PRSVR is one of the most creative up and coming clothing lines coming out of Chicago. Known for their stylish leather pieces, PRSVR is one line that you don’t want to overlook. The founders of PRSVR, Brandon and Margaret Williamson, sat down with RESPECT. to discuss the line, being fashion forward and more. Check out the interview below.
RESPECT.: How did you guys get started in fashion?
Margaret: What’s unique is that neither one of us necessarily have a background in fashion per say. I went to school for marketing in international studies and Brandon had a corporate background before we chose to jump into the entrepreneurship lane.
RESPECT.: What do you guys look at for inspiration for your line?
That’s a tough question because we pride ourselves on kinda doing these trends first, so if we feel as if something is going to hit we are the first to market with it. You know so it’s hard to look at this and still do that so a lot of my inspiration comes from the 90’s & 90’s hip-hop. I’m looking at old Puff Daddy music videos, old Wu-tang videos and Nas street dream videos. Looking what they had on then and then being like ok if this is 2016-2017, how would this look how would that look and what would they wear in this situation. And we’ve had great success. Even when we started with leather prior to that I didn’t wear leather pants and now leather is everywhere. We had so many guys in full leather sweatsuits, hats and it was like we gotta pull out of this to keep the aesthetics clean. Right now we are moving with our denim stuff.
RESPECT: You guys started as a two man band and now look at where you are. How does it feel to be where you are now coming from where you were?
Margaret: It’s still pretty much a two man band.
Brandon: And that’s thing before I met my wife, it was me and two other guys and they left. It’s tough, it’s just an interesting situation period. But I’m used to being around more people. So when they left they put a lot more on my plate and it’s not like Margaret doesn’t help me but they were really good at what they did. But it opened up my design skills and my creative skills. It opened up my vision for what I felt wanted to do.
RESPECT.: What does a brand mean to you guys?
Margaret: Perseverance. It’s the definition and it’s the daily reminder. We post quotes everyday for example and we don’t preprogram those in for the month. It’s literally waking up every morning and based on those fundamentals of passion resilience, sacrifice value, and respect. It’s stuff were still dealing with everyday. You have to remind yourself that your passion is worth it. You have to be resilient. The sacrifice we make it’s the sacrifice of not having our kids with us but we’re investing into the business. We want to plant those seeds and when it comes to our values, we have to stick our vision and even though someone knocks on our door and says, “Hey I’ll give you x number of dollars to do this,” no that takes us off track and giving the respect where the respect is due. Those different fundamentals means different things everyday and the brand for me really becomes my moral compass and keeps me focused on our future and knowing that this path that we set out even though now we have a couple more passengers on the boat, it’s still the boat that we built and were just trying to sail it in the right waters.
Brandon: It’s exactly what it is, it’s a great answer and I really don’t have much to add to that. It literally is just that, the ability to kind of set the temperature to what we feel think should be. This is life, this is how we feel life should be presented and we should be that example and we feel like our example is a good example so we should be the one to show that display, Those things are important so we want to make sure we are keeping that true. It keeps us in check.
RESPECT.: What do you guys want fans to get when they do look at your brand?
Brandon: All these products were made with love
Margaret: I think that we would want people to recognize that it’s unique. That it’s supposed to be comfortable, functional and stylish. It’s made for the people that want to write there own rules. Who are pursuing their passions, that aren’t trying to look like everyone.
Brandon: Everything in there was made for you. Like I made it all for you. Of course I had to think about what would I want to wear and make it vice opponent, you know were making clothes for dads who don’t want to wear boat shoes.
Margaret: And moms who want to be comfortable and stylish.
Brandon: And see their guys not wearing boat shoes. We want to make things and say these are for dads and see something cool.
Margaret: Not to jack someone else’s brand but it’s truly for us by us and when we say that it’s for the creatives it’s for the individuals, it’s for the minority. You know we are a black family and we make things that we think will appeal to other black families and we are not afraid to say that. And its sucks to say that it’s still not necessarily PC and no are all of our clients black? Absolutely not. But they all subscribe to this movement of being part of something.
Stay up to date with PRSVR on their site and Instagram!
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