An interview with the eccentric designer behind the internet’s new favorite clothing brand.

The Love America clothing brand is like if 4chan owned a truck stop. It is experimental, funny, and abrasive. It is Neo-Americana infused with internet schizo. The brand operates out of Western North Carolina and is owned by a designer named Van, an Asheville native. Van founded Love America in early 2022; in its short time, the brand has been worn by many notorious characters such as comedian Sam Hyde, musical artist Joeyy, rapper Bones, and electronic noise band Snow Strippers, who were recently featured on Lil Uzi Vert's album The Pink Tape.

Love America is run by a gap-toothed, shotgun-toting hillbilly named Van, who lives in Western North Carolina with his two dogs. Van wants to reunite the United States and make some money in the process. His designs are laden with American flag imagery and irony—take the iconic Confederate flag printed in LGBTQ+ colors, also known as the “REBEL PRIDE” T-shirt.

Van has moved on from screen printing and now uses a hot press that melts the designs onto T-shirts bought wholesale from Los Angeles Apparel. Van went to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City before dropping out, so the quality of the material means a lot to him. You won’t find any Gildan T-shirts among the many vulgar and insensitive ones stacked up on his worktable or on his website, www.loveamerica.online.

Van works throughout our entire interview, pressing shirts and packaging orders. His basement studio, which belongs to his mother, is unfinished. Nails stick out in strange places. Van sips an IPA and paces around manically fingering through his clothes. “I don’t even really like a lot of these designs honestly, they’re stupid as fuck,” he says. He points to a shirt of Calvin pissing out the Pythagorean Spiral.

I take some photos of Van and he smiles like a kid on picture day. A female friend of his watches from the desk, which is covered in Post-it Notes and a list of goals for 2022, as well as a list of goals for 2023. He picks up the REBEL PRIDE T-shirt. The girl sitting at the desk interrupts: “Van, maybe leave the Confederate flag alone for the photoshoot.” He smiles warmly. “That’s my public relations person right there, God bless,” he says. He opts instead for the T-shirt of Osama Bin Laden, which sports the man's face and the words “FUNDED BY THE CIA.”

I spoke to Van about the Love America clothing brand, the influence that the A$AP Mob had on his fashion, and why he believes his clothing can help reunite the United States of America.

How did Love America start out?

My business method at the beginning was to drop a T-shirt every single day, which is psychotic and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. For the first year, I was spending a lot on the brand. For every dollar I made, I spent three. I had another job and all my money went into this. But I kind of know what I'm doing now and it’s finally making money.

Who inspires you stylistically?

One of the guys that started the brand VLONE, which is a big brand from New York with A$AP Rocky [wearing it] and shit.

It was A$AP Bari, right?

Bari started with this guy named Killa K, and he was my mentor basically. Killa K introduced me to other people that were from Harlem, from that era of A$AP, that were mentors of mine and who shaped me in a lot of ways.

How did you make that connection?

Through clothes, through fucking swag, right, just swag. I love that word. What really got me was when A$AP Rocky said [in the song “Peso”] “Raf Simons, Rick Owens, usually what I’m dressed in.” Just the whole thing with high fashion and street wear, merging those worlds, is what got me. When I heard those words, I didn't even know what fashion was. I knew Polo [Ralph Lauren] and that's it. That song blew open doors for me and for a lot of kids that were in my generation of fashion designers.

What kind of brands did you wear growing up?

I would wear Polo, and when I really started getting into clothes, I liked Rick Owens and stuff. Just like classic shit. I don't even like fashion. I don't care about any of it. It’s cool I guess, but I don't care. Like these shoes [over here] are Mason Margiela but only because they're sick.

When did you know you wanted to get into fashion?

I was always into cool T-shirts. I had this one shirt as a kid that said “Are we there yet?” And I thought that was the funniest shit ever. I would wear that shirt everyday as a kid and walk up to the bus driver and be annoying as fuck.

There was this other moment where I was in San Francisco with my grandparents. We did a Golden Gate Bridge boat tour. And I saw a photo of a dude hanging from a helicopter on a ladder and a giant great white shark coming up from the ocean and almost biting his ass. And I asked some dude if that photo was real and he was like, “Yeah, that’s actually a real photo, there’s great white sharks all around here.” I thought it was real for like ten years, but then I learned it was Photoshop.

