Five Fits With: Denim Expert Andrew Chen of 3Sixteen
I met Andrew Chen fairly recently, but I think those who know him would agree: He’s one of those special people who quickly make you feel like you’ve known them for decades. He’s also an example of another rarity, in which his kindness is directly proportional to his level of success and wisdom. Andrew lives in Queens, NY, with his wife and two children and while he is a committed father, he’s also committed to the brand he co-founded, 3sixteen.
If you’ve ever considered purchasing a pair of selvedge denim jeans, I don’t see how you could miss 3sixteen. Their denim is renowned, though they make plenty more than just jeans. Like many businesses slated to open storefronts this year, 3sixteen has had to power through myriad hardships to open their new Elizabeth Street flagship’s doors in downtown Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.
I talked to Andrew about overcoming these obstacles, finding inspiration to make new garments 17 years after his brand’s inception, where to buy natural wine in the Hudson Valley, and more.
Let’s talk about 3sixteen. How and why did you start the brand? How has it changed since its inception? What makes 3sixteen special?
I started the brand in 2003; it was a side hustle at the time. My partner, Johan, has been involved since day one and came onboard as an owner in 2007. The brand wouldn’t be here today without him, and it probably wouldn’t look the way it does either.
We started out making graphic tees, and grew the line over the years into fleece, outerwear, shirts, and bottoms, but the category that really took off for us was denim. Our good friend Kiya Babzani, who was already carrying 3sixteen graphic tees at another store of his, opened up the first Self Edge location in SF's Mission District. Kiya helped guide us as we designed our first pair of jeans—which, like everything he carried at Self Edge, was raw and selvedge—and six months later, he brought it into his store. Six months after that, we all partnered together to open up Self Edge NY in the Lower East Side, and that began our pivot towards denim as that category quickly outsold everything else we were making at the time. We haven’t looked back since; to this day, most of our revenue comes from jeans.
I think our fabrics are special. We work with Kuroki Mills in Okayama, Japan to design our own custom denim, meaning the fabric is created for the garment. When we first took this step back in 2011, it was a big risk for a company as small as ours. We had to hit a minimum buy far larger than a company of our size had any business placing, but in order to be competitive and to offer a truly original product, it was important that we were able to make a jean entirely to our specs. Over time, I think that what makes our jeans special is the way that they age. We’ve since applied that principle to the rest of our collection. We try to develop fabrics that can take a beating, and that look better the more that they’re worn.
What’s your background? How’d you get to retail and denim? Why did you move to New York?
My introduction to retail came via Self Edge New York, which Johan and I opened up together with Kiya and his wife Demitra in 2009. It was trial by fire for me, but Kiya has been in retail for a long time; Self Edge was his third shop and Demitra came from running a family business. Johan grew up working retail and was a store buyer for a shop in L.A. called El Mercado, so I got a crash course in learning how to run a store from them. Over these past 10 years, I’ve been able to absorb their knowledge and combine that with what I look for out of a retail experience to try and provide kind, thoughtful, and hospitable interactions at both Self Edge NY and our new 3sixteen flagship that we just opened. And as a brand, we have learned a lot from the relationships that were formed through Self Edge. We are surrounded by some of the best denim brands in the world, so it keeps us sharp.
As for what brought me to New York: I grew up just north of NYC in Westchester, and moved out Chicago for school in 1997. I came back in 2005 because I met a girl.
You just opened a shop in SoHo in Downtown Manhattan. What was the road like to opening your first shop in L.A., and subsequently in opening your second shop here in the city? How are you handling retail during a pandemic?
We opened our first 3sixteen flagship in Downtown L.A. four years ago. Our brand has had an office and warehouse space in the Arts District for a long time now, and we have a deep personal connection to the neighborhood. It made sense to do because there was no shop that carried our entire collection and we felt it was important to create a space where someone could come and see everything that we had created in a season under one roof, and to see it in a context that we were intentional with. Seeing the success of that store—not only in sales, but in feedback from customers—was what led us to open up a shop in NY.
As you know, retail in NYC is its own animal. We signed the lease to our Nolita flagship in December of 2019 with no knowledge of what the following year would bring; after breaking ground in February, we were forced to put everything on pause as the city hit its peak with COVID. Having the clock ticking on a space you’re paying rent on is not a fun thing for a small business to go through, but our city was dealing with bigger issues. One week, we were hearing ambulance sirens every 15 minutes. It was surreal. And in the midst of the pandemic, we had a long-overdue national reckoning with police brutality against Black bodies in America. So we were severely delayed in getting our doors open, but for good reason. We felt a bit strange finally opening our doors in August. We didn’t want send the message that things were OK and back to normal, because they weren’t, but we realized that our situation was not going to change for a long time so we moved forward cautiously.
