The New Black

Collecting underground art isn’t for everyone. That shit is expensive. Designer Mitra Khayyam recognized this, and saw an opportunity to create her own line, which would made the work of underground artists immediately accessible for everyone.

Blood is the New Black launched in 2004 and is one of the few lines that has pushed the artist-designed t-shirt concept. BITNB’s unique model allows for emerging artists to not only showcase their work while creating an affordable and unique piece of wearable art, but also allows the artist to (gasp!) make money on their creation.

We caught up with Blood’s founder, Mitra, in their new Echo Park studio to discuss the line’s ideals, aesthetics, and some of the weird shit that fans have sent them over the years.
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Tell us how the line got started in 2004.
The line started based on a thesis I’d written at Parsons the year before in 2003, which was based on an idea that I came up with in the shower. Basically it was that artists can make money using t-shirts as a medium. It was back when a couple of small lines were doing it, but it wasn’t such a big trend yet.

How important was it for you to be doing your own thing right out of college?
I don’t think I’m the type of person who can work for someone. I don’t like to be told what to do. I’m very stubborn and I’ve always been very entrepreneurial, even at a very young age. Even if it’s been like ‘Oh I want to do this when I’m grown up!’

Everything I’ve wanted to do was in the fashion industry. But the older I got, the more jaded I became with the fashion industry and the more I became interested in art. I kind of felt like no one else was doing what I wanted to do and I felt like I had to do it my way.

Did part of that jadedness have to do with your rejection by a renowned photographer?
I worked for this photographer for a while, and it was this environment where everyone would be like, ‘I fed my cat champagne last night’ and worrying about ‘Oh should I do blow around Robert Downey Jr.?’ I was like ‘Are you joking me?’

I was there to really learn, and I love photography, and this guy was one of my favorites growing up. It turned out to be kind of just a joke. I realized I could be spending my time doing something far more useful, both for me and the person I was working for. I always laugh about it especially when people know who it is, but I think it makes for an even funnier story to go from there to seeing my stuff on the backup dancers in a big music video this guy recently directed.

Explain the way the BITNB model works.
It’s always been a royalty structure. The more pieces the artists sell, the bigger the royalty they get. It just encourages the artists to try and promote what they are doing as well as think seriously about what they are doing as far as graphics.

What types of artists did you want start working with?
I wasn’t really all the particular aside from choosing artists that I liked. I work with illustrators, I work with fine artists, I work with graphic designers… And because I’m the one curating the line, everyone’s style can be different while retaining a similar mood.

Over time we have worked with all sorts of people. Porous Walker does sculpture and installation in addition to his paintings and drawings and Dan Monick is a photographer. So it’s just a matter of finding someone or something that the last guy didn’t do.

Who were some of your first artists?
The first artist I worked with was Keren Richter, who is an illustrator out of New York, and I’ve known her since I started school. I always thought she was really talented and I liked what she did. Her stuff was so poppy and 60’s mod and I thought it was perfect for product design.

People began seeing that stuff and Keren hooked me up with some other artists, so she got that ball rolling with friends and friends of friends. It just turned out to be a huge family of people that knows each other in some capacity or another.

Tell us about the first BITNB office.
How about a gated community in Calabasas with almost retiree parents that have a 5 bedroom house and it’s just them and a cat. It was a garage business and I had t-shirts laying out on antique pianos and furniture, and boxes all over persian rugs. It was really something.

It was me and some interns and racks full of t-shirts. I did it for a couple of years and tried to make it work because we were still small — we didn’t want to spend money on an office and all that stuff that comes along with it. It took about 2 years of doing that and then we were ready to make the move.

At what point did it feel like things were really picking up?
I feel like when I moved to Silver Lake everything instantly changed. We always did well at trade-shows and we had a fanbase that were buying pieces off the website, but the move out here made things so much easier to get things done and to network and keep our eye on the prize. If you have rent to pay and an office, you really have to make it work.

When did you start seeing your stuff around?
Brian Lichtenberg, who designs T’s for us, was a key person in that. He’s a great fashion designer and he worked with all these different types of artists. He always knows stylists that are looking for new stuff, so now that he’s doing the T’s for us, he’s really utilizing his contacts.

But we’ve always seen our stuff on people like Lil’ Wayne, Anthony Kiedis, and Nik Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. I don’t know how they knew about the line, but we’ve been really lucky. We’ve never done the promo thing, in fact we’ve just recently hired our first publicist in the last 6 weeks.

How does that feel?
It’s really weird and foreign to me. I’m not a hype machine and I don’t really like to self-promote. It’s always weird. But I was watching TV the other day and some guy was wearing our shirt on that TV show Community and it was only like a split-second scene, but I got excited! I was with the dog, yelling ‘It’s my t shirt!’ The dog was just staring at me.

Have there been any setbacks in this whole process?
There’s been a huge learning curve. I came into this business not with a production background, but with a sales and marketing background. Just learning to be a business person in general has been tough. Not everyone is your friend and not everyone is going to give you a fair deal. Just kind of realizing that and building tougher skin has been a process. You can’t treat everyone like they’re family.

Do you see the line expanding out of t-shirts?
I think the line will always be t-shirts because of the price point. We’ve started doing wallets with Burger & Friends and we’ll see what the response is. We’ve also started doing re-useable grocery bags with the company Baguu Bags out of New York. I think it’s cool to add a couple of more lifestyle pieces to the mix, but ultimately we’re a t-shirt line. The whole idea is that t-shirts are accessible and democratic, so I’m not going to start doing denim. Maybe we’ll do a hoodie here and there, but that’s about it.

Tell us about some of the odd things you guys receive from fans.
Oh yeah! I got a letter from prison. I guess the guy had seen a photo of me and the line in an article in Alternative Press magazine, which you know has a certain readership. He had written me saying he was an artist, so I’m just picturing this amazing prison art with teddy bears and butterflies. I guess he wanted a lady pen pal, and I thought ‘As fun as this would be…’ it probably wouldn’t be a conversation that I’d want to start and continue having, but it was funny.

Aside from that, we’ve had people from the UK send us a lot of chocolate. Somehow they found out that I’m a candy fiend so we always get really good Cadbury chocolate. One of our girls got a Soccer Hooligan scarf from Manchester United. We got Ping pong shoes from Croatia, which were awesome! That guy also decided to start messaging me. He had taken a bunch of shrooms and was like ‘HEEEEEYYYY I’m so loaded! I just took a bunch of shrooms in this apartment!!’ And I’m like ‘Dude, you buy shirts from us. I appreciate it but it’s kind of weird’ (laughs).

It all makes the day more fun. Thank god for people like that because otherwise we’d just be working and stressing out all the time.

What can we look forward to in the future?
For spring we are working with Skinner from Sacramento, Sterling Bartlett from Echo Park, and an artist named Irana Douer from Argentina. So we are going global!

I don’t know, I’m doing everything just one thing at a time. For me, planning ahead just never seems to work out — I’m always just a ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ type of person. I never know what I’m going to like either. I can see something that is really crude and be like ‘That’s really awesome,’ or see an amazing piece of fine art and fall in love with it.
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*Blood is the New Black will be showcasing their latest line at the Unique LA show Dec. 5^th & 6^th! Click for more details and make sure to pick up some BITNB gear at great prices!
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Blood Is The New Black
www.bloodisthenewblack.com
Words by Jordan Malama and Matt Jacoby
Photography by Matt Jacoby