring out as key methods he grounds himself.
Julius Ignacio
“I hope my movies can carry some gentle and positivity to folks,” Joiner concludes our dialog. “As vital or unimportant as you would possibly suppose style is, what’s vital is the way you deal with different human beings and what impact that has on them. That’s all the time been my largest purpose and style has all the time been a automobile to speak that to different folks.”
He hopes to see extra sustainability in style – “Extra individuals who care about making issues that aren’t vapid and really final a very long time” – and fewer blind copying, leaving readers with one problem: to not hearken to him. Joiner, like Larry June emphasised on “Watering My Crops”
“I problem everybody to not simply observe what you see on-line. Don’t simply copy these traits. Take them and make them your individual.”
