DARKNET

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: ALEXA

We’re super excited to feature you in the Employee Spotlight this month! What's the first thing that came to mind when you found out you were next to be featured on Vapor95's Employee Spotlight?

Thank you. Excited to be featured! When I first heard I was going to be the next Employee Spotlight I was curious about what the questions would be. They tend to be pretty creative.

First, tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Vapor95.com. What does your day to day look like?

I live in Brooklyn and work remotely, handling marketing and PR at Vapor95, specifically working on influencer strategy and relationship building, managing brand partnerships, creator design collaborations, planning live streams, and events, and reaching out to editors for press coverage. My day to day varies a lot depending on what projects I’m working on. I can say that I do a lot of emailing, researching, and planning every day, and have to be pretty organized to stay on top of everything that I’m working on at once.

How did you find yourself working for the company?

I was friends with River (the founder of Vapor95) before working for the company. He knew that I was working really long hours at my previous job and wasn’t super happy there. He asked me to come work for Vapor95 and it was the greatest work decision I’ve made.

What did you do before Vapor95?

Before Vapor95, I was a Digital Strategist working on influencer strategy for a creative agency. I worked with a variety of lifestyle, beauty, and tourism clients as an account lead for everything influencer related.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a treasure hunter or an actress. I went to performing arts schools and had dreams of becoming a movie star, which is funny to me now because as I’ve gotten older I really don’t like being in the spotlight. When I initially went to college, I went thinking I wanted to pursue a career in creative writing. I later switched gears and went into marketing.

What are your passions and interests outside of work? What's your creative outlet?

Before the city shut down due to COVID-19, I would spend a lot of my time going to shows, mostly to see local Brooklyn bands, but also made sure to see larger bands I love when they made it to NYC. I like to snowboard in the winter, when I am able, but unfortunately didn’t make it out this past year. I wish I could say I have a creative outlet currently. I think I’ve had ‘start writing again’ on my to-do list since I graduated college. I have started getting into genealogy over the past few months while we’ve been stuck at home and have discovered so much about my ancestors. It might be lame, but in general I love doing research and discovering personal histories.

How do you relax when work finishes? What's your ideal weekend?

Working remotely, I sometimes have a hard time establishing a good work-life balance, partly because I’m excited about what I’m working on and also because I haven’t set up a consistent hourly routine for myself, so I often work late into the night. To relax, I like to take a bath, journal, read, light candles, and listen to music like Mazzy Star, Beach House, or J. Mascis. Pretty standard stuff I guess.

My ideal weekend is being outside in the sun, laying and hiking around in nature. I feel so deprived of it after being stuck in a little apartment for months. I think I need to get more plants for my room!

What is your favorite part about working for Vapor95? What are you working on now?

My favorite part about working at Vapor95 is feeling like I’m heard and respected, and that what I have to contribute is valued. I am able to be super creative and try out any ideas I have. There is an opportunity to get involved in all parts of the business that interest me, and I think that’s pretty invaluable.

Everyone at Vapor95 is super cool and easy-going. There is an immense opportunity for everyone working here to grow and learn new skills as the company grows.

Right now I’m working on a few things: finalizing our marketing calendar for the remainder of the year, launching new influencer merchandise collections that I helped design and am really excited about, managing co-branded collection drops, launching a new women’s collection, reaching out to the magazines about Vapor95 news, and managing our influencer and creator partnerships.

What's a secret about you that your co-workers have never heard before?

This question is reminiscent of having to go around the classroom and introduce yourself with one interesting fact about yourself, but worse. Working remotely I haven’t really had the opportunity to get to know all of my co-workers on a super personal level so there is a lot they probably don’t know about me.

If you had to choose, what is your favorite design at Vapor95, why?

My favorite Vapor95 design is the Severus, a limited edition, embroidered hoodie. I love all of the details that went into the design. I’ve been trying to get River to bring it back forever.

I’m also a big fan of the Vinne Art designs, especially CyberVision, Prototype, and Always Cute.

We ask this question to artists we interview here. Letʼs say you get full artistic freedom on a billboard on the busiest road in a huge city where millions will see your message. What would your message be? Any combo of words and images is fine.

If it’s possible, maybe a semi-translucent, holographic billboard that simultaneously casts rainbows and the shadow of the words printed on it onto the road below. The message:

Remember Magic

Or maybe just this quote by Ernest Hemingway:

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.

If you weren't working at Vapor95, what would you be doing?

Most likely working for another lifestyle brand involved in the music or snowboard industry doing marketing, events, and influencer stuff.

Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see Vapor95 in five years?

