A Quote by Steve Aoki

I have been doing merch' since I was 15 and in bands when I was a teenager - silk-screening shirts, making the emulsion in my mom's closet I converted into a dark room, through college. That's essentially how us bands survived was selling homemade t-shirts.
In fact, when I began selling 'Phenomenal Woman' T-shirts on International Women's Day last year, the campaign was supposed to run just through March, for Women's History Month. At the time, I hoped to sell around 500, maybe 1,000 T-shirts in total. We ended up selling 2,500 T-shirts on the first day alone.
When I was growing up, I saw the Aaliyah shirts, the DMX shirts, or the collab shirts with DMX and Aaliyah when they had a single together. Those were the dope collage shirts with their faces all over it. They were doing cool things like that.
My overnight success was really 15 years in the making. I'd been writing songs since I was 6 and playing in bands and performing since I was 14.
I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.
For years I've been seeing my young brothers wearing Scarface T-shirts, John Gotti T-shirts, Rick James T-shirts. We don't have any icons or idols to look up to, just rappers and professional athletes.
I've always been a fan first and foremost - obsessing over bands and seeking out bands, and spending hours and hours listening. When I played music, the scope of my fandom became more myopic; I was focusing on the bands we were touring with, or the bands on the label. And you're always positing yourself in relation to other bands. Since I haven't been playing, I feel a little less cynical. I'm able to seek out music and approach it strictly as a fan.
Just because they're going to the gym, a lot of guys wear old T-shirts that look like they've been lying in the closet for 15 years. My workout clothes have to work.
I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation.
I judge people based solely on the quality of bands on the black concert t-shirts they wear.
Imagine a music business where all the music press talked about, all day long, was cover bands of old rock and pop groups. Beatles cover bands, Rolling Stones cover bands, The Who cover bands, Led Zeppelin cover bands. Cover bands, cover bands, everywhere you go.
When I was a kid, I was playing in various bands - amateur bands, garage bands, weekend bands, you name it, around the area. At some point, I just wanted to try the whole 'Beatle tribute band' thing, so I found a local band that was doing that.
My closet is in perfect order at home. All my dress shirts, all my casual shirts. All my suits, they're color coordinated. All my ties are color coordinated.
There are bands that I got into when I was 15, when I was mad at my dad and just wanted to be different. I don't think I'd give those bands half a chance now. But I hold some kind of nostalgia for them that I won't let go. Bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag.
It's a story of little girls who are pressed into working in sweat shops in games, who spend all day doing repetitive grinding tasks like making shirts, which are then converted into gold and sold on eBay.
At 13, I was wearing plain t-shirts. Then I used to steal my mom's clothing. She had all these crushed-velvet shirts with French-cut sleeves. And, like, seersucker bell-bottoms.
I have a closet full of blazers and more striped shirts than any human could possibly wear. Somehow I think that I don't have striped shirts, and then I look at my closet and go, 'Oh, I have ten.' But then you always end up with your favourite striped shirt of the moment, and you don't end up wearing any of the other ones.
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