Opening a retail store in a time when it’s important to socially distance and mask up and sanitize hands is not easy, but we are doing our best, and so far it’s been great.
While you have the luxury of owning your own business, I have to assume you’re still beholden to making money. While these two things might go hand in hand, how do you balance the potential dichotomy of moving units, but creating clothes that interest and excite you?
First off, we have the luxury of having a strong core collection that we can maintain stock on year in and year out without having to discount or clear out. In other words, we are making jeans, tees, and sweatshirts all year long and the product never goes bad. These core items make up the bulk of our business, so we can depend on that revenue. That foundation allows us to explore new ideas and concepts with our seasonal collections, as well as other small releases and collaborations that come out throughout the year. The margins may not be as strong on some of those items, but they do keep us—and our customers—engaged. The balance that our brand has is something I am very thankful for.
That being said, just because we are producing the same jeans all the time doesn’t mean we aren’t constantly examining ways to make them better. My friend Thomas Hooper is a tattoo artist and he mentioned once that he finds beauty in repetition. Painting or tattooing the same subject over and over again gives him space to examine what he can improve on. We’re always looking at what small tweaks we can make to our core items to make them stronger, longer lasting, or of greater value to our customer. A casual consumer might not notice any differences in our jeans over the years but we can tell what generation a jean is just by looking at small sewing, hardware, or trim details.
I know you’re a family man. I’m a sucker for a good partner story. How did you meet your wife? How do you manage fatherhood and a business coincidentally?
So in 2004, I was still living in Chicago and I came back to NY one weekend to visit. I was crashing with a good friend and he was trying to set me up with someone he thought I would get along with, so he put together a group dinner. Turns out that girl got sick the night before so she couldn’t make it; but another friend brought my future wife along. We hit it off that night, started talking as soon as I got back to Chicago, did long distance for a year, and then got married a year later. We just hit our 15 year anniversary in August.
Managing fatherhood alongside a business has never been easy, but in the midst of a pandemic right when you’ve opened up a new shop—it’s stretching me in new ways. We chose to keep our two boys home for full-time remote schooling and feel strongly that this was the right move for our family, but it is definitely not as simple as turning a laptop on and leaving them to their own devices. The teachers are working hard and doing their best but remote learning is difficult. I’m still trying to find my groove.
I also know you love wine and food. Do you have a go-to wine bottle, producer and shop? Give me your top five New York restaurants.
Right now I am buying and drinking a lot of wine from Wildarc, a super-small producer in the Hudson Valley; it’s literally a guy, his wife, and their daughter. I found out about them after buying a bottle at a shop in Cold Spring and being blown away, and then I started chatting with Todd, the owner, via Instagram. Next thing I know he’s inviting me up to visit the farm. They’re learning biodynamic farming and have crops planted, but it takes a few years to yield fruit, so in the meantime they are buying from other farms that meet their standards to produce wine, and are also teaching people up in the Hudson Valley about the benefits of biodynamic farming. They’re most well known for their piquette, which is basically a second pressing of the pomace to create another wine-like beverage with lower alcohol content. Vineyards used to pay their hired help with it or just drink it because it was alcohol made out of what was traditionally “used” grapes. Pretty fascinating, and delicious too. Very crushable on a hot day when you’re grilling.
As for shops, I have to shout out Peoples, which was opened up by my good friends Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra along with their partner Daryl Nuhn. It’s located inside Essex Crossing in the LES, and it’s cool because it’s a combo wine shop and European-style wine bar where you can order small bites and drink wine by the glass—and then go next door and buy a bottle to take home. A fairly common thing to find in Paris, but not so much in NYC. They have a killer edit and great staff there.
