Who owns palace skateboards

Lev Tanju: I do all of them, man! Lev Tanju: Yeah I think so. Some of them are about life things, not even problems but funny things that are happening inside Palace. Every single week I have to do shitloads. All these high fashion houses collaborating with young brands, I think that will still happen. Dazed media sites. Fashion The End of the Decade. Text Ted Stansfield. Palace's first mailout, 8.

Did you ever expect Palace to take off in the way that it did? Why do you think it connected with so many people? I guess, Shining a light on skating again, and getting people into it — Lev Tanju How do you feel when you see people wearing your clothes on the street?

When we were making stupid Chanel t-shirts ten years ago— —I loved them! What do you think people would be surprised to know about Palace? Also just the London culture and the casual clothes I saw during that time were Adidas. At school everyone wore Adidas track suits. Adidas x Palace is a team line. Well the thing is, we all play football all the time, and we love it. Obviously football is the biggest sport in England, and even then I kind of had to talk Adidas into letting me a do a football top.

I think part of it is that our videos got very popular and so other companies started using lo-fi cameras. Graphics are getting bolder, bigger, even in fashion you see that. And streetwear has had a massive effect on this trend.

Even on the runway, you see clothes with logos everywhere. And these fashion brands see the streetwear brands doing so well, like Supreme, like Palace, which both have such a good following, and they want to do that. For example, does it annoy you when you see somewhere wearing Palace who clearly does not skateboard? Skate clothes were, for the most part, the kind of stuff that was being sold to kids at the mall.

There was one company operating on the level that Tanju was imagining, of course, started by another Englishman by the name of James Jebbia. But Supreme represented New York. Why couldn't Tanju do the same thing for London? Ever since Silas had ceased production, Tanju had been talking to Skewis about starting a new brand.

But he didn't have a name for the company or a place to begin. They gave Tanju a show. Every Wednesday at p. It was a kind of skate news show, with overdubbed audio and a chaotic edit of skating and news clips, and it became the aesthetic foundation for what Palace would become. This is it. And then, also just the word, the way Palace looks, it's a balanced word, and it has interesting connotations to it. Oldham has appeared on tees and in look books for Palace the brand. A graduate of the esteemed London fashion school Central Saint Martins, Purcell later worked for Marc Jacobs, but he grew up loving comic books and skate graphics more than anything.

It was stealing from everywhere, aesthetically speaking. They'd rip off Tommy Hilfiger, 7-Eleven, fashion brands, anything. And that really appealed to me, that idea that there isn't really any authenticity and there isn't any real ownership of things. Tanju knew exactly what the brand was going to be all about when he asked Purcell to create the logo. I'm not a hippie or anything—I'm not into cosmic stuff.

But it's just a very strong shape. Meanwhile, the rest of the skate world was in a kind of HD-video arms race. So when Purcell designed the three-dimensional-triangle logo, the Triferg, it was meant to be something slick that would pop when superimposed over Palace's especially gritty videos.

Even more important, when Palace skaters wore tees bearing that logo, it had to be legible. Pro Skaters , with few exceptions, are notoriously underpaid and exploited by sponsors, and when Palace was getting off the ground, the skate-brand landscape was particularly bleak.

Tanju wanted to build something that represented the skaters he admired, and he wanted to offer them a kind of support he felt they weren't getting.

I just wanted to do it myself, make the videos myself and showcase their talents in the way that I saw. With Palace, Tanju spotted an opening. He also brought them a cachet they couldn't get elsewhere. And that started with Tanju's personal style, particularly track pants and loafers. Not that he invented either, but both soon became cool-guy menswear essentials.

He grew up wearing lots of Polo and Moschino and then went on to orchestrate collaborations between both of those brands and Palace. The Triferg logo quickly became emblematic of an emerging generation of skaters who were excited to embrace new ideas about what a skate brand is and makes.

But it was a couple of designs by Tanju that supercharged Palace's reputation: a flip of the Versace Medusa head logo famously worn by Rihanna and a play on the Chanel double-C logo. Stuff just sparks between us. He'll say something, or I'll say something to instigate an idea, and that's it.

Done deal. Very fluid, very organic, very easy, and very quick. Palace has certainly had a hand in setting trends. Its mix of '90s sportswear with bench-made opulence is pervasive now; designer brands like Celine and Dior have been appealing to skaters with recent collections that might make you wonder if Palace was on their mood boards. As for what's on the mood boards at the Palace offices?

That's anyone's guess. Palace releases five collections a year. In addition to a constant procession of collaborations, there is an extensive main line that includes plenty of fast-selling T-shirts, hoodies, and six-panel caps with big, graphic logos. But there's also lots of wild stuff—western shirts with floral embroidery, camo Gore-Tex parkas, sweaters with intarsia-knit middle fingers, a million kinds of tracksuits, and, recently, a line of golf apparel made in collaboration with Adidas.

That maybe doesn't mind getting bullied, doesn't mind getting cussed. It's all good. He can deal with that. He looks like an idiot anyway, so it doesn't matter! He's up for being more of an idiot. That's the fun. Because it doesn't matter. Who cares? And that spirit and that humor, that has to always live in every collection. You've kind of lost it if you're not doing that. Tanju, for his part, delights in the more eccentric side of Palace's designs.