On that same trip, I got to use Photoshop. My grandma had it. And the first thing I did was put my sister's face on an elephant seal. I was probably eight or nine. It was the first time I used Photoshop; my grandma's always inspired me to do art stuff. She was an art therapist. She put paint brushes in my hand and told me to do shit.

Does your grandma like the stuff you do now?

No, it’s so funny. [My grandparents] don't like the fact that I like guns. I posted a photo of me with a gun. It was with one of my shirts and they were really concerned. I'm sure if they really took a look at some stuff, they would be like “Wow.” But it’s a generational thing. That happens a lot—people just think that I'm some sort of fucking asshole or something, but I'm definitely not. I use irony to try to make people think legitimately, without just being a troll or having no point.

How do you know Joeyy and how did he start wearing Love America?

Basically, I'm a fan of Sam Hyde. [Joeyy] is his people and then there's this Discord for an NFT project he did. And I wanted to get Joeyy's attention. So I was posting T-shirts and stuff there, and he saw it. He was like, “I need some of these dm me.” So I've talked to him and now we're cool.

Do you make all your designs?

No. I steal designs all the time, and I steal proudly. If you don’t like it, send me a cease-and-desist. This one [points to the REBEL PRIDE T-shirt) is pretty much completely original. Surprisingly, it wasn’t really a thing online already.

Lots of your stuff reminds me of truck stop designs.

Exactly bro, exactly. Everything's gonna be really nicely made but I want it to look almost cheap.

Do you have a signature shirt?

Honestly? It’s this [holds up the REBEL PRIDE T-Shirt].

That's surprising, you know what I mean? A lot of people are wearing this shirt. The whole thing about the T-shirt too is it’s one of the most American inventions ever made. It was the end of cotton, the beginning of the cotton mill. The guy that made the T-shirt cool was just some sick cowboy guy. James Dean. You see those photos of people in Africa wearing Disney shirts, too. It’s everywhere. I love the T-shirt.

What do you say when people say your shirts are racist?

When people say it's racist, it kind of just exposes that they're an idiot, so I'm more or less happy about it. It's obviously not fucking racist. People see the stars on the [Confederate] flag and they think that you're proud of slavery. This is the swastika for a lot of people. But the swastika, down to its actual design core of it, is not a racist symbol at all. But what people perceive it as and what they project upon it, that’s what makes it racist.

All this suggests [points to the REBEL PRIDE T-shirt] is an idea of unity. Why do we have to divide each other, or see each other as racist or hateful? When we can just unite, radically. Radical unity is basically the message. That's what I'm all about, making people think differently, just being cool with each other.

What is the message you want to spread?

Reuniting the United States. People just want to be loved, respected. That's it. But that’s not really what people are about [nowadays]. They're more about like indoctrinating and cancelling and making you get the fucking shot. I don't know.

My whole message is love. That's why it's called Love America. Because that phrase in it of itself, triggers people. They say, “How could you love America?  What is there to love? This is the worst place in the world.” It's like, bro, you're saying that shit on your phone, in your house, using American dollars, going to the store, getting bottled water. You don't even have a fucking thing to stand on. You know what I mean?

This is the best country in the fucking world, whether you like it or not. Of course, it's going through some shit. It’s losing right now. But the the idea of freedom and the idea of being able to do whatever you want to do is an impenetrable concept. And there’s technically never been a better system than the free market. You could argue for Communism or whatever all day, but [those things haven’t succeeded.] It's about what people do and not what people talk about.

Hands down, at the end of the day, [we have] the best system ever. Fucking capitalism, the market, intellectual property, and building community. That's how I see it. I'm like a proud capitalist. I love making money, but I'm building a community and I'm not just taking.

People like this shit not for the T-shirts. People like this shit because it's called Love America. I have people that come up to me they're like, “Bro, your stuff is so sick.” I don’t like half this shit. Most of this shit is stupid. I like this stuff [points to a pile of collared shirts and polos], that's where I really shine. But those are one-off pieces and reworked vintage.

I'm trying to just have people realize how America's dope. Everyone wants to be an American. Everybody can be an American. And we're all just trying to build a family. None of this stupid, divisive separation & barriers. I want rednecks and liberals to hang out and have a great time and drink beers and get drunk. Maybe they don't agree with each other. Maybe they don't have the same mindset. But bro, you can hang out and have fun together. Any human can do that.

Follow Jack Ludkey on Instagram.

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