Year One

Year One

This has been my escape.

It’s officially one year since I opened the Teemill store, aka the Core range, aka sustainable streetwear, aka where the Artifacts live in the Archive. 🤣

In case you hadn’t noticed, I build backwards. No one in their right fucking mind would build an entire business architecture before building product. Except for me.

I’ve not scratched the surface of what I plan to build, but the fact that I can shake it and it doesn’t fall down, is, annoying actually, if I am honest.

I always find a loose nut. It’s one of my favourite games is try break it. I’m very good at it.

Model wearing Corruption, a condition in The Canis.

Game on

The next step is finding people to play.

My social strategy thus far has been ‘post and bail’. Which is good for, nothing, it’s good for nothing.

Now that the hardest part is done, the next hardest part must begin. Which again, is backwards, but can I get enough people to care? That remains to be seen.

Really…supposed to do this the other way around.

Streetwear, mythology, art and games

Ja. I know.
But, I’m bored. In real life, I live in a uniform of holy trackies and sweaters.
At any given moment I could be somewhere ankle deep in mud, in my office, or getting covered in dog.

I can’t wear my nice things because there is no “out” where I live. I work from home.
I need something that still looks artistic, inspired, authentic.

And at the end of the day, all covered in cobwebs, bugs, Canis, dog hair, who knows what else, missing my cat and family, I just want to be comfortable.

Worldbuilding chaos

What started with an idea for a cap led to gradually constructing an entire creative ecosystem.

A sustainable streetwear label, a publishing platform, a mythology, a visual language, a product architecture, a content system, a worldbuilding framework, and a long-term business strategy, all while working a day job, navigating financial pressure, grief, you know…life.

What will year two bring?

I have absolutely no idea.
I know what I’d like to happen.

When I started The Pavement Special in 2023, before this website, before the cap and the clothes, I had no job.
Again.

I was desperate to do something stimulating, that I knew I wasn’t going to find in any role. I had nothing but time on my hands that I didn’t want.

I started writing.

I probably should have quit by now

Believe me, I’ve thought about it.
I’ve rattled it to the bones, and it won’t bloody fall down.

I’ll think about my socials and well, lack thereof, the challenge of getting this in front of the right people cos I’m blending genres like mad. My audience is scattered.

And just when I think, ok, maybe this entire thing is a dumbass idea, another condition will emerge, another character, another story, another arc, another level.
I’ve stopped shaking it. Now I just hang on for dear life.

“Arise my mighty pink army! Scatter left, scatter right, attack!”

…

” Beware geneticists, with their craziness and hybrid monster fantasies. Beware the things they do, they’re geneticizing monsters with geneta-glue”

Crabulon. Evil Scarecrow.

To the two people that get that, welcome, where you been?

And to the handful that have been here from the start, thanks for sticking around.

The Design That Almost Broke Everything

A conceptual piece testing if art styles can hold in the same world

When I set out to build The Canis, it was to try and solve a few problems at once.
I didn’t anticipate creating one instead.

Enter, the jellyfish.

I did not choose this design. It popped into my head one night.

I have a real fondness for political cartoonists. I grew up on Zapiro in South Africa and enjoy many of today’s artists.

The jellyfish concept was my own little protest. I shelved the idea for a couple of weeks until the jellyfish suddenly slotted into place within The Canis. A condition. Spineless. The enchanted ones.
It represents what confronts us. What we’re up against in The Canis.

Jellyfish nightmares

Spineless

I kept waking up at 5am with the jellyfish fading behind my eyelids. Hating it.
It took me 5 days to do. 3 of those were 7.5 hour sit ins.

The one that ended up on garment is the second third version.

I couldn’t see why. Was it conceptually weak? Probably. Was it good? I don’t know.

Nearly broke The Canis

Five minutes after I’ve built The Canis, I’ve designed a character that broke it. I could not tell if it was pushing one style of art too far.

If I have, which style do I go with, do I need to redesign everything and pick one or will this evolution of story be legible?  My brain was a rolodex of symbols and iconography.

The irony is this is exactly what Spineless represents

The conditions that spread and fracture our systems, that push to the brink and force change.
I bit the bullet and released it into the wild. I still hated it.

I mocked up the world. I needed to see conceptually if it held. No one knows that the Raptor design is really a sleeping geometric creature. No one knows that the Sun Eater doodle has morphed into a formidable Token. No one knows how dangerous it is. The fragments are only just being unearthed.

It didn’t break

To my surprise, it held. Even if the AI concept mock-up has gone a little literal with Raptor…He was inspired by the Bio-Raptors from Pitch Black. Still some of the best creature sound design ever made.

Spineless

The enchanted. Because pressure always finds a form. The condition. Organic streetwear for those who recognise.

The next 5 designs are planned.
The next fragment is being unearthed.
I thought the jellyfish was going to break The Canis.

It didn’t.
I like it now.

Turning garments into an ARG

There is something about organic business growth that forces you to think.
I have started this from my own pocket, my own blood, sweat and brain cells.

Recently, I asked the question, how do I make garments entertaining?

A photo of my notes in progress on building an ARG from our range

The question led somewhere stranger

I started by looking at my characters. Things I drew when I was 14, 17.
What I was thinking about hasn’t really changed. It’s evolved. I started mapping alignments.

Characters became artefacts.
Artefacts became factions.
This is also where I decided Artifacts was cooler than Artefacts, sorry England.

Story had already been forming around them; each garment had its own ‘for who’ declaration based on the art.  
What if you could “battle” or align in the street? Choose your faction.
Can garments carry allegiance, story and resistance?

Ancient pressures.
Ways of holding your ground.

The Canis emerged.

Recognise The Canis

Two weeks of game mapping, architecture and linguistic gymnastics led to The Canis.

Suddenly, it was alive.
Not just another shop, a small theatre of resistance. Rebellion.
Defiance.
The garments became artefacts in a wider struggle because, in ways both obvious and hidden, this is a battle for our lives.

Has it changed my social media habits?

No. 😆

It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any founder

Not because it will solve your distribution problem. It may solve nothing.
But asking the question led me to unearth the world that has been hiding in plain sight for over 20 years.