In five years, I hope to still be with Vapor95. I think we’ll be doing really big things and I’m so excited to see the brand evolve and to be involved in that growth.

Which year of your life would you like to relive?

Is this a situation where you go back to change something knowing what you know now about life? I don’t know that I would want to relive one specific year in my life, but I do look back longingly at my childhood and wish I could relive portions of it. The simplicity of life, when the most important things to me were playing outside with friends, and logging into AIM as soon as I got home. Summers spent climbing trees, catching hermit crabs at the beach, and believing in magic. When days felt like they lasted as long as my weeks do now, and memories of my favorite times were easy to recall. When I would stay awake all night to devour books and write plays that I’d make my family act out. I would go back to those moments when things felt calm, simple, and happy.

What message do you have for the vapor95 fans and customers reading this who admire the brand and want to create something or do something similar?

First and foremost, thank you! Thank you for being excited about the brand and a part of our community. The customers and fans of Vapor95 are the most amazing, kind, and creative people I’ve encountered. Working for a brand that you feel good about and connect with is so rewarding.

As cliche as it sounds, just go for it. Put aside any fear of failure and know that there will always be people out there who relate to and connect with what you’re doing. It may take time, and a lot of hard work, but you will find your audience or community.

Why We Are Made to Order

When Vapor95.com was being established, the team and I invested a lot of time into discovering what our motivations were outside of our appreciation for vaporwave aesthetics. To most of us, the Vaporwave movement was a massive part of our childhood and early adult lives.

Through the combination of music, aesthetics, the subculture and the love shared for Vaporwave by our community, we found a place we could think of as home outside of what may have been a broken one. We found refuge at a time where people around us couldn’t really identify with us. We found a medium for genuine self-expression that wasn’t restrictive or judgemental.

We found peace and we wanted to do the same for you and every other person we came into contact with. Being made to order plays a big role in that, so I’d like to take just a few minutes of your time to explain why we do it and how it benefits you.

Design Palette

One of the core beliefs among the founders of Vaporwave culture was something akin to anti-industrialism.

At the time Vaporwave emerged -the late 90s- brand names and crass advertisements were on their way up. MTV dominated pop culture, the Backstreet Boys were a thing and more and more, mass-produced, low-quality items filled the market place. There was a growing feeling of disconnection between business (especially brand name fashion) and real people.

There was no feeling of “this is mine” or “this feels like me” because everything was defined by trends and TV ads.

Our top priority when establishing Vapor95.com was to promote genuine self-expression by having as varied a design palette as possible. We wanted every single person who came to our site to find something that was uniquely suited to them.

It’s one of the reasons we work with so many niche and incredibly talented- designers and are constantly able to keep updating our lineup.

If we had chosen to follow the trend of drop-shipping fashion sites, we would be sacrificing a variety of expressions for “popular” designs that could be mass-produced at a low cost.

Quality Control

There are only a few things worse than finding a piece of clothing with a design that you really love, ordering it, waiting weeks for it to arrive, to find out that it’s an itchy, ill-fitting, poorly held together mess.

We’ve all had one of these experiences and we have made it part of our mission to never let it happen to you. Given that every item is made to order, Vapor95 is uniquely positioned to ensure that every item ordered is made with quality in mind.

Not only are our clothes made with the best materials we can get our hands-on, but they’re all handmade in Los Angeles California, in a living wage environment. For clarity, what we mean by a living wage environment, is that instead of minimizing costs by paying our employees the least amount possible, we pay them a wage that gives them a sustainable livelihood. Yes, it “hurts” our bottom line, but we think of this arrangement as an investment.

Instead of forcing people to work in horrible conditions for pay that barely keeps them afloat, we arrange specifically to create positive working environments and keep pay rates that make our employees comfortable. Which in turn encourages them to maintain, top-notch quality on every single item.

The Environment

It’s beyond speculation now that the global climate is shifting and there’s likely blame to lay at the feet of modern industrialization and our rampant use of automated mass production.

As a young adult, my and my team’s eyes were opened to the impact of human activity around the early 2000’s when Al gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” and global warming was becoming a more commonly heard phrase.

Of course, before that, we were inundated with messages about pollution, the diminishing rain forests and even the mysterious - and somewhat exaggerated - a phenomenon of acid rain. However, none of these hit home-like “An Inconvenient Truth”. Maybe it had something to do with “The Day After Tomorrow” debuting around the same time and how shocking that movie was.

Either way, all of us knew that we had to do as much as we could to minimize our impact on the environment where possible. Once again, being Made to Order suited this purpose. Instead of holding onto warehouse upon warehouse of pre-made clothing, we only make what we need and do our best to choose environmentally friendly resources in our clothing.

