THE SEVENTH LETTER

Though it is common for artists with roots in graffiti to branch out to the apparel and streetwear world, no one has done it quite like The Seventh Letter. Casey “Eklips” Zoltan, rumored leader of the west coast graffiti crews AWR and MSK, founded The Seventh Letter in 2000. The Seventh Letter acts as a platform for the crew’s artists to showcase their work in the form of apparel, art exhibitions and other special projects. Over the last 8 years The Seventh Letter has evolved as an apparel brand as well as an international collective of artists from the graffiti, tattoo, fine art, and design disciplines. We sat down with Casey to ask him a few questions about The Seventh Letter.

For those who don’t know, what is The Seventh Letter?
The Seventh Letter is more than just a clothing company, it’s basically a corporate identity for what we do. We come from an art background, mainly graffiti, but we do everything. We are a collective of artist, and The Seventh Letter is a way to legitimize ourselves to the world. We started out doing clothing, but we have expanded into jewelry, film, and traveling art shows. We attach The Seventh Letter to basically everything the crew does.

How did you decide to make the transition from The Seventh Letter as a graffiti crew/art collective into an apparel brand?
I’ve been doing clothing since ’89 and it just got to the point where we didn’t want to do stuff for other people anymore. We wanted to have our own focus, our own projects, and something that we could all represent.




A lot of the original streetwear brands had backgrounds in graffiti. Was this an influence in creating your own apparel brand?
Not in any way. We influenced a lot of those brands. We were the designers for a lot of those companies…that’s why they were considered graffiti companies. Artists from AWR and MSK were doing all of their designs.
There were other brands, like L.A. Bronx, that probably influenced a lot of people. A lot of brands even before then had people like Risky and Dante designing for them, this was back in like ’87 or ’88.

Do you think that a lot of the roots of streetwear lie in taking the images from the streets, like graffiti, and turning that into apparel?
If you are a graffiti writer everything that you do you will do with a graffiti flavor. Whether you’re doing film, writing books, or doing clothing designs. A writer has a certain lifestyle and a certain aura, and everything you do is with that vision and that passion. Graffiti influences everything a writer does.




You have some of the top names from not only the graffiti world, but from the tattoo, and art world on your design roster. Do you feel that apparel is a proper way to showcase their talent?
I think clothing is really cool. It’s great that people can buy a piece of art from an artist that they like for a reasonable amount of money. Not everyone can afford a Mr. Cartoon tattoo, or a Retna or Revok painting. So it’s cool that people can get a t-shirt that represents an artist that they believe in. A lot of t-shirts sell to fans that actually like the artist… It’s like buying a print that you can wear. It’s also a really good way for artists to get their name out there. It’s an amazing vehicle for a lot of artist’s careers.


Your line primarily consists of t-shirts. Do you have plans to expand the line?
For fall ’09 we are starting to do more than just t-shirts. T-shirts are what we’re known for and it allows us to push artist’s careers. It’s harder to do an artist driven piece when you get into cut and sew. We definitely will have more stuff, but t-shirts are really what we focus on. We don’t want to overcrowd our plate - if we try to have a really big line then all we will be able to do is clothing. It will be hard to do clothing and have amazing art shows, travel the world, and have the jewelry line. We take it day-by-day and step-by-step… We don’t have investors or backers, and everything we do is on our own. It’s a growing process, and we will eventually get to that point. I am very interested in designing a full line of clothing, denim, and accessories. It will come in time.



Where do you see the streetwear market going, and where do you feel The Seventh Letter will fit within this market?
That’s a hard question. I don’t know what streetwear is, these days. It’s really hard for me to gauge where it is going to go.
As far as The Seventh Letter goes, we will continue to do what we do, which is make clothing that we want to wear.
In the early ‘90’s a lot of people were doing graffiti stuff, and anyone would buy anything with graffiti on it – a tag, a drip, or whatever. In the later ‘90’s people looked at their t-shirts and wanted to know who did it. They didn’t want to just buy a shirt with a tag on it. They wanted a shirt that was done by someone that has cred. They wanted to know the history of that writer.
If I can predict anything, it’s that people will hopefully weed out the fakes. There are people that own skate companies that never skated, there are people that own graffiti companies that don’t write graffiti, and there are people that own Ultimate Fighting companies that don’t Ultimate Fight. Hopefully people will start supporting the people that really have paid their dues.


You recently launched a jewelry division…
I’ve always been interested in jewelry. I wanted to start doing jewelry for The Seventh Letter in 2001. I just started buying equipment and I didn’t even have a jeweler.
A year ago I met this amazing jeweler named Kei and he was eager and ready to do his thing. He was out here from Japan, and we connected to make TSL Armor. Everything is hand made, hand carved, and done in house. It’s an amazing project. Jewelry can last forever, and it’s cool to think that maybe in 50 or 100 years that some of these pieces might still be around. It’s enabled us to get into different stores and deal with different clients. We have signature pieces by different artists like Kenton Parker and Estevan Oriol. I don’t want to be like all these other jewelry companies, we are trying to do more artist driven
things.



What is the future of The Seventh Letter?
Just living. The Seventh Letter is us, it’s our family, our crew, our lifestyle – it’s everything that we do. As long as we are living and we are here we are going to continue to do what we do and we are going to continue to build The Seventh Letter. We are going to push into new ventures, new projects, and bigger and better things.

[+/-] show/hide this post