Interview by Carol Wright | Photos Courtesy of Malik McIntyre
We got to chat with up-and-coming designer Malik McIntyre about what got him interested in fashion, working on collections on his days off, and creating pieces so unique that people won’t be able to get them anywhere else.
Take us back to the beginning. What initially sparked your interest in design? Did you grow up drawing or have a unique personal style?
It was all the above, like, anybody who went to high school with me will tell you that I always wore really crazy colors growing up. My first passion was actually drama club. I wanted to act at the time, cause I was really into writing books and writing songs and stuff like that. So I was really into plays and the school that I went to – I guess I would say it was a very underprivileged school. So, the programs for the creative kids, they merged them all into one club. So, I originally joined the club for drama, but there were also kids there who liked to paint and kids who liked to sew. So, when I joined the club, I made a friend, and his name was Charlie. He loved sewing. So, when I got cool with him I started seeing the whole process of basically taking fabric and making whatever you want out of it. I was really fascinated with the concept. So, I got obsessed with fashion design, but at that point, I think that I was either 17 or 18 years old. I was really confused because I knew that I loved fashion, but it was a new passion of mine, and when I went home and I told my mom that, “Now I want to be a fashion designer,” she was like, “Just last week or a couple of weeks ago, you told me you wanted to act, and now you wanna be a fashion designer?” So, she was very confused about what I wanted and was very hesitant about letting me go to college for fashion design because she thought it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
So I was confused and didn’t know how I was going to move forward when I graduated high school and one day, the military came to our lunch class to talk to us about military opportunities and when I was walking past, the guy said, “Hey, do you know what you’re gonna do after you graduate?” And I’m like, “Actually, I have no idea,” and he was like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Well, I like fashion, but I don’t know how I’m gonna make it happen.” Because my mom also warned me, and she wasn’t wrong; a lot of times when people get degrees in art, it’s very hard for them to find work afterward and starting a brand costs a lot of money. So, I explained the whole thing to the military recruiter, and he told me, “Well, if you give four years of your life to the military, we’ll pay for your schooling, even if it is a risk, you’re not going to be taking it out of pocket. And it would also give you more time to actually think about what you want to do.” So, I went home, and I told my mom, and I’m an only child, so her first response was immediately “No.” She was so scared. She was like, “You cannot go out to the military, you’re crazy.” And I just started telling her about all the opportunities that can come out of it. I can get out of Chicago; I can make a name for myself. And over time, she caved in, and I went out to the military. So, the military pays you pretty well for an 18-year-old. The money that I was making, then, was a lot to me because I had never made that amount of money. So, as soon as I got out, I immediately started investing in my brand. I dropped my first collection, literall I want to say a month or two after I graduated boot camp. And I’ve been balancing both careers ever since. It’s crazy, because it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment passion. I still love it. I still love what I do. Every day I find new inspiration, and I just love to create. That’s basically how I started, and eight years later here I am. I’ve done three collections. I’ve done fashion week, and New York Fashion Week twice. I got invited to Paris Fashion Week. It’s crazy how everything just unfolded.
While in the Navy, how did you keep yourself feeling creative, and what would you do to pass the time?
It was really, really hard because the type of job that I have. I work with underwater ordinance, which is missiles, torpedoes, and guns. So, I have a very serious job, if I make mistakes in my job, people can get seriously hurt. So it’s like night and day, because, as a creator you need space to just relax, be calm, be inspired, and then in the military everything is ten and two, everything is very serious. So, it was always really hard for me to not get into creative blocks, they happened all the time. But when we used to do deployment, a lot of people don’t realize there’s a lot of off time in that when you’re just out in the sea after you’re done with you work you go back to your cabin for some free time. So, in that free time, that is when I would sketch and come up with concepts. Then as soon as we hit the port, I would put the collections out. Now, the only downside to that is, we live in a social media era now, so everybody’s attention spans are very short. So, what would happen to me is, I would put a collection out and it would be great and would have a lot of buzz around it for a week or two, and then I would have to go away again for deployment and come back in two or three months, and it’s, like, I lost all the buzz.
