I met JS almost a year ago through a mutual friend (Phil Chang) – he’s the owner of a boutique in Seoul called Humantree and is also the creative director of a line called Buried Alive. He was in NY for a month-long visit, absorbing all that our great city has to offer. Though we had a bit of a language barrier originally, we got to know each other better through additional meetings and I got to share with him our vision for 3sixteen and how we faced similar challenges in bringing our brands to overseas markets. He expressed interest in launching our brand in Korea via Humantree and we were excited to hand the responsibility over to him and his team – thus far, the response has been great and we’re happy to call Humantree home to our brand in Korea. Besides 3s and Buried Alive, Humantree also stocks Mishka, Haze, Know1edge, and Coup de Grace.

I had to leave this…

…to come back to this:

(photo courtesy of shan213)

While the garments in our collection have been garnering a lot of press recently, we didn’t want to neglect highlighting the graphic tshirts that are releasing this season. We got our start with graphic tees and will always be the first to share that they’re still a vital part of our line. Our garments demonstrate our penchant for premium materials and quality construction, but our graphics allow us to tell a story of who we are as designers and people in a way that the garments can’t. As usual, the Holiday collection was designed by our good friend Jeff Hamada. (He was recently featured in a Hypebeast essentials piece – check it out here). We drew our inspiration from the book of Revelation:  Babylon was the epicenter of greed, lust and excess, and was consequently judged for her wrongdoing. Though the graphics were designed 9 months ago, the subject matter is strangely timely considering the current state of our nation.

I believe Jeff found this hand-sketched skull image in an old anatomy textbook.

The “Vortex” tee features a photographic print of a waterspout to symbolize impending destruction.

We’ve used key imagery in previous collections. I particularly like this graphic because we elected to go with a very fine plastisol print, which yielded an interesting embroidery-like texture to the design.

Although the phrase “You reap what you sow” is typically used to advise one that negative actions have consequences, the back print of this tshirt indicates the hope of brighter days ahead…

The “Babylon Fallen” collection is available at retailers worldwide currently, and is also available online at 3sixteenshop.com.