Naming my top five NY restaurants is so hard; it’s such a big city. I can try to just name my top five in our neighborhood. I’m gonna give you a bit of high-low: first off, a meal at Jeremiah and Fabian’s two restaurants, Contra and Wildair, is a must. Widair is the more casual a la carte spot and Contra offers a seasonally rotating tasting menu; just pick one and have your mind blown every time. I categorized them as the “high” but honestly, for the money you’re spending, it’s kind of crazy what you get in return. And they are kind and wonderful people. On the other end of the spectrum, you can go to Wah Fung #1 Fast Food on Chrystie Street in Chinatown and get a roast pork on rice for $5 and wonder how in the world something so tasty can exist, let alone for such little money. Right next our old office on Forsyth Street is Wayla, one of the best Thai restaurants in the city. If you can’t get a table for dinner, my hack is to hit up their sister spot right next door, Little Wayla, for lunch. They offer many of the same dishes they cook downstairs for dinner in the form of a $10 box lunch. Over COVID, they pivoted towards feeding the food insecure in their community by offering “pay what you can” lunches and I will always love them for that. And what’s NYC without a pizza recommendation? Prince Street Pizza is an obvious rec but the Spicy Spring slice still slaps. My rule of thumb is: If I am walking by and the line is 5 people or less, I partake. Any more than that, I keep it moving.
What advice would you give to someone looking to buy their first pair of raw denim? Are there any rules that come with purchasing a pair? What makes a pair of raw denim special or worth a hefty price tag? How do you care for your denim?
The best advice I can give to a first-time raw denim buyer is to try and buy them in store. I get that this is not always possible depending on where you live, but if it’s possible, I cannot recommend it enough. You need to see, touch, and try jeans on in person to know what you’re getting into. And more importantly, you need someone knowledgeable to guide you through the process. Well-read staff will be able to tell you exactly how to size your jeans, and what you should expect over the first few weeks and months of wear. Some fabrics stretch a ton so you need to keep that in mind when sizing; others don’t budge. Ask questions when you’re trying jeans on, and if you’re not getting satisfactory answers, take your business elsewhere.
Similar to many other garments, what makes a pair of jeans special is a combination of fit and fabric. Detailing, too, although when it comes to jeans I am partial to cleaner, more nondescript design, which you can see reflected in the ones we make. You can find a jean with incredible fabric, but if the cut isn’t right for you, it doesn’t really matter. With the internet we have access to more information than we need, and sometimes this amount of information can be paralyzing. But when it comes to jeans, there is a veritable database out there of how different brands fade and wear in over time. Now, a lot of that has to do with the wearer and what he’s doing in the jeans, but you can definitely see differences in fabric quality by what they look like over time. Cheaper, mass-produced denim often fades with less depth and contrast.
I am not precious with my jeans. I wear them all the time, and I wash them once a month in the washing machine on cold and hang them up to dry. Good jeans don’t need to be babied; but they do need to be washed fairly consistently. It keeps the fabric healthy, and it probably keeps you healthy, too. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic. Wash your jeans.
How do you guys find inspiration to make new clothes? What keeps you personally ticking? Do you have any beacons that guide you through creative and business decisions? What principles or characteristics do you think make for a brand’s longevity?
Like plenty of other designers, we’re always finding inspiration in vintage clothing; but not only in the silhouettes themselves, but by looking at the way the fabrics age over time. Although we specialize in raw denim, we’ve been dipping our feet into different rinses and wash treatments these past few years. I still don’t like pre-distressed garments; wear should be imparted by the wearer. But we are starting to loosen up on washes, especially if they bring out some interesting characteristics of the fabric that might otherwise take some time to see. It all comes down to the material; if you start with something cheap, it’ll show. Start with something thoughtfully made—something that is designed to age well—and you’ll have better results.
I’m glad you asked about beacons. I can’t think of one that is more important to Johan and me than our faith in God. It’s been our guiding principle from day one and helps keep us focused when there have been plenty of opportunities to waver or take shortcuts. I’ve shared this before: I don't think that faith is necessary for running a business with honesty and integrity, but for us, that is our why. We try our best each day to treat our vendors, our team members, and our customers with respect and value, and we try to make the brand a fun, open, and rewarding place to work at each day. We’ve put the needs and interests of our team and our customers over profits and will continue to do so for as long as we can. And in a time where so many Christians have traded their integrity for the illusion of power, our faith drives us to use our voice to try and help those who are in need. We honestly believe that there’s more to what we do than just making clothes.
One mark of brands and companies with longevity—in my opinion—is direction. Yes, we absolutely have to listen to customers and consider their feedback; we wouldn’t be here without them. But the brands that I respect have a strong point of view and bring their customers along with them. In a time when crowdsourcing is rampant and companies are scrambling to cater to every whim and need, I find that brands who take a solid stance on who they are, what they are about, and what they are not about, are the ones I gravitate towards. Customers relate to brands that have a distinct voice—otherwise we could all just make different colors of the exact same thing.
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