As David Gensler and Jenna River's SVSV line continues to unleash its brand of actually limited and higher than William S. Burroughs end lux wears on the fashion scene, I couldn't help but wonder, "What?" Everyone’s on SVSV, but it seems to me like actual horse’s mouth type straight talk was a bit sketchy. I called David up to get the scoop, find out about their new accessory and talk a little general shit, if you can believe that. I think I get it now.

ASF: What's up man, what are you working on lately?
David Gensler: I just worked with a guy named Brian Collins, who’s a partner and executive director at Ogivly Worldwide, on Coca Cola. We worked on the master strategy for the overall repositioning of Coke. It just doesn’t get bigger than that... it’s the biggest brand in the world, so I stepped out and did that for about a week, and now I’m relaunching Miller Brewing company, particularly Miller Light; all new packaging and a bunch of completely new inventions. It’s fun to see something that you do, a design. For Miller, they produce 500,000 bottles and cans a day...

When you’re doing this stuff, since you’re a young guy, do they want you to “hip it up,” I guess, or do they just want to you do something that’s just going to solve their problem? I’m assuming people think you just go in and make stuff “neat” and roll... is that the case?
It kind of depends; the two roles are either designer or strategist. The strategy I guess because of my age, they kind of lump me into the youth culture, “help us penetrate this market,” but a lot of times it’s new business development. I’m doing a lot of consulting on infrastructure development for a lot of these agencies, a lot of these big holding companies.

So it’s not always a “help us sell to twenty somethings” type scenario?
No, actually it’s a lot of kind of very large business development and internal development and development of... for instance.... these agencies cant figure out how to make money selling the traditional services that they offer, you know the media companies for instance, how to wrap their heads around guys like you, or guys like The Brilliance, and they sit back and they’re kind of like, they don’t understand the significance of it, and then when they do, they don’t understand how to interact with it, and if they can figure that out, they don’t understand where it’s coming from or how to reproduce it. A lot of it is figuring out ways to help these bigger agencies develop content. It’s cool, it’s big stuff, it’s fun, and it’s corporate. With the KDU on the other hand it’s like... if Jason and I have a disagreement, we flip a coin and go where it lands, but in the corporate world it’s a little different.

What do you think about rap music wise nowadays, since I know you’re into hip-hop...?
I like Pharrell... I’m interested to see what the whole Teriyaki Boys thing is about...

Have you heard it?
Have you?

Yeah it’s pretty bad.
Personally, I’m confused with the whole Bape revolution anyways...

I didn’t listen to the whole thing because I’m not sure I really want to hear the whole thing, but I watched the video and it just looks like a Bape commercial. The song’s produced by Daft Punk, but it sounds like a throwaway from the last album, which was a throwaway anyway.
That’s about the last thing Bape needs, more mainstream exposure.

Well they got it now.
I was in the Bape store Saturday, walking around Soho, and they got these ugly Teriyaki boys t shirts.

Yeah those are in the video, they’re shit.
Yeah, it’s just a TB with the Bape cameo pattern in it, and its like “wow, look at that.” And there’s just people lined up... Teriyaki Boys... Hey, you know as long as it works, I’m not hating, just keep cashing the check and take the money while you can. Although, it’s so funny how everybody now, talking to everybody, every one is so anti Bape.

Yeah I know its nuts man, it always comes up, case in point right here.
It’s funny. It’s a good lesson. It shows you that once rappers made you famous, now rappers make people hate you.

Yeah word, I mean we’re kind of ahead of the curve in hating on it, well maybe behind the curve since people have been hating on it for years now, but it’ll reach a whole other level of being hated on in a year or so.
Yeah and I’ve heard stories about people in London getting jumped for wearing Bape.

Do the people jumping them take the gear or do they just kick their ass?
Just kick their ass, “that shit doesn’t belong here.”

Yeah, I could see that happening. Bape in London used to be kind of a cool little Soho thing, to me, but now I can’t imagine the new new crowd. Plus everyone in London is drunk. I suppose that’s the drawback of conspicuous consumption; you get a conspicuous ass kicking.
That should be part of it. But yeah, in terms of hip hop and all that, I’m consulting a bit and very good friends with a guy named Corey Smith from Black Smith Entertainment, he’s just become part of Atlantic, and just got his big deal, and dude just has a sort of new view of how to market and use hip hop and his artists in a more sophisticated way. And you know, there’s a lot of guys in music that are really smart, but in hip hop, in terms of marketing, everyone’s attitude is to just get the money as quick as you can and get out, and we were always about figuring a way to develop these dudes as a brand, as there are so many additional ways to make money and keep making money, instead of trying to just sell albums, which isn’t working. So Corey’s doing some new stuff, with Talib’s new record. I like EL P and like the whole Def Jux crew, but I can’t... Something... Mike Jones. It must be like crack in his voice because I’m just like “am I actually singing this?”, or I’ll hit it twice on the iPod... they put something in there, it’s some kind of devil music in the mix to make you entranced.

