I am fascinated by design and how things look (borderline obsession). With my friend
Scott, I have been brainstorming artistic ideas and creating t-shirt designs since ninth grade. Our
idea for designing t-shirts mostly came from t-shirts we had seen on the internet. The t-shirts
were in vogue, but we realized and said to each other, “Why pay thirty dollars for an OK t-shirt
when we could make our own, fashionable, more stylish shirts for a lower, more reasonable
price?” Since we were both in the Multimedia Arts and Design Academy at our school, we took
advantage of the design programs that were readily available. After we taught ourselves how to
transfer the designs onto shirts, we were on our way to establishing our own clothing company.
We decided to call our company “Lente” meaning “chilled” or “relaxed” in Latin. Since
Scott and I wanted to name it something that we had in common, we thought we would try to
extract something from our three years of Latin studies which was one of the drier, less
energizing classes of our early academic careers. After wearing a couple of our samples to
school and getting some positive, unsolicited feedback, we decided to “release our name to the
public.” After some of our friends were exposed to the new apparel, we had a rush of pledges
begging to be a part of the “elite” Lente fraternity. Some of my friends would even come up to
me with designs they had drawn on pieces of paper during class, inquiring whether their art
could possibly be considered as a part of the cutting edge corporation.
Scott and I never made it to the “big time” probably because we had no financial backer
and no spare time between our sports, music, and rigorous school schedule, but I found this
experiment to be one of the most interesting and inspiring of my life. Designing original clothing
is an intrinsically special, mind stimulating, artistic practice, but I gained more from this
phenomenon than a few stylish designs. I realized I have it inside me to create my own ideas. Not only can I create my own ideas but I have the confidence and precision to make it better, I believe, than most other ideas. I do what I do because I can do it better.
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