CaliforniaApparelNews.net

L.A. based nature-loving label Free City, known for its bright, plush sweats and feel-good graphics, has given snow bunnies a new reason to hit the slopes. The brand has launched its new capsule collection with Burton Snowboards, featuring a puffy vest, a puffy long-sleeved hooded jacket and snow pants. Each piece comes in a range of colors – including burnt sienna, dusty green, steel gray and blue – and features the brightly-colored hand-painted doves, logos and silk-screening the label is known for.

“I’ve always been a fan of Burton,” Free City founder and owner Nina Garduno, said. “I snowboard, and I’d get Burton clothes and screen them myself with Free City fonts, and people would be asking me where I got them.”

Garduno said she’d never planned on designing a line for snowboarding, but the opportunity with Burton was a “fantasy” collaboration. The Vermont-based snowboarding company provided the technical knowledge and history while Garduno supplied the creative direction.

“I got to pick every color, I got to pick the fabric, I got to design it. It was real, a real dynamic – it wasn’t just me giving them my artwork, it was us designing together,” she said.

 

The collection is not just limited to boarding – the pieces were made “to transcend from snow to street.”

All of the items are uni-sex and range from extra-small to double extra large. At $249.95 to $349.95, they also run cheaper than her standard Free City outwear and will be sold at select Burton stores, Free City, Ron Herman, Shopbop, Revive, Seilin & Co. in Japan and Pink Moon in Kuwait, as well as online through the Free City website.

The new items add to her current collection of goods at her Free City Super Shop on Melrose and Highland, which is sporting the theme of “Basic Goodness” this year.

The 10,000-plus-square-foot space is part workshop, part retail store and part creative lab.

“We set a mood for the store every year in September. This year’s is called Basic Goodness. It’s about a journey, wearing a backpack and collecting things on the way, only keeping what you love – everything has an artifact feeling to it.”

She describes the store and her Spring 2012 line as “having a lot of Americana in it.” The space is filled with handmade art, bicycles, organic food, plush hoodies, jackets and sweatshirts sporting sayings of peace, love and motivation, and even ceramic apple bongs and moonshine.

Everything is made at the workshop behind the store and is hand-printed with hand-mixed colors.

“I have small amounts of things that are made with lots of care,” Garduno said.

She says her designs are about creative expression.

“I work very hard to stay very true and find the right way to say something. With ‘radical feminist,’ that can be such a harsh phrase for people, but when you see it in our font it almost makes it humorous – just sort of endearing and much softer. It’s not political, it isn’t anything about that, it’s about finding our way and doing it in an artistic way that feels like freedom, and to not have it be conventional and still succeed.”

Although she has always been self-financed, Garduno said she is now looking for financial partners to “have Free City grow and become everything it’s supposed to be” – but only with the right match.

“It’s got to be people that are mindful and careful about the result. I’ve said no to money before. Making money is important, but it’s not my motivation.”

Sharing her vision is the goal now.

“I am open to having it reach as many people as possible,” she said. “It should be for everybody - young, old, girl, boy, professional, unprofessional - for someone fully tattoed or clean as a whistle. For the adventurer and for the woman holding the Kelly bag.”

Lucky Angelenos will be able to share in her vision at the end of the month. For the first time, the store will be having a three-day slash sale with “rock bottom prices,” clothes, bikes, ceramics and "historical goods" never released before.

Free City Super Shop: http://www.freecitysupershop.com/
Sale dates: January 27, 28, 29
 

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