Through the Reimagining Equity and Sustainability Initiative, CFDA IMPACT in partnership with the Best Buy Foundation and Sustainable Brooklyn worked with teens at their Detroit and Brooklyn Best Buy Teen Tech Centers to provide knowledge and skills to reframe consumption, develop an understanding of the ways innovation and creativity provide solutions to unsustainability, and reimagine possibilities within the fashion industry.  

As a continuation of the conversation of innovation and creativity in sustainability, creator of Everything Boisterous and multi-hyphenate creative Jaconna Jacobs sat down with  Gordon Holliday, the solution-based fashion designer of ROOLĒ who’s making it his mission to give clothing purpose again.

Jaconna: For those that aren’t familiar with you just yet, what’s your name and where are you from? 

Gordon: I’m Gordon Holliday and originally, I’m from Baltimore, Maryland. At 13, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. From high school to college, I stayed in North Carolina for the majority of that time and now I’m in an awesome place of life. 

Jaconna: So how does Gordon see himself as both a person and a creator? 

Gordon: I have so many things in my head. I see myself as someone who is open to my own imagination, a user of that imagination, free thought, free ideas, and someone who’s creative. As a creator, I see myself as someone who finds ways to bridge the gap between the context of history and story-telling with aesthetically pleasing gifts of humanity.  

Jaconna: What’s your earliest memory of falling in love with design? Take us back. 

Gordon: My earliest memory probably goes back to… from as early as I can remember, maybe like 7 years old. I remember playing Minesweeper on Windows 98 and watching my mom draw on sketchbook paper. The first thing I saw her draw was an airplane. I’m pretty sure I used to draw before then but the  way that she just put her thought of an airplane on paper blew my brain away and grew my curiosity  to draw. The level of art cultivated into design as I grew older. I really started challenging myself in different ways of how I express who I am to the world, my family, and my community. Definitely an early 2000s vibe of intro to design. 

Jaconna: I love that, that’s amazing! I had no idea your mom was the sparker of it all. 

Gordon: Definitely! My mom could just make things happen and I would be so intrigued. I would ask her if I could do the same things too like… I am your child (laughs). 

Jaconna: And for that reason, shout out to Black moms all around the world and Black women, period. When it comes to your eye for creative direction, design, and the execution process behind it all, where or who do you get a lot of your taste from? 

Gordon: I get a lot of it from a combination of a few things. I do fairly well  with cross-referencing several different things.I like to find traditional techniques of sewing from different cultures to cross reference with inspiration from what’s currently happening in current day society. It may be a range of topics including me questioning why innocent Black men are being shot and killed in their neighborhoods and translating the processing of that and where I’m from through the lens of fashion. Then, it could be a day where I peep what A$AP Rocky is wearing, like the quilted blanket he rocked at the Met Gala and the discussion around that moment. These cross-references and my own personal experiences equate to where my taste can come from. When you have a deeper evaluation of your environment as a designer, those things start to develop what work you put out into the world. 

 Jaconna: You definitely have a deeper appreciation for the things that inspire you to think and I love that. I remember I met you on UNCG’s campus back in Greensboro, NC and I took a photo of your fit because it was just a fit that was fly and a style I had never seen before. I instantly took a photo for my blog Everything Boisterous and we’ve been friends and creative accountability partners ever since then. With that being said, I want to thank you for allowing me to come into your past, watch your journey, and for allowing me to tell your story today. 

Historically it seems like a lot of Black and Brown people have had to go through streetwear to be seen and validated in the luxury space . Do you feel like that narrative is evolving in today’s climate at all ? 

Gordon: Definitely. We’re now in a time and space where there are real topics and groundbreaking moments happening within the industry. Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss, and what he did at Paris Couture Week last year showing inventions curated by Black people through design, was a prime example of that. I don’t think the expectation is limited to doing what Fubu or Sean John did. I think this and the upcoming generation isn’t going to care about acceptance, and has more focus on coming into this space on their own grounds with ownership of that. For Black people, ownership has been an ongoing conversation.As a designer , the question of “how do you consider every piece of the process?” is something that continues to evolve. 

Jaconna: Hip-hop definitely played a huge role in validating the price tags and relevance of brands. Today, more and more Black designers are taking control of not only their design but the narrative and pricing they attach to it. Just because you’re Black doesn’t automatically mean you HAVE to create within the lens of streetwear so how would you define the purpose and intention of ROOLĒ ? 

Gordon: With ROOLĒ, my biggest goal is challenging the consumer. I try to remove my face from the brand because it’s not about Gordon, but about the intention. ROOLĒ stands for Rule Over Our Lives Everyday… constructed as more of a mantra for the people that consume the brand. It’s about taking charge in your life, whether it’s paying a bill, wanting a promotion, or leaving your job to be an entrepreneur. I want people to take charge of those things. When I became an entrepreneur and able to invest in myself and build my company, I felt like I was taking charge of my life versus doing what everyone else told me to do. I wanted to be my own boss and control my own time. The confidence I have with the brand really defines the confidence that people feel when they wear the clothes. 

