Summer 2003
The design is the product
Letter from Todd St John
Your article on ‘Cool Stuff’ (Eye no. 47 vol. 12) made Gary Benzel’s role in HunterGatherer and Green Lady seem overly minor: Gary is an equal collaborator on both lines, and we frequently work together on other projects as well.
Secondly, the line ‘doesn’t skate and has no ties to graffiti’ took something we said about not trying to sell specifically to one group, but came out in a weird way. I was trying to make the point that with our lines, the design is the product, rather than being used to promote another product (decks, snowboards, etc.) – not that we have no gratitude or connection to it. Gary started producing his first skate line while in high school, and growing up in Hawaii surfing and, more secondarily, skating were factors for me from an early age. Both figure in heavily in our collective backgrounds.
New York
First published in Eye no. 48 vol. 12 2003
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