I first met stylist and creative director LIL GOVERNMENT through the Internet (could you guess by her name?) and though I now know her real first name (but not her last, I haven't asked) I still call her 'Gov' in a lot of social situations. She's always been an outspoken advocate for unlimited creativity and equality in arts and nightlife, while still being a wild one herself. She moved to New York about a year ago, and since then has paired up with to.be, a new kind of t-shirt company. I sat down to ask her about her involvement with the company, and her thoughts on nightlife as it stands.
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First things first: who are you?I'm Lil Government, and I do artist relations and special projects for to.be. Basically all the crazy people I know and I just want to make as much as possible, and to.be has been an amazing basis from which to offer young artists as well as established brands and individuals.
What is to.be?to.be is a multimedia creative platform and community, from which you can customize and order sublimation t-shirts and high quality prints using your own or others' work. The site launched with a Dis Magazine collaboration, and since have since launched projects and made t-shirts for DFA Records, A-Trak and Lex Luger Low Pros, Mad Decent, Lucid FC, Been Trill and many others. The company has grown to include to.be Camera, an easy augmented reality and .gif making camera app for iPhone, and be/spoke, a custom platform allowing users access to branded image libraries they can use to create custom t-shirts.How did to.be get started?to.be, has been live for just over a year now and is the brainchild of idea-man Nick Dangerfield and developer Kosta Krajcev. We strive to be more than a set of tools, but also a nonjudgmental place to create and connect with other users–not only URL but IRL. When I wear my to.be shirt, at least in NYC, there have been times when I've actually met other users because they recognized the print style or design from the site. It's the best!
What is to.be 's relationship to nightlife? For just a t-shirt brand it would be an odd connection, but it feels natural in your case.
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Nightlife is about freedom, energy and connecting in a shared space, and so are we. A lot of the producers and DJ's we've worked with also throw parties, so naturally we would support and share in that. We've thrown some cool parties ourselves: Pictureplane and Rewrote DJ'ed our launch, and iLoveMakonnen recently performed with his longtime NY band Phantom Posse for an intimate crowd at our office for the Lucid FC be/spoke launch. We also did a t-shirt collaboration with Good Company this past summer, and Bukkweat Bill rapped there at the end of a daytime event to a packed house with the front grate down so we didn't get shut down. One might say we know how to throw a party.How did you first get involved in nightlife, and what was its connection to fashion for you?Between going out and planning events for various purposes, I've personally been involved in nightlife for over a decade now–from thirsty partygoer to promoter/producer and everything in between. It's a great way to bring people together and instill in them the actual emotion and purpose of what you're doing rather than just shoving a product in their face.Fashion and nightlife are both intrinsically, universally relevant. Everyone wears their personal armor, goes places, wants to feel good, and wants to be around supportive, smart, and chill people. At their core, parties and clothes can absolutely be meaningful.Was technology always a part of that connection?
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Technology is a lot like fashion, in that there's the form or aesthetic as well as the role it plays in the world around it. It can be worthless and piggyback off of pain and insecurity, or it can open new conversations and ask new questions. We strive to do the latter, in both the wearable and the tech.How is to.be transformative for fashion?The be/spoke platform is a simplified offshoot of to.be that brands can populate with their own assets so users can customize shirts. This platform is admitting to what the fashion world has known since the dawn of the internet: a lot of what's exciting comes from young people, or "nobodies" of any age who are innovating. Look at the projects we did with Lucid FC and Been Trill–we're not telling you what's cool, we're saying you're cool, and we trust you to do you. We'll even put our name on it.The to.be platform itself just makes it so easy to make a shirt out of anything; fine art, a vapid meme, or at it's best in my opinion, both simultaneously.
Can a T-Shirt be art?Art is about the comment, not the medium. And if you doubt that, just look how literally Richard Prince has taken it.