Vintage Clothing At Its Very Best: Wearing Worn Free Brings Out Your Inner Rock Star
A special message from Jeffy (Real Social Dynamics)
Living in Los Angeles, we all want a piece of the rock and roll lifestyle that has played such a big part of our city’s history. Unfortunately the real rock icons left town a long time ago, so we’re left with the splinters and pieces they left behind. We were happy to discover the vintage-inspired clothing of Englishman Steve Coe’s Worn Free clothing company, who custom-make their incredibly soft apparel from the actual articles that the rock icons wore. So instead of wearing a t-shirt to show your love for John Lennon, you can actually now own the exact shirt off his back. Or at least, a perfect copy.
We’re all big music lovers here and we wear these shirts any chance we get. Complimented left and right from artists like The Crystal Method and Hepcat, they could quite possibly be the coolest (and softest) pieces of rock memorabilia we’ve ever come across.
“This was an idea that I had about ten or twelve years ago,” Steve explained. “I was watching Cheech & Chong’s Up In Smoke, and there were a couple of t-shirts in there that I just really, really wanted. So I started thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you could buy the things you saw in a movie?’”
“But from there it just really sat, because I didn’t really know what to do with it. I have another clothing label called Bogus, which we started doing before Worn Free, where do a lot of novelty tees and sell them to places like Urban Outfitters, and eventually we just started messing around with certain films.”
While Steve’s original idea came from films, he soon found that it was the true originators of the rock and roll spirit that were really up for the idea. As he started doing his research, he came across countless photos of his rock and roll heroes wearing t-shirts that he himself really wanted to replicate and wear. He soon set out to get the actual licenses from these stars and found that they loved the concept.
“There’s so many different aspects you have to deal with in terms of licensing, but I sent out like ten letters to various artists, agents or lawyers and literally within about two weeks I got an email back from Yoko Ono’s lawyer to come in and see him,” Steve recalled to me from his Santa Monica office. “The day after that I got a call from Arturo Vega, who did all the art direction for The Ramones, and they all really liked the idea too.”
Soon countless shirts from John Lennon and The Ramones would help kick-start this creative clothing line but it didn’t take long for their like-minded peers to jump on board as well.
“So it literally just started from there because it was something new,” Steve said. “It hadn’t been done before because we’re not simply plastering the face of the person on the shirt, we look into more about their story and what they were interested in. Because most of the time, they were not promoting anything, it’s just something that they thought was nice and they picked it up and wore it.”
The artists themselves now constantly send him their old photos and pitch him new ideas as well.
“Most of the people we do stuff with are great about it,” he shared. “People like Chris Stein from Blondie, he emails us and gives us bits of old art work that he did and tells us all sorts of stories behind the shirts."
You end up really finding out some interesting things behind these artists.
Worn Free then takes these stories and includes them on all the “tags” that can be found attached to their shirts. This year they’ve made them look like a backstage pass, another nice nod to the lineage of the garment. Their catalog features photos of the artists themselves modeling his shirts. It’s this seamless product placement that really enhances it, knowing that the actual artist wore it and not just some fanboy at the local mall.
“Take Frank Zappa’s “Rental” shirt,” Steve shared. “That shirt is such a popular shirt, but if it didn’t have a tag of Zappa on it, that shirt would be worth about five bucks. However, because of the association, it just brings it together with such a strong image of him wearing it.”
“The whole thing that really brings Worn Free together is the fact that somebody wore it. So because they’ve already pre-endorsed it as a cool thing to wear, that’s the great thing."
We never have to do a photo-shoot because we already have the model!
While Worn Free has been a big hit among celebrities and music aficionados, Steve has helped steer the brand in new directions with a return to focusing on films and even recent items from Muhammed Ali and Elvis.
“The Muhammed Ali stuff has been phenomenal,” he said. “We’re just doing a luxury bathrobe, much like his boxing robe and other bits of things and they’ve been selling like hotcakes!”
He then added, “We’ve never really just focused on music, it’s just that’s where we started but I’m still interested in doing the film stuff. There’s actually a bunch of great movies, like B-movies from the 70’s and 80’s that we want to do and we’ve just gotta team up with the right studios so we can get all the clearance done.”
With an expanding roster of licenses that now tops thirty, recent partnerships have included Island Records, Chase Maximus’ personal favorite Mikey Dread and my long-standing reggae love affair with The Clash and Joe Strummer’s “Dread At The Controls” shirt, there is a style and shirt here for everyone.
“We only work with licenses that we think are cool,” he added. “It kind of brings you slightly closer because it’s a personal choice of that artist and all the graphics we choose have got to be strong in their own right.”
As I look down at my yellow shirt that was inspired by the cult-classic reggae filmThe Harder The Come, which starred the iconic Jimmy Cliff, I can’t wait to see what this creative company will come out with next.
We’re planning on expanding out from just t-shirts, so anything you can possibly imagine, we can do.
It’s nice to know that no matter what license will come next for Worn Free, they will always be a home for people who want more out of their love for music than just impersonation. When it comes to Worn Free, you know you’re always getting the real deal.
Now I know that’s only rock and roll but I like it.
Surf & Buy: Worn Free Clothing
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