2020 really gave me a moment to reflect and think about my purpose as a designer. I know I can design great things , but how do I make things that are impactful? How do I make things that actually affect the industry ?A lot of times in the western culture of America, we see New York, the fashion shows, the boutiques, and the storefronts. What we don’t see are the garment workers and the less-than minimum wage globally across India, Ghana, and Bangladesh. For me, as a designer, I like to see a problem and find a local solution, and that came to me as sustainability. I’m a sustainable designer that likes finding ways of being regenerative through practice. This is what my goal is as a designer and that is how I got into the sustainability world. 

Jaconna:I love that you went back to the drawing boards and found an extension of your purpose during a questionable time. It also seems like you had the chance to pour into your purpose vs. ego. 

 Gordon: Right! 

Jaconna: Rather the world wants to recognize it or not, Black people have always interacted with the action of being sustainable through the act of passing down of garments, among others. For example , you can catch me on a Tuesday in Brooklyn or back home in North Carolina wearing my Negro League jacket because that’s a passed down piece that my dad gave me. For you, what catalyzed your commitment to sustainability within your brand/ platform space? 

​Gordon: It first came from when I first started learning about the Holliday side of my family being made of generations of quilters. My grandmother was a quilter and seamstress at NASA. My great-grandmother was a quilter who made and sewed my grandmother’s clothing and sheets from scratch. When I found that out, I felt like there was an unlocking of my gene-code. Back in 2016, I kept writing “Recycle ROOLĒ ̄” but I didn’t really understand how I was going to implement sustainability quite yet. Then I see people like Greg Lauren and ClothSurgeon, it just made me think about how people are tearing things apart and remaking things through deconstruction just like quilting. I still had a lot to learn and try over and over again back then, but now I can look at a garment, break it down into pieces, and remake it into something new. 

That was my influence and then I started going full force with it.   

Jaconna: Sounds like you found a new purpose within ROOLĒ. You’re re-purposing with ROOLĒ 

​Gordon: Exactly! I got to meet Dapper Dan in 2019, and reading his story, he was sustainable to a certain extent. He couldn’t afford to get luxury brands so he used their bags to cut them up and re-make them into jackets. That famous photo with the LV bomber jacket worn by Diane Dixon was from a cloth bag he had used. Dapper Dan was doing it on a level of commissions. As a slow designer, I’m making one-of-a-kind, original pieces, which,  through the lens of sustainability, I’ve dedicated my platform to. 

Jaconna: It’s also interesting how he spearheaded sustainable re-construction and even bootlegging through fashion which is now a present- day way to cause traction and excitement for future collaborations (ex: from Supreme bootlegging Louis Vuitton to legally collaborating with them) and it wasn’t framed in that way when he was emerging. When it comes to sustainability, we know that, the more you rely on factories to produce your designs in mass, the less sustainable the practice actually is. What type of practices do you utilize to involve your design process to ensure that the garments have a purpose that serves not only today but can serve multiple purposes for the generation of tomorrow?  

Gordon: The key thing is collaborative work. I like to get  to know my client and create around their lifestyle so the product can actually last, be useful, and mean something to them. Once I’ve learned enough about them, I can get a sense of what I should generate. Depending on what the project entails, I like to tap third parties. For fabric, one of the greatest things to happen to me was The Slow Factory Foundation and Waste Management’s Design Challenge. One of the greatest connections I made was with Jessica from Fabscrap. She runs the company in Brooklyn, They just opened a new facility in Philadelphia, and they are pretty much the Goodwill of fabric. They collect fabric that might be deadstock or didn’t sell in the season, and they re-distribute them so they don’t end up in the landfill. Jessica taught me how to properly run logistics and, as a designer, it’s very important to break down this stuff   to ensure that even the scraps are being used. If my client gives me a duffle bag that they want to turn into a bucket hat, I have to deconstruct the bag which is time and then re-construct it which is labor. I also have the option to tap Fabscrap to take leftover materials to make things into scarves or tote bags. 

Jaconna: You’ve always been the kind of designer who ensured your clothing had purpose and intention. The memory that stands out to me was when you were working on your collection RetroFuturism. You produced the music for your debut moment of the collection , you made the visuals , the sounds, and my mind just exploded because I’ve never seen someone so dedicated. Years later, you are telling a really dope story through a new collection with the support of the CFDA . Can you tell me about that collection and what it means to you. 

