Of course I said, “Hell yeah.” I started messaging with the Nike SB team, but I wanted to have a proper meeting in Portland. From there, they asked me if I’d like to design a Dunk.
I didn’t have money for billboards or advertising, so I asked my friend who works there to hang it in the store. He connected us, but when the team came to Tokyo, they went into a pizza spot called Pizza Slice and saw a Girls Don’t Cry poster, and that got them more interested. My friend from Los Angeles has connections with the Nike SB team. Last year, you released a Girls Don’t Cry x Nike SB collaboration, which sold out immediately. Each character has a different message that comes from everyday feelings and emotions. I have this character called Vick, which is a panda and a rabbit mixed together. Those characters are inspired by old Disney characters. I want to make accessible clothing.Ĭan you tell me what inspires your graphics? You have different characters that regularly appear on your designs. With Wasted Youth, I realized I didn’t want to make super-expensive clothes. Wasted Youth also reflects on skate culture and punk culture, the two cultures that I really liked when I was younger. I designed a beer bottle with a flower blooming from inside, and that kind of expresses the fact that nothing is wasted. But after looking back at those six years, I thought nothing was wasted. When I moved from Osaka to Tokyo, I spent the first six years struggling to make money and was living day by day. Wasted Youth reflects on some frustrations I had when I was younger. I realized I wasn’t able to show my own style or my own ideas as an artist. You started designing album art for bands, but what led you to launch Wasted Youth about three years ago? Just seeing how they don’t have a store but still have a strong brand through pop-ups and how they present their brand to people. I’m probably more inspired by my friend's brands in L.A., like Rare Panther, Carrots, and Babylon. How do you think those brands inspire what you do now? That’s how I started getting into more and more. I’m from Osaka, so it’s hard to get certain things there, but the first Bape item I purchased was a Pepsi collaboration of bottle caps. But just how far, and how big, does he want to go?īape was my entry to streetwear. Even OGs like Undercover’s Jun Takahashi and NIGO®, both of whom have collaborated with Verdy, have given him their stamp of approval-high praise for any designer, new or old. He’s worked with everyone from Union Tokyo to Uniqlo and, earlier this year, dropped a highly coveted Girls Don’t Cry x Nike SB collaboration, which is now on the resale market for up to $5,000 (available only in Japan, the sneakers retailed for roughly $98).
On any given day, his releases- T-shirts, keychains, hoodies, and more-draw hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people. Since launching Wasted Youth, a brand and skate team, in 2016 and Girls Don’t Cry a year later, Verdy has become a streetwear phenomenon. “I like punk culture, but I’m always smiling.” Nothing seems to faze the 32-year-old artist/graphic designer, and even if it did, he’s not letting it get to him. It’s the reason one of his graphics for VK Design, a new project, is a combination of the anarchy symbol and-yup, you guessed it-a yellow smiley face. Verdy is always smiling-in photos and when you meet him.
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