So, in order for me to combat that, I had to make sure that everything that I put out was extremely eye-catching. I don’t know if you’ve ever been on my website but if you notice all of the pieces are bold and everything is colorful. I did that strategically because people had no choice but to pay attention to it, because every time I dropped a collection, it was, like, I was starting from scratch. I didn’t have a following because I lost so many followers, and people tend to forget after you’re gone for a while. Like, when you’re coming up you can’t just go on hiatuses; that only works for people like Beyoncé or whatever. But when you’re coming up, and you’re trying to make a name for yourself, after you disappear for a couple of months, people are gonna forget you. So, I made sure that my collections were always very attention-grabbing, and it worked. Now it’s not just a strategy anymore; now it’s just part of how my mind works. I’m very attracted to colorful fabrics and pieces that make you look twice. So the military did help me in that aspect. It gave me a very sharp eye for color.
You’re very honed in on social media and are always connecting with your audience. I was wondering if that was intentional. When you first started doing storytimes on TikTok, was it something that you did because you thought it could lead to customers or was it just something that you did naturally and then the rest followed?
Honestly, when I first got on TikTok last year the point of it wasn’t to promote my brand at all. I actually had moved to San Diego from Hawaii, and I didn’t really know anybody in the area. And I’m an only child, so I’ve always been extremely introverted. So, it’s like, sometimes it’s hard for me to go out and meet people and stuff. I used TikTok simply to express myself because that’s kind of what TikTok is. TikTok is a bunch of regular people, most of the time, going on there and talking about their day and finding people who can related to them and that’s where it started off for me. I didn’t expect it to blow up. I didn’t expect a lot of people to pay to attention to it and when they did I was like, “oh, so now I have a platform here, so now how can I use that to my advantage and promote my collection?” I was scared to be honest. When the videos started getting a lot of attention I was like, “is this gonna hurt me as a designer if I’m on here talking about my personal life? Is that going to scare people away from wanting to support me.” It ended up being the exact opposite. I found a lot of people who liked me personally and I felt like they could connect to me, and because of that, they supported the brand. So it was really very random and it happened so fast. TikTok is kind of scary because of how fast it allows you to reach thousands of people, but it worked out.
What inspired the colors and design behind your Micasso Puffer collection? Sometimes puffers can be very simple and boring – did you want to do something out of the box?
When you’re an upcoming Black designer your work has to be excellent, because we live in a fast fashion world and everyone wants to go into fast fashion because it’s cheap and it’s quick. When I create for my brand, I always think to myself, “what’s gonna stop somebody from going there instead of going to my website?” Because my pieces aren’t necessarily cheap, so I have to tell myself that I can’t put out things that people can get anywhere for a fraction of the price. If I want to establish myself as a luxury brand I have to create things that are unattainable anywhere else. So, when I create the puffers and I create the collections I always try to make them unique to me and my brand. Every time I sketch something if it looks like something I’ve seen before in any way I stop because I want everything I put out to be recognizable to my brand. People should be able to say, “oh yeah that looks like a Malik McIntyre coat.”
What advice do you have for aspiring designers?
My biggest piece of advice is so cliche. Everybody says this, but it’s really just, keep going. I’ve been designing since 2015, and I didn’t start seeing any type of return on what I was invested in until about 2019/2020. If I had taken those first couple of years and said, “Oh, this isn’t working out,” and just quit. I wouldn’t be where I am today. Another brand that I looked at for inspiration was Telfar because they were founded in 2005, but people didn’t start wearing Telfar until a couple of years ago. Now, every time you go on the website, everything is sold out. So that 10-year gap, that 15-year gap, if they would have quit and just said, “hey, nobody knows who I am, and my work isn’t selling the way I want it to,” they wouldn’t be where they are right now. They are literally one of the biggest Black-owned brands in America right now. So, my biggest advice is don’t stop and create things that people can’t get anywhere else because there are so many designers in the world. Don’t be like everybody else.
Keep an eye out for the full interview in NYOTA’s Digital Issue, coming in March!