Das Monk: Making Clothes, Supporting The Arts & Listening To Awesome Tunes


Clothing label Das Monk seamlessly combines art, design and fashion into street wear perfectly suited to chilling with ease while looking fine in the process. Based out of Sydney Das Monk is the brainchild of husband and wife team Marc Hendrick and Anna Lunoe who collaborate with emerging artists from around the globe to create the awesome graphics on their t shirts, singlets and sweatshirts. We recently had a chat to Marc about finding artists to work with, his favourite tunes, celebrity clients (TV On The Radio!) and entering the big bad world of “basics”…

Das Monk’s growth into an “Independent artist collaborative”. You’ve worked with around 15 artists from all over the world on every collection. Firstly, how do you find these artists an what draws you to them? I basically spend a very unhealthy amount of time on the internet poring over art/design websites, and have found most of our artists that way. I guess I’m just drawn to them because to me they’re all incredibly talented as well as being slightly mentally unhinged.

How does the collaboration with the artists work? Do you give them some a brief, do they pitch you an idea to approve, or is it just free reign? Sometimes I’m quite specific and I know exactly what I want, and I’ll be really anal with my description because I can see the finished idea in my head. And other times I’ll just give them a few key words and a set of inspiration images and say “do something good please!”.

Are you cool about artists getting in touch with you and spruiking their work, or do you like to curate the contributors by hand? If so, how can they contact Das Monk? Do the artists involved get remunerated for their artwork or do they give you work in exchange for exposure? Tell us how that works? Yeah absolutely. I have lots of great artists contacting me all the time, and even though it’s not always a perfect fit for the label, it’s always really interesting stuff. There’s a couple of artists right now working on designs for future collections who approached me, and I was surprised I’d never seen their work before because, you know, I thought I’d seen the entire internet. And yep of course they get paid for their work, as well as getting lots of exposure/more work in the process. I can’t have any of my starving artists drop dead on me!

One of my favourite things about the Das Monk website is the blog section. You have such a huge and diverse range of influences- from art to film to music, especially music. Does all of this feed into your t-shirt design as inspiration? Yeah I do have a lot of different interests, so it’s always fun to force my tastes on unwilling people through a blog, particularly my taste in music. And a lot of the music I listen to has a bit of a lo-fi, DIY sound and that has definitely seeped into my taste in art too. I like things to be a bit raw and unpolished.

You’ve been making mixtapes under the monicker ‘DJ Hendy Boy’ for a couple of years now. Has music always been a passion of yours? Yeah music has always been a bit of a passion of mine, but unfortunately I’m about as musical as a dying cat. I’ve got a good ear, but a terrible ‘everything else’. So that’s why I stick to making mixtapes under arguably the worst DJ name of all time.

Okay so what are your top five favourite tunes to play at work right now?
Deerhunter – Desire Lines
El Guincho – Bombay
Surf City – Crazy Rulers of the World
Shabazz Palaces – Blastit
Das Racist – Sit Down, Man

Another change since the early days of Das Monk as a label is that it has morphed into a husband/wife team with your partner Anna Lunoe. Tell us about working together with her, and how you both collaborate. Actually, Anna has been involved with the label since we first started. All the creative part of the business is a team effort between Anna and I, whether it be coming up with ideas, choosing artists, or deciding on an overall theme for a collection or a photoshoot etc. But Anna is a full-time DJ so unfortunately she only gets to participate in the fun, creative side of the business, while I have to do all the boring number-related things and slave labour.

Quite a few celebrities have been spotted wearing your threads at this point. Can you share some of them with us? Who was the strangest/ most surprising? Yeah it’s been mainly musical people who we’ve seen wearing our stuff. The guys from TV on the Radio, MGMT, The Cool Kids, Lupe Fiasco, Busy P, and A-Trak have all been spotted in Das Monk, but definitely the most surprising was when someone sent me a picture of Ron Weasley from Harry Potter wearing one of our tees to a premiere of his. He looked so red and dashing.

You’ve already added singlets and sweatshirts to the Das Monk roster, what direction do you see the label moving in, in the next few years? We’re getting into the big bad world of basics – we want to expand ourselves a little so we’re not just a print-based label. So expect a heap of different materials and washes for basics like pocket tees, shorts, and shirts.

If there were only 3 designs from the label’s history that you could choose as your Das Monk favourites and to showcase the label, which 3 would you pick? I’ll start with “Mount Hexx“, just because that’s been one of the more successful designs that I did myself. And I’ll choose two from our most recent collection, the first being Tim Laing’s “Peacebone“. Tim is our resident surrealist pencil illustrator and undoubtedly our most popular artist – the guy is talented beyond belief. Incidentally he’s moving to Melbourne from the UK next week so if anyone needs his services, he’s available for hire! And finally there’s Eleanor Wood’s “Daydreamer” which is just a beautiful design, and encapsulates our love of mixed media.

Give us some insight into artists we should be keeping an eye out for? I’m quite excited to be working with a lot of Australian artists at the moment, because so far most of our artists have been from other countries. Firstly there’s Leif Podhajsky, who’s absolutely killing it at the moment, doing a number of amazing album covers for bands like Tame Impala and Gypsy & The Cat. Also look out for a young designer from Melbourne called Sam Chirnside, who I think is the next Jonathan Zawada, as well as a really talented Indonesian-born Sydney-based graphic designer by the name of Mark Soetantyo.

What else is happening in the future for Das Monk? Any crazy scoops or collabs you can fill us in on? Yeah we’ve been working with our bro’s at Vanishing Elephant (interview here) on some tees for them next season, as well as a jewelry collaboration with ZM925 which should be really interesting.

Das Monk is stocked in over 35 of the freshest stores throughout Australia, Japan, USA, Canada and New Zealand. For more information and Marc’s excellent blog updates visit www.thegrandsocial.com.au/das-monk

All Images Provided by Das Monk

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