Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Polar Kingdoms not your ordinary DIY clothing

By Andrew Gaug

When someone wears a metal music-inspired shirt, it's usually because they either enjoy the sound of thrashing guitars and beating drums or they want to look hardcore. Not much thought is probably put into how or why it was made.

When Youngstown resident and sophomore graphic design major at Youngstown State University, Andrew Devlin makes a metal-inspired shirt, it's not just making something that will appeal to fans of hard rock and metal. He's mixing his love for abstract art, hard rock and punk music as well as emotion.

Devlin's clothing line, Polar Kingdoms is self-run by him alone. Printing clothing such as shirts and hoodies in his basement, Devlin's designs are directly inspired by his musical taste.

Living in Pittsburgh in the '90s, Devlin played in various bands around the city ranging from metal to post-punk rock in the vein of bands such as Fugazi.

“I pulled out of the basic metal scene and started exploring different kinds of music,” Devlin said.

Now Devlin said, his MP3 player has more than 3,000 songs spanning all different genres.

“It's all stuff with emotion,” he said.

Though his love of music continues, Devlin said his interest in designing and printing clothing re-emerged after a band he was in split up.

“Before I used to sell my stuff at a store called Ohio Vintage,” he said, “It was kind of just an experiment — I'd make stuff like girls' shirts and long-sleeve shirts using methods like paint splatter. We'd just go with a design.”

After Barley's co-owner Dan Crump bought a few of Devlin's shirts from his line, he asked him to make the official shirt for the Youngstown music festival Jonesfest.

“The people seemed really impressed with the look of the Jonesfest shirts,” he said.

For Devlin, that's a long way to come from his first shirt designs in 10th grade that he didn’t like.

He eventually dropped out of high school and bounced from college to college. But his designs expanded, much like his music taste, and his clothing began to capture a multilayered, abstract collection of chaos and emotion.

Now, his shirts and hoodies usually combine different styles of printing, including splatter paint, silk screening and stencils.

Though designed with the dark mood of a metal shirt, Polar Kingdoms has all the feel of a punk rock, do-it-yourself clothing line.

“Right now, it's all do-it-yourself,” he said, “There's no overhead and there's not a whole lot to lose.”

That's not to say Devlin would turn down an offer from a major clothing line, such as the California-based metal and hard rock clothing company Affliction Clothing.

“This is something that I'm pushing all by myself,” Devlin said, “So I'll take any opportunity I get.”