I met Chrissie Miller at Max Fish. That was a million years ago. The towers were still up, I was still on drugs, and the people who are old now were young and dumb and working retail. I introduced myself to Chrissie because I liked her t-shirt. That’s how cool kids used to meet back in the day. They complimented each others gear because American Apparel didn’t exist yet and 50/50 poly-cotton blends were scarce. Chrissie was wearing a t-shirt that said “The Socialites” which was written in the same font as “The Strokes.” The Strokes were so hot at that moment, that the quickness to both poke fun at them as well as give them credit was pretty next level. “I like your shirt,” I told Chrissie. “Thanks, I made it,” she replied. We’ve been bros ever since. A lot of things have happened since that night. The Socialites shirt became a full line called Sophomore, which is kind of running the streetwear show right now. The t-shirt graphics and ideas have since runneth over as well, and Chrissie became one of my main homies. I wanted to have a one on one with her and talk to her strictly about everyone’s favorite fashion staple: the t-shirt

Lesley Arfin: So what’s up with the sun and the moon shirts? What inspired that design?

Chrissie Miller: I can show you. I found this handmade hippie shirt from a Grateful Dead book and it had a sun on it. There’s also this era of YSL where they did these dresses—one was a moon and one was a sun. I just thought it was cool. I kind of thought originally, maybe the moon would just be for men and the sun would just be for girls.

But, you made both for both?

Yeah, although the moon sold better.

Would you say that music inspires most of your graphics?

Yes, we’ve done shirts that are music related. I did a series of shirts for the night club, Stereo. Every person that worked there had a different song lyric [on their shirt].

Dude!

It was amazing, so much fun.

What were some of the song lyrics?

It was like “Sick bottles of chicks six bottle of Crys”, “You tell your friend to get with my friend, we can be friends”, “All the boys think she’s a spy…” It’s interesting though, people really need to know those songs to get it.

Do you feel like teenagers and high school is a very big influence? I mean, the brand is called Sophomore…

Nostalgia I think in general. Our theory with the graphics is that we want people to kind of look at them and have a double take. Like there are two meanings. One, it looks cool visually and two, there’s a deeper reference.

Do you think the name Sophomore lends itself to that?

Yeah, I mean we wanted something collegiate. Then we looked up the word Sophomore and it means wise fool. We thought that was cool.

Do you think people who don’t live in New York will get the references you make on most of the shirts?

Sometimes I’m surprised when they do get it, other times they won’t get it and they’ll just buy it because they see it on someone.

Are you ever afraid that they’re going to be too New York?

Well when we did the “Page Six Six Six” shirt, I really don’t think Page Six was as big then as it is now. So I knew that people were buying it just because they saw Britney wearing it. They didn’t think about what it meant and also it sort of just looked like newspaper. I’m trying to think of another example that was like really insider and no one else got. Oh, we did a “Max Fischer for President”,like all the clubs he was in on the back. I think that was too insider. It didn’t sell well. “Stay Gold” did great because everyone knows that movie, but you don’t have to know that it’s The Outsiders. When we first started making shirts, we sold them at Union and Anything, those were the people that were buying our stuff and talking about us. So we kind of wanted to keep that mentality even though now the graphics are a little bit more accessible, especially the moon and the sun. It’s more just kind of graphically cool and not as insider. That’s what we want to stick with, that feeling.

Like the t-shirt subculture feeling? Like street wear? Sophomore is kind of like the girl version of A-Ron’s shirts, maybe a little more high brow…?

Well, we wanted to make boys shirts for girls. Like the graphics are always really big and we use one screen for the men and then we just make sure it fits for the womens so it doesn’t look dinky. There aren’t many streetwear brands besides like…

Married to the Mob?

Yeah, we were before her. I think the mistake that Married to the Mob made was not making men’s clothes because then it’s too girly and there’s not enough of those street girls.

I always wanted Supreme to make clothes and shirts for girls. But Erin from Made Me is kind of doing that and her shit is really good. I always wanted Supreme clothes but in my size.

In the beginning, everyone said it was really important that we don’t do womens right away because we would be considered a womens brand, so we did mens first and then made a small enough size that it fit girls. And also the actual t-shirt bodies we make are girly; you know they’re sexy with the lower neck.

Did you design a shirt for Lissy Trullie? Did you design a shirt for The Virgins?

Yeah! The Virgins never used my shirt though.

What other bands would you ideally want to design shirts for?

I kind of have this fantasy about doing a big band and doing all their merch, like their leather jackets and their pins…

Like styling and costuming?