Yeah, I def went through a Swisha House phase that no one understood, I put on in the car, and people were like “what the fuck, son.” Of course that phase is over and I’m way into Journey’s first three prog/jazz albums.
I heard some Iraqi rap the other day, which was kind of fresh... I’m not really sure what they were talking about, but it sounded like they were pissed, it was cool. But the music thing, I’m so selective about whom I consult with... I would consult with Lyor at Warner Brothers, and I think those guys are really smart and I think Lyor is probably the smartest guy in the music biz, and Corey and then that’s about it... I’m just interested in making it so the people that make money, make their money whether the records sell or don’t sell; they’re making it off of fees and making it off of salaries and off their deals and stuff. But no one’s innovating. I think Lyor said that the whole industry is going to change by some 14 year old that doesn’t understand the music industry. I mean, with companies like Myspace, I mean Myspace is just big enough that in 2 years nothing in the entire music industry is going to be able to compete in terms of distribution potential.

Yeah, there was a story on NPR, talking about the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and how they got out there strictly off of assorted blog comments and then a Pitchfork write-up. I mean, everybody that’s into indie rock now knows who these cats are, all off of new media, no Stone no Spin, just straight pitchfork and blogs, word of mouth. And they suck.
Right. It’s funny like, these rap guys run around and they try and get their radio play, and they’re still paying so much money to try and figure it out. They do their local tours, and they're working in this paradigm that’s just decades old, it’s like American Bandstand era.

The whole hustle, it’s kind of like that movie That Thing You Do... and that movie was set in the 50s... so....
Quite literally, it’s exactly like that in rap, just with more diamonds and spinning rims. But what’s funny is that some of these bands, they’re musicians, but they’re also tech geeks, and you can’t even say geeks anymore, they’re just dudes who understand how to get on Myspace and sit there for ten hours a night and invite people to go and check out their songs, and, you know, a band will have themselves and a couple friends, you have 10 people generating a 100 new friend requests per night, you know times 10 friends, time 10 days, time 10 months, next thing you know, you’re just like “jesus,” you’ve reached this huge amount of people for free.

So what’s up with the bullets, what’s the story behind the whole thing, since we’re supposed to talk about that because I’m running these images. I think they’re dope, by the way.
Oh yeah they’re all sitting here in front of me, we’re doing a photo shoot tonight. We launched the whole SVSV thing, and quite honestly it was because we were just so frustrated with the whole kind of collectable culture. If you look at my generation and then your generation being younger, and if you combine both of our generations as kind of one, it’s the biggest generation; we’re absolutely ridiculously educated, we are unbelievably well connected, and instead of us challenging ourselves and like looking at larger things “like what do we value,” we just go for the quick buck and we value a limited edition Bathing Ape Teriyaki boys t shirt so ugly I want to punch somebody. The only reason that brand can exist is because we assign value to it; some people look at it and go “oh, Pharrell wears it so it must be valuable,” well, Pharrell wore Von Dutch hats, did we forget that?

Word, he wore a lot of whack shit before he got on Bape.
We’re so quick to forget, and we’re like “that’s worth something.” I love to go on Concept Shop; you could get a PhD in youth culture consumption from studying Concept Shop. I saw a $1,200 Supreme staff Christmas shirt on Concept Shop and I was like you know, if some kid paid $12,000 for this, there should be a crew of people that go out and check him publicly, you know, like just take him into the street in Soho, and beat him a little bit, not a lot, just a little bit. It’s crazy. But at the same time, our generation is obsessed with LV and Gucci bags; how can we worship true high value things and then at the same time attach the same value to a limited edition t shirt that’s limited only because the brand told the printers to just make 20?

So then with the bullets?
Well, we said to ourselves “how would you make a real luxury thing?” Mark Ecko with his cut and sew, he’s like “its luxury” but it’s not, it’s an image thing. So we were like, how do you make true luxury? So we started playing with new materials, and I thought it’s kind of funny to put an icon like a bullet together with something kind of frail like porcelain. So take the fine porcelain and put that together with something like a bullet and then stick some platinum and gold on the tips, so it’s just kind of like contradicting itself. At the same time, we wanted to raise awareness on a positive note, kind of like a Lance Armstrong thing. We’re going to use the campaign to raise awareness of the fact that AK-47 bullets in Liberia and Nigeria lead to around seventy thousand deaths in one month in 2003 alone. Seventy thousand, man. That’s like taking a giant football stadium and killing every person inside. And these deaths are people our age that are just not fortunate enough to live in Brooklyn or live wherever and sit there and swoon over the latest iPod or something like that. Not that we’re activist, by any means, I’m not a big Adbusters reader, but I mean damn, dude you cant even watch the discovery channel without feeling bad.