​Gordon: I was inspired back last March when I found out about the African Samurai, Yasuke. I was like, woah, there was an African Samurai in Japanese history and I instantly wanted to know more. My cousin St. John went to Tokyo one year and came back eating Japanese snacks and watching anime , and it just seemed like he was a whole different person. I lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousin when I was 6 years old and I would watch Yu Yu Hakusho , Dragon Ball Z, Inuyasha, and Gundam. I would be so attuned to it and I kept saying to my cousin that I wanted to go to Tokyo one day. There was a correlation between that moment I had not only with my cousin,  but with the thought of me always being the only Black man in the room. Yasuke was that to me. They didn’t even think he was a real Black man so the story goes that people thought his skin was charcoal and tried to wash it away. Some say he was a missionary or an enslaved African, but I believe that he was just traveling to a village and the village instead ran into him. In reference to what I think about the relationship between the Black Panther Party and Chinese immigrants, there’s always been a comradery within Asian and Black culture for various movements including the Civil Rights era and beyond. This story really spoke to me and I wanted to tell a story that people may not have heard of before through highlighting a symbiotic relationship with the feudal lord Oda Nobunaga and the African Warrior, Yasuke. 

Jaconna: What inspired you to pair this particular story with your mission of sustainability? 

Gordon: One of the biggest quilting techniques that inspired this collection are sashiko and boro which are Japanese patchwork techniques. Sashiko means little stabs and boro means patchwork. When I was looking up these styles, the design of the stitching had bamboo-pattern stitching with Japanese fans in them, and it was just really intricate. In 13th century Japan, firefighters would put out fires by dipping the kimonos in water and put out any fire using that kimono. Fabric was scarce so when you saw a hole, you just patched it back up. 

So when you think about having a coat five years plus, you’re talking about a coat that has so much character from patching and stitching. Between the story of Yasuke and the sustainability of those Japanese techniques, that’s what pushed me to tell this story. 

Jaconna: You’ve always engaged your design and your character with your community. What’s been a key to your discovery and exposure as a designer? 

Gordon: The key to my discovery as a designer is my inner child and keeping that alive. When I think about that younger version of myself, I didn’t have a limit, a box, a title, or a name. I could create anything I imagined and I think about how I can expose my community to certain platforms because you never know who’s  the next Gordon Parks or Black inventor in the neighborhood. If they see somebody that looks like them who’s doing it, it’s a Pharrell moment of… 

Jaconna and Gordon: You can do it too !  

Gordon: As for the exposure of myself as a designer, I think my growth and exposure has been particularly fond because I spiritually just want to do the right thing.  

Jaconna: Wow. I think what you said is impactful and stands out to me because for myself , ensuring that I’m driving my own story of who I am and what I do is super important not only as a creative, but as a Black woman. I don’t want anyone to have control over how I expose my character, my story, what feels right for my path, nor the impact it’s meant to have. For you and your path as a designer, what’s the most important piece of your process? 

Gordon: I think it’s just the conversation. It’s not just about what you need, but the factors and resources that are going to make you do better and feel better. Conversations don’t just stop at designing clothes, it evolves into designing worlds. The NFT, metaverse, and web3 2.0 are the future. It doesn’t stop at just clothes ,we’re designing experiences and that always starts with a conversation which is the most important piece for me. 

Jaconna: What are some ways people can get involved with being sustainable in fashion and getting involved with your brand?

Gordon: Support your local designers, clothing swaps, donations, www.roole.shop, and just learn the art of sewing. I feel like everyone just wants everything right now but what happened to doing tangible things yourself? We should get back to making tangible things. For people getting involved with my brand, it can be as simple as buying a piece or attending a workshop or learning about the people in the community who are making strides as well. Anything like this is super key for any community that wants to keep growing. 

Jaconna: You are truly dropping gems today. Let’s pivot to your designer dreams for a sec. Gordon, who are your dream collaborators? Give me your top 5. 

Gordon: Kapital, Pharrell Williams, Jaden Smith, Sacai, and Kanye West.  

Jaconna: That is a table I need to see come to life for you. Before we close out, we’re two Black creatives that met in North Carolina that are doing an interview on the grounds of CFDA right now. If you could give the kid I met in 2015 some advice , what would that advice be ?  

Gordon: Fatherhood brought me into a space where I want to provide an environment for my son, community, and for his future endeavors. It’s important for the youth to see thought provoking adults who change narratives toward a progressive future. When they see you achieve your potential, it instills in them they can set & achieve their goal. As a new parent and hopeful optimist, I want all children to be in a space where they can evolve and contribute majorly into the advancement of society for positive changes. With that being said, I would tell 21 year old me to stay diligent, stay prosperous, resilient, and don’t lose sight of who you are. 

Jaconna: I think this moment deserves a mic drop. Thank you G !