Interviews

PAUL FRANK

By Tiffany Chow

   You would be hard-pressed to find anybody who isn't familiar with the name Paul Frank. The clothing company known well for its uniquely fun designs, broad range of inspired products, and Julius the monkey has quickly made its name known throughout the world and with each new day continues to expand and progress. What most are not familiar with, though, are Paul Frank Industries' humble and honest beginnings, the integrity and sincerity of the company's owner, creator, and namesake, and the story behind it all.

    Paul Frank himself took a few moments out of his extremely busy day to talk with us about the company.

SKRATCH: Tell us about the beginning of Paul Frank Industries. What made you want to start such a unique, fun, and innovative company?
PAUL FRANK: It wasn't like I wanted to start a company; it was about a need for things that no one else had. It's always been about being unique. We liked old music, like The Who and mod stuff, so we wanted to dress like that. We used to wear thrift-store clothes in the '80s, and people used to make fun of us. It's always about having something that other people don't, so making things is another way to do that. In the '90s, people started wearing vintage clothes because of Kurt Cobain and stuff, so in order to be different, I went and got a sewing machine. Sewing clothes wasn't really something I wanted to do that bad, so mostly I just brought out the machine to sew patches on sweaters. I had this orange vinyl, and I thought "Wow, this might be a cool wallet." At the time I was an art student at OCC, so I was using what I was learning in my art classes. My friends and their bands were all creative and artistic; they were painting and sculpting. But I made a wallet in my room, and from that day on everyone wanted a custom-made wallet or a guitar strap or a watch band or a backpack—so I learned how to make all those things myself. People think I started a company and pasted my name on a wallet. That's not what I did. I make things. Like Jesse James makes choppers, I make wallets. It's like Paul Frank's Monster Garage.

SKRATCH: So when did it turn into a company?
PF: About a year or two later. There was such a demand. Literally, I would get up and sew, then go to work, then come home and sew some more, and then go to work at night and sell stuff that I made. I knew this was good. I knew I was creative and that what I made was really cool and really unique. My friend Ryan tried to get me a job at Mossimo, but the lady there wouldn't have anything to do with me because she didn't even know how to sew. So Ryan said, "Why don't you just do this?" And I said, "Well, I don't have any money." So he went and got some money from his step-mom. We wanted to do it really legit, so we went and got a business license and a resale number. So, basically, we started from scratch.

SKRATCH: So you clearly did not have any aspirations of PFI becoming what it has today. How does it feel now that it has completely blown up?
PF: It's cool when I see people jogging or [at] Disneyland wearing one of my shirts; I still get really excited. It's cool because I don't know that person, and they went and actually bought that at a store. It's like watching your hair grow. You don't really see it growing, it's just longer someday and you think, "Oh, I need a haircut!" We offer so many different products…I don't really have time to sit back and dwell on it. You can never fully appreciate your own fame or success, because you're in it. What's cool about success and seeing it get so big is that you realize what you're good at and what you're not good at. You start to feel a confidence and a comfort; you know what works and what doesn't.

SKRATCH: The corporate offices are bright and right by the ocean in Orange County. How do you think the location reflects the personality of the company?
PF: It wasn't on purpose that we wanted to be so close to the ocean, it just happened that way. See, that's the thing: a lot of this stuff just happened. It just happened that I felt like sewing a wallet, and it was cool and other people wanted one. It just so happened that our building ended up being so close to the beach. But other things are intentional, like painting the building those bright colors. My elementary school was the same colors. I didn't realize it for awhile. I didn't know why I liked those colors so much. I think that's why, though. I grew up in the '70s. In 1972, I started going to this elementary school called Sunview in Huntington Beach. Part of the school was a rusty orange, one building was light blue, and one building was a goldish yellow—and those are my main colors. I grew up in those buildings that were made in the mid- to late-'60s, so I wanted our corporate building to reflect that attitude and some of our other aesthetics. That's another thing: we have our own library of aesthetics now. Whether it's a reception office or our offices or our stores, I try to repeat things, like shapes and colors. I always refer to Disneyland. It's the best example of continuity there ever was. Even the churro cart by the Matterhorn is painted in Matterhorn lettering, so you have this Mexican dessert, but it's painted in this Matterhorn lettering. It doesn't make sense, but it's continuity. My influences aren't clothing designers at all: my real influences are the industrial designers, like whoever designs schools, desks, chairs, office furniture, bicycles, cars, blenders, toasters from the '40s through '60s, stuff like public buildings....

