Hello everyone! Hope you’re all excited to attend Royal Vegas Retreat 2021 in November! Starting this week, we’ll be introducing different vendors and guests that will be participating in person or remotely at RVR!
As a reminder, you can reserve your room onsite at the MGM Grand right now using our Passkey portal: https://book.passkey.com/go/sroy1121mg. Using our room block guarantees you a great rate as prices fluctuate, and it helps us keep our event financially viable!
Our first vendor is Odd Monster! We had a mini interview with Rei (she/her), the designer behind Odd Monster, to get to know her brand. Read on to find out more about Odd Monster!
What is the story behind your shop and brand logo? I’ve been doing illustration and design for as long as I can remember, ever since I could pick up a pencil, really! My love of alt fashion came later, when I discovered lolita fashion through my first trip to Japan in 1998. Years later, Odd Monster is the marriage of these 2 things, illustration and street fashion. With my logo I knew I wanted to portray something a little bit "off," but also cute at the same time. I feel like all of us in the alternative fashion scene are just a little bit odd, so that's where the monster comes in. As for the colors, they are very much influenced by my love of tacky color palettes from the 80's and 90's.
What would your brand “elevator pitch” be? Odd Monster is a slow fashion, retro-inspired, artist-owned streetwear brand. We focus on using vintage pieces mixed with illustration and different printing techniques. Odd Mon aims to create something a little bit cute, a little bit nerdy, and a little bit odd for all the other fashionable weirdos out there. So stay cute, and stay odd!
How has your brand evolved since its inception? Originally Odd Monster exclusively did screen printed, graphic t-shirts. Since the brand's inception, I've worked on refining my sewing skills so I can offer more custom pieces, printed with my artwork. Rather than simply printing on t-shirts, we're evolving to offer custom pieces based around vintage, upcycled garments.
What does a day in the studio look like for you? It varies so much! I'll use a day last week as an example: I had a couple orders that needed to go out, so I package those up in the studio and throw in some fun freebies like stickers or buttons. After that I set up my sewing machine and heat press because we recently moved and I'm still in the process of arranging a new workspace. After lunch I run to the post office to drop off packages, and grab a couple more of those free mailers they have. Then with the heatpress setup, I press a few more of the Gothic Lolita Book graphics onto totebags. Next I sew the lace to the edges, and then sew in Odd Mon's tag on the interior. The last step is to tie a bow from a strip of black ribbon, and hand sew it to the front. If I'm in "the zone" I can normally do 3 or 4 of these in a single afternoon.
What are your favourite materials to work with? I love vintage garments! Being able to take a piece that has been around and been loved, and give it new life is one of the best things about designing for Odd Monster. For illustration, I love Copic markers and Neopiko pens, and for screen printing Speedball paint is the best, along with any cotton garment.
Who is your favourite designer with less than 5,000 followers that you feel others need to know about? I have to pick just one!? Ok, I'm going to cheat and say 2, @ramarama10242016 and @nuezzz.tokyo are both doing amazing stuff, go follow them! Ramarama makes these amazing layered tops and dresses using multiple different fabrics and colors in a single piece, they're ethereal looking and quite difficult to describe. Nuezzz has the best 80s/90s illustrated streetwear, I swear it's something you'd see on characters from Saved By The Bell or Fresh Prince.
Who is your favourite designer with more than 500,000 followers that influences you? That would have to be our lady, Vivienne, no question. I'm sure Vivienne Westwood needs no introduction, everyone is probably aware of her and her fashion house and activism.
Where can people find you online? I've really been getting back into long form blogging, so please check out OM's buy me a coffee page, here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/oddmonster! We're also on IG, @oddmonster_co and our website is https://oddmonster.co/. We sell through The Lolita Collective, too.
Call to action: CW: ableism, torture, medical abuse Write your elected officials using this template protesting the end of the FDA's (never-enforced) ban of the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, which is a torture device used in "behavioral modification" "therapy" (scare quotes 100% needed) for autistic people and intellectually disabled people. Abled folks - please read up on this and understand the ways in which disabled people are treated, not just by abled people, but by institutions, as subhuman.
As always, visit prettyprincess.club for more information on Royal Vegas Retreat 2021, or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. See you next week!