What’s up world, it’s Coty!
I started sewing in 2015 when I lived in Westerly, Rhode Island. I got a sewing machine for Christmas from an ex girlfriend in 2014 and thought it was a fkn joke. Months later I opened the machine, cut apart one of my favorite hoodies, traced that onto fabric, cut it out, and I sewed it back up. It was far from cool but ever since that day I’ve been obsessed. I taught myself how to sew and that came with a major learning curve.
My first fashion show was downtown Minneapolis at The Pourhouse for RAW Artists. They had asked me to do a “full collection” and I had no idea how many pieces that was. I thought I was supposed to make as many as I could, so I came up with 35 separate outfits and invited a ridiculous amount of my friends to model for me. I was the last show of the night which was cool because the outfits just kept coming and coming for over 12 mins. Afterwards they told me I was only supposed to do ten looks max…….HAHAHA. I met one of my only designer friends Mercedes Bergman at that show and she invited me to design for Fashion Week Minnesota the following spring of 2017……THAT SHIT WAS FIREEEE!!!! After that I was a part of around 80 more fashion shows, including a total of EIGHT Fashion Week Minnesota shows.
I absolutely loved doing shows but there were some major issues in the scene that took me awhile to notice. People in Minnesota do shows, even the largest ones downtown at The W inside of The Foshay Tower for FREE. They say that we get exposure, but half of the time they would call me Cody instead of Co-T and would hardly even have my name in the background of my model walk. Also, how is it exposure when I have ten times the following of a majority of the scene? The charity shows where 100% of the proceeds went to something special were great, but out of the 80 events, I bet less than 5% were like that. I’ve done some really cool stuff with The Project Hope Movement like raise money to feed the homeless in our area, then we/I made and donated 1,200 face masks to low income areas during lockdowns. Another awesome show I did was for Arianne Zager with Fashion Week Minnesota Spring of 2022, we raised 13k for a soccer field to be built over in Sierra Leone. Some of the smaller ones were cool, and I threw a few small ones of my own for free since I never got paid anyways, I just wanted anyone to be able to show up regardless of their income. I’ve gotten permits to throw wonky little events/shows in parks around Minneapolis and someday I will throw the largest most wild fashion shows the world has ever seen. There’s a few people in town who need to go away forever for how they have treated people in the past and the present. My plan is to throw much better, way more put together shows that involve paying everyone for their time. I’ll throw my rager shows the same night as the creep producers just to shut them down, you don’t mess with skateboard punks.
I’ve made almost anything you can imagine when it comes to clothing. Hoodies, T-shirts, backpacks, pants, leggings, dresses, bucket hats, snapback hats, a few shoe samples, and tons of funky @$$ costumes for my friends and myself. I haven’t seen many others with my style, that’s because this is all me. I sew everything by myself and have gotten very little help over the years. I’ve done several major record label collabs including with Dirt Monkey and Super Future.
I started making music on Ableton around a year ago and dream of owning a massive clothing factory that doubles as an event space for after hours fashion shows, art galleries, and to throw my own EDM shows until the sun comes up. My DJ name is Trip Tailor……the trippy tailor…..don’t even ask haha
I’ve been moving into a more upscale side of things lately. For some reason I was trying to compete with fast fashion prices for yearrrssss and it really watered down my ability as a designer……Just wait until you see what I’m really made of, I turned a new leaf in 2022 and realized that things need to change if I want a successful career as an independent designer. I will never work for anyone, I live uncensored, I fkn love bass music, and I truly don’t give a damn what anyone thinks about it. I do this for fun and I’m going to make sure it stays that way, I’ve never felt more confident in my life…….all because of a sewing machine gift that I thought was a joke.
What a life!
Keep it wild!
Yours Truly,
CoTy Schooley