Fashion’s Rule Breaker is Paying it Forward

[Colm] Pretty opinionated on this stuff.

[Miles] As you should be.

Yeah, absolutely.

I just felt like there

was such a clear spirit to KidSuper,

which was this like childlike sense of wonder

that things are possible,

there's a mischievousness to it.

And that felt really easy to apply that like ethos

to different mediums.

And so, now because of the success

of the KidSuper brand,

I've been able to do these really other really cool things

that I always wanted to do.

[upbeat music]

Hey guys, I'm Miles Pope from GQ,

and I'm here with Colm Dillane of KidSuper,

the creative mind behind the amazing KidSuper brand.

So like, you're so much more than just a fashion brand.

You know, you launched Blank Canvas

like your KidSuper Studios,

like, you hit 16 years, your anniversary.

Jesus. Wild.

It's funny to like,

'cause I'm always getting asked when did it start?

So I do sometimes like

will give like my origin story at 14,

I was just screen printing T-shirts with my friends

and selling 'em in my high school cafeteria.

I think there's this like, idea

that I had this like crazy plan

and I knew where it was gonna go,

and I knew I needed this brand,

and I knew what it was gonna be.

But for me, I just started doing T-shirts as a hobby,

and because I loved painting and drawing,

and that was a very tangible way,

but what I loved was just all the people I was meeting.

It's very much so like the intersection

between like art and fashion,

which, you know, you don't really see a whole lot of.

You see like everyone's just trying

to create these big looks and these big trends,

and like your brand is truly, you can see the hand

and the creativity within it from start to finish, so.

I appreciate that. Yeah.

Talk to me about rule breaking.

Yeah. You are known

to break some rules in the best way possible.

Yeah, I think one as just me to the core spirit,

I was always mischievous.

And I think that kind of that spirit is similar

to when I'm like rule breaking,

'cause I'm like, everything that I do is rule breaking.

I try really hard.

So one of the good examples was during COVID,

the first thing I did was a stop motion fashion show.

Everything was dolls,

and all the clothes were miniature that we had made.

And I remember saying to my friends like,

We're gonna get kicked off of Paris Fashion Week.

Like, this isn't real and the clothes aren't real

and they'll never, like, you can't wear 'em.

And it ended up becoming this huge hit

in the fashion fashion world.

And I remember thinking like,

man, the thing that I thought was, so again, rule breaking,

and so myself was the thing that they liked the most.

Yeah, people loved it. And so, yeah.

And it kind of put a battery pack on me

to like kind of continue rule breaking.

So KidSuper is this global brand.

Talk to me about travel.

Travel, yeah.

So I love Paris Fashion Week

because it elevates any idea that I have

and it recontextualizes it in a very like highbrow way.

Absolutely. Which for me,

as someone who is kind of an outsider,

to have a platform that kind of takes my ideas seriously

or presents them in a serious way is really cool

because it gives like some of my ideas like more credit

or the credit that they deserve.

Like even- Yeah. A big stage.

Yeah, and like even when I did a comedy fashion show,

I had done a bunch of that stuff in New York

and people were just like,

Why is a fashion brand doing comedy stuff?

But when I did it in Paris it was such a juxtaposition.

Totally.

And another interesting thing

is it weirdly took Paris to embrace me before the US,

which is kind- Interesting.

Because in the US, and I'm not saying anything,

but like, they were very obsessed

with like where I was from, what my career was,

blah, blah, blah, my, if I hit all the boxes,

and in Paris, because my like background

was like a little bit nebulous to them,

they were just like, The designer that is Colm,

let's like see his work. Let's see it. Yeah.

And that was refreshing as well.

Totally. And shocking.

What are your like travel essentials

when you're traveling?

Wherever your trips take you.

Okay, so anywhere I go, I have like loose leaf paper

and colored pencils and markers.

And because with those, I know I can make like any art/

Thank you so much for sitting down

and walking us through it.

Your inspiration,

how you have broken the rules in this industry,

and how you are keep pushing forward

and truly being yourself.

The bad boy of fashion. The bad boy of fashion.

We gotta- We can coin that.

We gotta- I'm here for that.

I'm here for that. It's also such like

a juxtaposition. Absolutely.

But yeah.

Thank you. This was fun. Thank you. This was great.

And I love chit chatting and hopefully next year

you come to a couple of shows. Absolutely.

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