Brain Dead: Punk and Nerd's Love Child
Where two worlds collide.
When you hear the phrase brain dead, your mind often goes to the coworkers who can’t do their job, or content creators on Instagram. But when the nuanced hear Brain Dead, they might think roller blades, epic nerd games, reviving dead footwear branches, Nu Metal bands, and so much more. Brain Dead Clothing does a lot when it comes to special projects and on the surface you might think they’re doing random projects for the sake of collaborations, but upon further inspection, you realise there’s a lot more to it.
Kyle Ng and Ed Davis started the brand in 2014, but 10 years later, it has grown into the worldwide powerhouse that it is today. The label makes killer in-house products but also connects with many big names that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with clothing. Brain Dead has collaborated with many familiar names such as the NBA, A.P.C, Dickies, and even non-fashion-focused brands like Marvel; however, they seem to work with a lot of labels that you could say do not fit within the fashion zeitgeist. These projects are fresh and fun when a lot of collabs you see today are *famous shoe brand* x *popular brand*.
You know what? I’m starting to think Kyle and Ed just like bringing their guilty pleasures into their work. Treating the label and their world like one big sandbox. I think they create these projects to remind the outer fashion community that it’s ok to have hobbies that are outside of consuming clothing. Brain Dead is probably the best in the game when it comes to spreading the message of being your authentic self — like what you like, do what you like to do.
For the rest of this newsletter, I’m going to be sharing some collaborations/projects that you wouldn’t see from a popular clothing label.
Brain Dead x Higround Keyboard
As a fashion enjoyer, it’s embarrassing to admit to my other fashion-enjoying friends that I like video games. It’s true. Probably a large part of the fashion community tries so hard to be cool and to say you like playing video games is uncool. Well, you know what? Brain Dead doesn’t care what you pretentious assholes think when it comes to deciding what is cool and what is not. I’ll admit, I don’t know a whole lot when it comes to the technical side of PC peripherals; however, I know enough to say that this keyboard would be perfect for one-tapping CTs and telling my team to “rush B” in Counter Strike.
Brain Dead x Them Skates
I connected to this collaboration because growing up I would rollerblade a lot. It was mainly to play street hockey because playing ice hockey in Australia wasn’t always the easiest thing to do. It’s easy to see (just from looking at the world around you), that rollerblading hasn’t been the most popular eXtreme sport to participate in… however, Brain Dead didn’t care. The founders know what they like, and they thought it would be fun to connect with the rollerblading community. Sounds fair, right? What also makes this collaboration beautiful, is the fact that Brain Dead helped bring the sport of rollerblading into the limelight! Super cool moment for all involved.
Brain Dead x NBA
The last project I’m going to talk about is one that surprised me the most. The overlap on a Venn diagram between Magic: The Gathering and the NBA is very small… but in that small overlap, Brain Dead are happily sitting there playing Magic: The Gathering while wearing their mohair LA Lakers knits. I’m not a basketball fan, but I love this collection. It’s a lot more tasteful than some other streetwear NBA collabs we’ve seen in the past… *cough cough* Supreme. I have no idea how this project truly came about, but from the final products, I can tell that Brain Dead were given full creative license that allowed them to connect the sports community to theirs. The garments that came from this are incredible and some teams are still available!
The label, Brain Dead, are incredibly talented and filled with amazing individuals all-round. There’s so much more I want to talk about. I could go on and on about their cinema where they show screenings of classiques, to their work with Kiko, to even reviving the footwear team for Oakley, but then I wouldn’t get this newsletter out on time. I encourage you to look through their archive because there’s a good chance you might find they’ve created something to suit your guilty pleasures.