I’d go meet with A.R.E. Weapons and do it for free. I realize it’s sort of hard to do it with bands because they have their own ideas, they have to want to take a risk. With The Virgins, they just need shirts that say The Virgins because that’s all that people are going to buy right now. But Lissy was cool let me design what I wanted. I’d love to do new Rolling Stones stuff, because their stuff sucks right now. Kings of Leon, The Strokes, yeah there are tons of bands I would totally—I would even do it for free because it’s so much fun.

So tell me about the "Badlands” shirt.

Okay, Badlands was a video store in the West Village that had been there forever and was closing. When I passed the sign it just looked so cool because it was aged and fucked up. And I always liked the expression "Badlands" from the Terrence Malick movie. Just the whole meaning behind it.

Have you ever been to the Badlands?

No.

It’s really amazing. It’s South Dakota, it’s a land formatation made of clay. You can’t grow anything there, you can’t walk around easily because the clay is so slippery. If you fall its soft but at the same time you don’t want to fall, it's fucking scary.

I made the shirt because it’s this piece of NY history, the video store closing and mixing it with the face of Sissy Spacek from the movie…

“Locals Only”, self explanatory?

Locals Only was something that A-Ron had on the side of his club when he opened 205. The whole t-shirt culture thing that I was talking about, it’s like “I’m part of something and you’re not… I’m in on this joke”. “Locals Only” kind of goes with that whole thing.

Do you want Sophomore to stay streetwear or do you want it to be high-fashion?

Well, I always thought it would be interesting if we could sell both. If we could be in Opening Ceremony and Barney’s, and these kinds of stores, and then keep our Union and other streetwear stores. In Japan our graphics are big, so I thought it’d be cool to be in these two markets—like the streetwear market and then high-end. I want to keep up with the insider stuff. I’ve started to develop a formula for the T shirts: one of them is insider, one of them is movie reference, one is a really easy breezy one, and we always do a NY shirt, always. We did an 80s NY shirt last time.

I remember that, you also did a Beverly Hills shirt.

Yeah, we do LA stuff a lot. We did this one shirt that said, “Los Angeles: Thanks But No Thanks.” It had all kinds of great things about LA on it.

Sometimes the ideas don’t work like we think they will. The peace sign shirt was probably our most popular.

That’s a great t-shirt. You know I have an old vintage t-shirt that's exactly the same.

Well, what’s different about ours is that I wanted it to fill the entire shirt with the peace symbol when you held it up. It was popular because I didn’t realize that when it came out, it was the 50th anniversary of the peace sign. That was last year, so it was in the air that people just wanted to wear it again. I look at a lot of ‘90s graphics, and right now I’m really into bigger graphics, like remember the whole Vuarnet era with the small graphic and then the big one on the back? There’s just this sort of collective consciousness you’ll notice that we’ll be doing what someone else is doing. You know for a long time it was hip-hop references, during that time we did “The Ten Crack Commandments”. You ever see that one? It’s my favorite.

Do you feel like hip-hop culture ties into your line?

Not right now. I think it goes in and out. The one shirt that I really want to make that I never made, another one that I don’t know if people would get… You know the “Listen to Bob Marley” shirt? It’s just a really popular t-shirt and it says, “Listen to Bob Marley.”

Okay.

It’s like a hippie shirt. I want to make one that says “Listen to the War Report.” I just don’t think people will get it.

But people might get that on two different levels. The CNN album, and then like, an actual war report. Are you doing a Scorpio Rising shirt?

I am. And that’s on two different levels. The Kenneth Anger movie and, Scorpio actually rising in astrology. And the Heathers shirt too, but that’s not coming out until the fall. The story behind that is me and you were watching Heathers and I never noticed the reference to Big Fun. Every twenty minutes of the movie there’s a reference, even if it’s in the background or the song is playing. And I like the idea of doing something involves teenage and suicide and the crosses

And I always told you that I was obsessed with that movie and wanted a Big Fun t-shirt. I mean I guess I could’ve made it but it wouldn’t look as cool…

“Teenage suicide, don’t do it”, and on the back “Big Fun”.

That’s my dream shirt!

Those are the ones that work the best, the one’s that come together that quickly. The ones like Joan of Arc, which was a shirt I wanted to do, if I’m struggling with it I try to just move on.

Interesting, that‘s a good way to approach an art project I think.

From what I’ve seen, people really get the Big Fun shirt. More than I thought that they would.

I mean, even if they don’t know Heathers the younger generation might get it. It’s like teenage suicide, don’t do it, ... you literally should not do that.

Haha, totally.

Sophomore is sold at Opening Ceremonyand the entire line rages from $60-$200. Even the leather items. Yes, they make leather things too. Go now!