Being made to order allows us to spare the Earth from unnecessary production and keeps all parties involved completely guilt-free.

More Meaning in Every Item

This one isn’t quite about the bottom line or the environment... it also wasn’t necessarily intentional but so far, it’s accidentally become a positive part of our user experience. To some extent waiting for your clothing can be inconvenient.

Some first time users come into Vapor95.com expecting to be met with the typical user experience. They’ll sort through our design palette, choose a generic, but interesting design they want and finally, verify their size and expect their clothing to arrive in 3-5 days with premium shipping.

Normally, this would mean an item gets worn out once or twice and then it starts losing value. Not because the item gets worn out, or boring- but simply because there was less emotional investment.

At Vapor95.com, we invest in user experience every step of the way. Our site isn’t a simple library of T-shirts for you to browse, it’s an experience from start to finish. When you visit vapor95.com, if you’re new to vaporwave, you get an in-depth introduction, if you’re familiar you find a new hangout with deep insight and deep roots in vaporwave culture.

When you finally make the decision to make a purchase, you’ve been on a journey with us and you know that our designs are unique and not mass produced. You know when you get your Clothing, you’re not likely to run randomly into someone else wearing the same thing and in a beautiful irony, the wait for your clothing becomes more meaningful because of that.

Because to do it this way, is Our Truth

Ultimately, Vapor95.com is an intimate reflection of our values as a team. It stands not only as an awesome source of self-expression through fashion, but also as a home for like-minded individuals and lovers of vaporwave, a bulwark against the destructive tendencies of industrialization, an expansive library of high-quality design and an end-to-end positive experience for our customers, employees and other staff, all of whom we think of as family.

(Yes that was definitely a run-on sentence- but it was worth it.)

All things considered, we’ve done the best we can with Vapor95.com. We’ve stood by our values and given up cash to do so, we’ve created the best possible user experience we could and constantly strive to do better but most importantly, we’ve created a hub and a home for vaporwave culture which means so much to all of us here.

DARKNET: sustainable fashion

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: ALEXA

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: ALEXA

We’re super excited to feature you in the Employee Spotlight this month! What's the first thing that came to mind when you found out you were next to be featured on Vapor95's Employee Spotlight?

First, tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Vapor95.com. What does your day to day look like?

How did you find yourself working for the company?

What did you do before Vapor95?

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

What are your passions and interests outside of work? What's your creative outlet?

How do you relax when work finishes? What's your ideal weekend?

What is your favorite part about working for Vapor95? What are you working on now?

What's a secret about you that your co-workers have never heard before?

If you had to choose, what is your favorite design at Vapor95, why?

We ask this question to artists we interview here. Letʼs say you get full artistic freedom on a billboard on the busiest road in a huge city where millions will see your message. What would your message be? Any combo of words and images is fine.

If you weren't working at Vapor95, what would you be doing?

Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see Vapor95 in five years?

Which year of your life would you like to relive?

What message do you have for the vapor95 fans and customers reading this who admire the brand and want to create something or do something similar?

Why We Are Made to Order

Why We Are Made to Order

Design Palette

Quality Control

The Environment

More Meaning in Every Item

Because to do it this way, is Our Truth

Is Vapor95 Legit?

Is Vapor95 Legit?

Recent Articles

Categories

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: ALEXA

EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT: ALEXA

We’re super excited to feature you in the Employee Spotlight this month! What's the first thing that came to mind when you found out you were next to be featured on Vapor95's Employee Spotlight?

First, tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Vapor95.com. What does your day to day look like?

How did you find yourself working for the company?

What did you do before Vapor95?

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

What are your passions and interests outside of work? What's your creative outlet?

How do you relax when work finishes? What's your ideal weekend?

What is your favorite part about working for Vapor95? What are you working on now?

What's a secret about you that your co-workers have never heard before?

If you had to choose, what is your favorite design at Vapor95, why?

We ask this question to artists we interview here. Letʼs say you get full artistic freedom on a billboard on the busiest road in a huge city where millions will see your message. What would your message be? Any combo of words and images is fine.

If you weren't working at Vapor95, what would you be doing?

Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see Vapor95 in five years?

Which year of your life would you like to relive?

What message do you have for the vapor95 fans and customers reading this who admire the brand and want to create something or do something similar?

Why We Are Made to Order

Why We Are Made to Order

Design Palette

Quality Control

The Environment

More Meaning in Every Item

Because to do it this way, is Our Truth

Is Vapor95 Legit?

Is Vapor95 Legit?

Recent Articles

Categories

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