SVSV is you and Jenna Rivers, what’s Jenna all about?
Jenna’s a FIT designer, was sort of you know, disillusioned with the whole Project Runway, you know, fiasco that kind of took over NY for a minute. She’s a real designer; there are so many fashion designers that are taking graphics and putting them on American Apparel that it’s just insulting. I mean, she’s formally trained in fabric design, and tailoring, and she does all of her own master patterns, and you know, she does everything herself literally by hand and it translates, it shows up in the clothing. No one else got me on my concept for SVSV. I was like “nah dude, if you’re like Jay-Z and you have a three or four thousand dollar watch on, you should have a complimentary hoodie. Jenna got that. She does everything, I come up with ideas.

With the line, do you feel like the market for it is already there, or do you feel like you’re cultivating it?
It’s definitely split. We have acquired a clientele. A lot of people are like “this line’s such bull shit, you cant get this line.” It’s funny because I can go to my friends, like I’m friends with every retailer in NYC, and because of JB Classics, every retailer in the world that’s in our market. But, you can’t go to Bond in London, or you can’t go to Alife and shops like that, you can’t put in a $15,000 pure vicuna hoodie, it’s a liability to those guys, just to hang it on the rack. They’d have to insure it... so what’d you do? You do the same model that high end suit companies do; you have a studio and I have my executive and Hollywood connections, entertainers, they come in, and they say “I want this” and we take their measurements... “I want two jackets in that, and something in that, cashmere, and I want it lined with this fabric..” so that’s what we did, and the people who need to know about it know about it, people who don’t know about it don’t need to know about it. But now it’s to the point where shit’s kind of pushing pretty hard and we got a lot of websites like The Grand and other people wanting to carry the stuff. My favorite brand on the market is Acroynm, love ‘em, just think the stuff is the shit, love what the kids doing, such a small operation, and so we’re going to start making some CP Company styled jackets, probably like in his price range, btw $900-$1,500 for spring, it’ll be teched out, kind of anti-micro gear, magnet closure.

Up until this point SVSV hadn’t been doing any regular retail stuff, it had been all direct?
Yeah direct to the consumer. From a business model, it’s great cuz your overhead is so low. So the bullets, they’re only 100 bullets made, we’ve got a bunch of scarves that are going to go out for holiday. We have scarves in this special kind of spun aluminum urns that are these 14 inch high black satin anodized urns that we came out with that hold the scarves, sealed with black SVSV seal, we’ve got a bunch of bamboo t shirts, we’re using a lot of bamboo and soy beans for fabrics. Were going to do t shirts, but not a lot of people have felt a pure bamboo t shirt, or a pure soy bean t shirts. We have a lot of fire proof stuff too, a lot of fireproof hoodies. A lot of people are like, fireproof, what the fuck are you going to do with fireproof? If you travel a lot and you’re on a train, or you live in NYC where planes have flown into buildings, it makes more sense. When I consult it’s always uptown in some high building, if those elevators go out, and I’m on the 49 th floor... I don’t know if you’ve ever ran down 49 flights of steps, but you will die by the time you get to the bottom, it is so hard. When we had the NY blackout, we were at The Roc offices, at the very top of the building, the penthouse, and I had to run down the steps, I got to the bottom of the steps, and I lied on the sidewalk like I was dead. And I thought, if that building were on fire, I would have died.

So who buys SVSV? Who do you list as clients?
I can’t name names, but the way that that whole circle works is that it’s all whispers... I’m fortunate with my background and the circles of entertainers and producers and directors out in Hollywood, big photographers, couple big designers, a lot of people in corporate America. People get caught up on the imagery, either the Middle Eastern flair, or the chuck Anderson stuff in the first campaign, if you look at the pieces by themselves, their pretty plain. Like they’re real clean, there’s nothing sort of wildly abstract about them, so a lot of executive types are like “I’d just like a nice black jacket.” And yeah, we’ve kind of got our hipster pool, so we’ll start moving some t shirts and light jackets so more people can get their hands on it.

SVSV
DAVIDGENSLER
THEROYAL
THEKDU

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