Fashion Friday Feature – theFword

After the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in October, my friend Kim of In My Short Sleeve, wrote a post on the brand theFword and their “F the Rest” tee’s.  Of course for me, I thought awesome, another cool baseball-inspired t-shirt but I wanted to know more about the company and the tee itself.  This week’s Fashion Friday Feature is on theFword and the “F the rest” tee.

The owners of theFword (the F word) are Fern and Big Gus of San Francisco, CA.  Now if you are a regular reader of Fashion Friday you know that I like to write, in my own words, about the companies I feature.  I think this week that I want to keep this “interview style” for most of the post.  Fern painted such a vivid story with his explanations to my questions that I do not want to take away from how passionately he spoke about his brand.

What is the name of your company and the meaning behind the name?

The name of our company is called theFword (the F word).  A quick story of how I came across it was; My dad always told me – “if you want to make a name for yourself, use your own name.”  So as an entity, not as a brand – I began to think of different names I could potentially use that people could refer to me as.  I didn’t find my actual name to be catchy at all and I didn’t want to take away from what my dad had told me, so I started using my initials, breaking them down into acronyms to mean something else.

After years of switching from different names to name, one night;  while I was working on some graphics – I told myself I needed to change it up again.  With no creative juices flowing, I was fed up and I said “F**k!  I need an F word.”  And it stuck.

The actual meaning behind the name is a hidden message –  ”Do not judge something based on your own perception.  Understand it, before you question it.”  People know (or think they know) what art is but they don’t always understand it.  When I tell people the brand is called “theFword”, they automatically think it’s referring to the derogatory word. Automatically people judge it based on their own perception, just like art.

What is the overall concept of your brand?

The overall concept of the brand is having the freedom of creativity.  You’ll see that each piece we put out will be something different and unique every time, hopefully.  We don’t want to be in a pigeon hole.  Our goal is not to cater to a certain audience but to all kinds.

We definitely put out designs that we love ourselves, concepts and ideas taken from the things we love and grew up knowing.  Why?, cause we can.

Our tagline is “Free Youself, F The Rest.”  Which means, be free – do your own thing.  Don’t let anyone stop you from doing something you love.  The actual “F” in theFword is the word; FREE.  It describes the brand, the art and the lifestyle that we are trying to portray.  They say “Art is Free” and “The Best things in life are Free”.

What got you interested in starting your own clothing business?

I come from an artistic family background.  So at a young age, I’ve always loved art – all types and forms.  That’s really the only thing I excelled in during grade school.

I remember always getting in trouble by my mom after I would take magic markers and start drawing things on my own shirts.  As I grew older I noticed that clothing sets a huge statement of you are, artists do the same thing through their work and soon realized both go hand in hand.

So by middle school, my goal wasn’t to become a firefighter or a doctor – but the owner and designer of a clothing line.  Years and years later, I was fortunate enough to start my own brand and been loving it since.

What is the meaning behind the “F the Rest” tee?

There’s a few reasons why the “F THE REST” tee was created but the main meaning behind the tee was;  The SF Giants logo is hands down, my favorite logo of all time.  So like any other independent brand would do, I had to pay my local respect and homage to my hometown.

With a brand called “theFword” and growing up cheering for the Giants, it was only right to utilize the SF Giants letterform, particularly the “F” and put it on a shirt. All I wanted was a Giants “F” right in front, the back was really secondary.  I later added “The Rest” which ironically is the end of our tagline (Free Yourself, F THE REST).

It went so well with all the meanings for this project, it had an “F” for theFword, it was made in an iconic letterform based on our hometown team, and it included part of our slogan.  The cool thing about it was that people (mostly giants fans) loved it -but only because their thought of it was, “F**K the rest” – which is a mentality for any die hard fan that reps their own team.  Now that’s one misconception that we’ll roll with!

If you would like to own the “F the Rest” tee, please check out theFword’s online store by clicking here.  This tee comes in black as well as a white colorway.  They are current;y sold for $25 on their site.

Thank you for reading today’s Fashion Friday Feature.  If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends.  We’d also love to hear from you so please leave your comments below.

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