In the summer of 2019 three like minded BCA students decided to put their heads together and develop a clothing brand that reciprocated their passion for experimental fashion along with their own unique style. Juniors, Gavin Zhao, Natalie Painter and Priya Aggarwall, all from different academies, agreed to build a brand ‘Play Hooky’ that catered to high schoolers like themselves, and promoted the idea of self expression through the use of graphic designs and prints.

Fashion remains a creative outlet for many teens and is a form of expressionistic art not to mention a 406 billion dollar global market value. Fashion is an important aspect of many BCA students’ lives and often is the source of inspiration and even self confidence. Small start ups like these have become common in the last few years. The authenticity and originality of smaller brands attract people to their designs, and this creative trio is ready to do the same.

When interviewing the founders of ‘Playing Hooky’, they mentioned the nonchalant conversation the three held that sprouted the beginnings of the brand. “It was sort of a spontaneous,” said Gavin, a student in AMST “I said, ‘hey you know what would be cool? if we all made a clothing brand together.’ Kind of shebang. I talked to Natalie and Priya, our business planner, and we got the paperwork done this summer.” Since then they’ve been working on designs and printing them in order to make these visions a reality.

“We start off by getting the clothing blanks, which are unprinted pieces of clothing, and then we get a design and format it in adobe illustrator.” Gavin said. ” Then we bring our clothes and the design to our screen printers and they print the design.”

Natalie Painter, AVPA-T,  sketches the designs she often finds in her sketchbook. Her drawings tend to be influenced by what can only be defined as horror, grimy or grunge, three words that were often associated with their own styles as well.

The brand holds a fortunate future as  they plan to release a vintage reworked line at some point, where portions of the proceeds would be donated to a green charity. This is still following their ideas of a spring collection along with a delayed fall collection launch! Added to these exciting business plans Natalie said, “I hope we can expand more I’d really like to make more designs and sorta customize it to how we grow as individuals and how our buyers grow. But in all I hope we just keep getting bigger.”