Photo: Art by Mason Dillon
Mason Dillon is a rapper, student and more recently Streetwear artist originally from a small suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dillon came to Evergreen in 2017 as a freshman, and found inspiration to pursue his art in a variety of ways, including clothes-making. Over the Summer, Dillon released his first ever hoodie series, mentioned in the article below. Recently, Dillon decided to end his Evergreen career and move to Tacoma, where he will focus on building his rapping and Streetwear brand.
How long have you been making clothes for?
Pretty recently. I didn’t start until this past summer, maybe a little before that.
What inspired you?
I just couldn’t afford, all the street wear stuff that I wanted. So i decided to try and make it my own.
Could you tell me about your process? From finding a piece of clothing to what you put on it.
My process is normally pretty spontaneous. I just go into a store and I grab stuff that I like, and then see what I can do with it. I tend to make most of my stuff in one session, like, in one night. I never do reference work or anything, because I suck at drawing references. I just start drawing stuff.
What kind of materials do you use to draw on your clothes?
I started out using fabric pens from Joanne’s. Really basic Sharpie pens. Then I moved on to paint. That was like a tough transition because I used to hate painting. But I really liked painting on clothes. That actually ended up working out well. I normally just do paint and markers.
What kind of clothes do you pick out? Where do you get your inspiration for what you draw?
I really like pants. Pants are my thing, and shoes.
I got into making clothes because I’d see a lot of Instagram artists online that were just doing their own thing. If you’ve ever seen @zillakami or @sosmula. They wear crazy clothes, but they get all their stuff from independent artists. It’s a movement right now that’s happening.
What’s the movement?
Making your own clothes. Being your own designer. The internet is making all of the arts, like fashion and music, accessible to everybody. Maybe people were always doing this but it’s coming more into the mainstream. You start to see people like @problem6oy and @slumpykev and @asspizza. They’ve all been at the forefront of this movement, making one of a kind pieces.
Where your inspiration from?
@slumpykev and @kodone are my biggest inspirations. @slumpykev got me into the idea of painting stuff because he just takes everybody’s favorite cartoons and straight puts them on clothes. I really like that, but I can’t do reference work for shit so, I kind of just make up my own little things.
@kodone has so much visual symbolism in his stuff. Half the time, he just has to explain it out right. I really like his style. When I make clothes, most of my images are based off of wordplay or puns, just random things that I thought up in my head. I feel like that’s where I kind of get a little similar to his style.
@fifthpower is also a dope one. I have some shoes by him that are really sick. I paid too much honestly, but it was worth it.
@problem6oy, he’s big right now. He blew up out of nowhere because Billie Eilish started wearing his stuff.
So what’s your next collection gonna be?
It’s based on this series I’m doing called Hole Theory. I’m going to release my first collection of printed sweatshirts. Instead of doing one-of-one hand painted things, it’s going to be 10 sweatshirts with the same design. That’ll be my most produced thing that I’ve ever put out. And then I’m also going to do some one-of-one stuff with it, I have some shirts coming out. They’re all gonna have to do with the Hole Theory.
What’s the Hole Theory?
The Hole Theory is… sort of me exploring mental illness and depression. It’s going off of this weird premise that life is sort of like a hole, that you go down. Some people might see that as a bad thing, because you’re going blindly into darkness and you don’t know where you are, or what ways up or down or whatever. But I feel like in that moment, you just have to keep going down the hole and see where it ends. I’m just trying to come out of that, I guess, I don’t know.
Are you speaking in reference to perceived individuals experiences of life, or existence in general?
I guess I’m just going off of own experience, really. Especially when I’m talking about something like mental illness, I don’t really like to go into other people’s experiences, because I wouldn’t know about other people’s experiences, you know?
What are some of the experiences that have inspired you?
Coming to Evergreen was a big inspiration. I started exploring myself. Where I’m from, I feel like there was very little expression. Everybody dressed the same, did the same thing. My art teachers didn’t ever fuck with the stuff that I made. Because they always said it looked like, half finished, or weird or it wasn’t a reference drawing. I couldn’t do still lives or anything. But like coming to evergreen, everybody’s just, weird. In a really dope way. So, I just thought ‘I can be as weird as I want and do my own thing’. And I think that’s just like, kind of where the art has been coming from.