SKRATCH: Paul Frank has become a sort of icon for many kids in the indie-rock music scene. Was this planned?
PF: I think it all goes back to designing things that I think are unique. I wouldn't call myself indie, but I would be or I am. What IS indie? What IS emo? I was wearing a Western shirt and horn-rimmed glasses before there was a thing called indie or emo. I don't know what that means exactly, but I know that I always had an artistic flare. With indie and emo, you're wearing older clothes, sneakers and jeans. It just happened to be that we were already wearing stuff like that because of music, so all this is based on music. [When I was in a mod band, we] wanted to sound like The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Velvet Underground, so whatever The Velvet Underground or The Who was wearing, we were wearing, too. Because Paul wears that kind of stuff, he designs that kind of stuff, so everybody that is into that music scene likes that kind of stuff, too, so they buy my stuff. I don't GO after these people like the Gap or some other big corporate company. They try to go after that—I already AM that. I hope I didn't just give away a big secret. It's not like I try. It just happens to be that cool bands like Pretty Girls Make Graves or Alkaline Trio have the similar interests, like skulls, hearts, black, and rock 'n' roll. That's how I met all my cool friends: by playing music. Just think: if I had never learned how to play the guitar, I would be working at some warehouse somewhere driving a forklift. I was terribly shy, and music got me out there. It was like a fork in the road. What if I didn't take the fork of music? I would just be a normal person and none of this would have happened. See, music is responsible for so many things. People make babies to music. People take drugs to music. It's all about music. Like The Beach Boys said, "Add some music to your day."

SKRATCH: It can definitely be argued that the reason the music scene has so readily adopted Paul Frank is because of your background. But it could also be attributed to the huge amount of collaborations you've done with major names in the music industry. From Bad Religion to Radiohead, from The Vandals to Alkaline Trio, from the Coachella Festival to KROQ. How did these collaborations come about? What inspired the first collaboration in 1999 with The Aquabats?
PF: We used to play with them back in '93 or '94. I liked them because they wore their own costumes. I designed this belt for them to wear. It just happens to be that if you're in a band, you have other friends in bands. It's like "Birds of a feather flock together." My best friend, his wife is Warren's sister from The Vandals—but that's not how we got to do stuff with them. It just happens to be that Warren started wearing my T-shirts before my best friend Chris met his sister. I knew Scurvy would have this appeal to punk, rockabilly, or gothic kids. There's always a fashion of people like the punk girl or the emo girl. I just know that certain things would cross over to those fashions. Some things just stay cool, timeless, classic. A lot of this stuff just happens.

SKRATCH: The music scene in Orange County is quite possibly one of the most prolific and productive scenes in any other area in the United States. What role do you think Paul Frank plays in that?
PF: It goes back to why our building is where it is. There's a definite thing about growing up in Huntington Beach. I don't know what it is, but for some reason a lot of things start in California. It takes California to make a lot of things cool. California was one of the last states to be filled in, but we have it all here. We can go surfing and snowboarding in the same day if we want to! There must be a reason why. Because we're closer to the beach, the kids here are much cooler. Is it cooler to say you have a 714 area code or a 909 area code? 714—that's right. If someone can figure out why that is, they'd probably make a lot of money.

SKRATCH: There is definitely uniqueness about PFI that draws many people in. What do you think is the most significant aspect of PFI that sets it apart?
PF: I know exactly what it is: it's the fact that we use humor, sarcasm. People see the characters and assume they're happy, but if you look at Julius's face, that's not a smile, it's a smirk. And Worry Bear is worried, and Scurvy's sad because he used to be a pirate and now he's doomed to be on a liquor bottle forever. I drew Worry Bear on a plane. That's the difference between me and a major company. They see Worry Bear and they say, "Oh, there's a bear on a shirt. We should put a bear on a shirt"—and then they wonder why they don't sell very well. I was flying on an airplane, and I got a little scared and worried, and so I drew Worry Bear. That's something that really bugs me. People see me and they say, "Oh you're the monkey guy." It's more than that! People don't know that I drew Julius for my girlfriend that and there's a story behind it or that the giraffe was originally a costume for the monkey. Nobody knows that. People think that I just buy a bunch of purses and slap a monkey's face on it. People don't realize that we hand-make every single product before we ship it off to manufacturers. Everything is hand-made first right here in the offices.

SKRATCH: Finally, what do you see in the future of Paul Frank Industries?
PF: I definitely would like my cartoons to become real cartoons on TV, so we're working on that right now. I also would like to open more of my own stores. I really enjoy designing them and the furniture and the light fixtures and everything. I have a lot of fun doing that. And what's really sad is how many boutiques are closing down. You barely see any boutiques anymore. Everyone buys things from Urban Outfitters and think that it's a boutique, but it's not, really. But everyone goes to Urban Outfitters and doesn't go to the little hole in the wall, and then it closes up. It's really scary to think about that, because eventually all those major stores are going to start controlling what people buy and what they should like, and that's really scary.

Check out some of Paul Frank's products, art, and cartoons at his Website www.paulfrank.com.

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