Funeral Party hoodie

Funeral Party hoodie

MANUFACTURING

New Fashion Entrepreneurs Start Funeral Party

Los Angeles’ Funeral Party brand has been sold in San Francisco’s influential Stashed boutique for a few months as well as in a couple of Tokyo-area boutiques such as Sugata. But the brand’s founders, Jordan Avery and Max Bahramipour, made the official drop of Funeral Party’s first collection on Jan. 24 on its direct-to-consumer website, funeral-party.com, after the site’s design had been polished. They also wanted to wait for an official release until after they placed the brand’s clothing on hip-hop artists such as Cousin Stizz and Levi Carter, whom Funeral Party styles during performances and for performers’ Instagram profiles.

The novice fashion entrepreneurs make the brand in Los Angeles. They hoped to offer a fashion label that would mix elements of streetwear and luxury. They also wanted a name that would make the line stand out.

“It has a dark connotation,” Bahramipour said. “But it’s celebrating life and mourning. It’s a perfect in-between.”

Funeral Party’s first drop features 18 garments, including sweatpants, T-shirts and hoodies. Graphics are an important part of Funeral Party’s first line.

“Graphics are big,” Avery said. “I wanted everything to be recognizable.”

Big graphics are a way to get noticed and stay on people’s radars, Avery said. He developed the graphics with designer AntNoir, who worked on the streetwear brand Vanity and also collaborated with the streetwear brand Black Scale.

Funeral Party graphics include a skull and crossbones juxtaposed with a large cinematic font spelling out the brand’s name. Another graphic features a mock advertisement for “Funeral Party Mortuary Services” that features a cartoon of a hot-rod hearse. Another brand graphic features a gothic cathedral and the name of the brand.

Funeral Party’s other looks include pullover and zip-up hoodies that feature high-end Riri-brand zippers. The first collection also offers an oversized, boxy Sherpa jacket that will set something of a pattern for the collection. Some of the collection’s other items feature fitted silhouettes. The designers wanted fitted and boxy styles to be juxtaposed against each other, Avery said. They also thought that it could present an alternative.

“We were tired of everything being oversized. We wanted some items to be cropped so you could see the layering. The pieces would not be hidden by each other. They would not be lost,” Avery said.

The line’s other styles include cargo pants, dubbed the Casket cargo, which feature piping on the pant’s side pockets utilizing unique colors such as gold on green pants, pink on camel-colored pants and black-velvet piping on black pants.

Retail price points run $65 for a trucker cap, $85 for a T-shirt, $250 for a pullover hoodie, $325 for a zip-up hoodie, $550 for pants and $600 for a Sherpa jacket.

Funeral Party serves as the first fashion venture for the business partners. Avery formerly worked as a hip-hop musician and also ran a company that resold vintage concert shirts, inspiring some of the vintage looks of the Funeral Party line. Bahramipour worked in real estate, where he worked with investor groups to redevelop homes and sell them for a profit.

Next up for the brand is a capsule collection that is scheduled to be released for Summer 2020 and another 18-piece collection scheduled to be released for Fall 2020.