So idea to production to having my hoodies in my hands was not an easy task at all. This process is called cut and sew because we are actually paying a company in China to buy a big roll of fabric, cut it into pieces and sew it together.

I found this talented, crazy, bisexual Russian girl named Victoria on Craigslist who was a designer and seamstress. She had her own issues (don’t we all), but she was super helpful at assisting me in bringing my vision for my hoodies to life. She also had connections in China in a province where they spoke a dialect of Russian, so she was able to communicate with people there.

We began with some white hoodies that I purchased from Aaron at No Division Screen Printing in Los Alamitos which was cool because we became friends, and he has made some shirts for me over the years.

I brought those hoodies to Victoria and she created pockets made of mesh with a Velcro flap that sat atop the right shoulder of the hoodie like epaulets. Again, the idea is to put the phone’s speaker right in your ear and this did the trick, but they were perhaps a little wonky because of the way the phone stuck out.

The next step was to actually draw up designs and make new prototypes to send to China once we had the fit dialed in. We came up with three ideas. The first one was the original idea with the phone sticking out, the second I later named the “Pillowcase Mesh” because of the way the sideways pocket folded over itself and the mesh on either side to allow sound to come through where both the phone speakers are. The third, my favorite, was the LoPro Snap. It had a pocket high up ending at the seam on the top of the shoulder. The first two had a traditional kangaroo pouch at the front, but the third, and I don’t remember when we established this, had a front pouch that went all the way to the bottom so it needed a separate liner and it had two slits on either side of the hoodie making the pouch span the entire front.

I had to source a roll of black fabric for Victoria to use to make the hoodies. I actually found two that I liked. One was a very thick 100% cotton so dense it was almost reminiscent of a wetsuit. The other a cotton/ poly blend soft, but honestly too light for my taste. After Victoria, established designs and created prototypes for each, I chose the second and third options as the two hoodies I wanted to produce. Obviously the more designs the higher the cost and the more quantity we would have to make, so I settled for the two designs. If I were to do it over, I would have made the front pouch the same as the LoPro Snap for both.