Coolest Person in the Room: Colm Dillane

I saw you did the cover for Fuerza Regida. How was that?

I love Fuerza. I actually went to kindergarten in Mexico, and then moved from Mexico to Wisconsin. I’m a big soccer player, so I grew up playing soccer with a ton of Mexican guys. I met Fuerza just because they happened to come by the store. Their PR agent told them to come to KidSuper and that it would be cool. They didn’t know much about it, and I didn’t know so much about the music. They were supposed to stay for 10 minutes, and six hours later we were still hanging out. I was like, wow, these guys are fucking awesome.

Me and JOP — or Jesús, whatever you want to call him — just became really good friends. He was trying to get into fashion, and I like doing anything, so I told him, “Hey man, you should come to Paris Fashion Week. If you’re there, we should do something for the show.” He made a song for the KidSuper show and performed it at the show. That went a little viral. Then he was like, “Would you want to do the album art?” And I was like, of course. It was a very natural, organic collaboration.

You really do have range in who you collaborate with. I saw you worked with Cynthia Nixon and Kai Cenat. What kind of thing draws you to a project or collaboration, or even your own collections?

Well, I’m very much the type of person who’s down to say yes to everything. When I started making T-shirts, I always said the best part of this business has been the people I’ve gotten to meet and collaborate with. That was always the goal.

It’s funny because now a lot of people say, “You have to build community to sell your clothes.” But for me, it was the opposite. I wanted to build a clothing brand so I could have a community. That was the goal: community, and working with people, and meeting new people.

So when it comes to projects, if I get an opportunity to work with someone, I’m usually saying yes. And also, they’re usually incredible — pretty easy yeses for me. I’m pretty open-minded, and I’m in a lot of different worlds people wouldn’t expect: soccer, art, film, comedy. Those are all things I’m really passionate about.

Even with Fuerza. People don’t know I went to kindergarten in Mexico and grew up playing soccer. Just this weekend, I flew back to Beloit, Wisconsin, where I went to elementary school, to play in a Mexican soccer tournament with my best friend from when I was six. They’re all listening to Fuerza, and I did the album art. It’s pretty amazing.

Isn’t there a huge Hispanic community in Wisconsin, randomly?

Huge. Huge Mexican community.

Growing up, there used to be a whole Mexican soccer league for kids. It was just all Mexican teams. My best friend’s dad was the coach, so he’d always bring us along. Me and a couple kids were the gringos.

It’s also just such a bigger population than people realize in America. Fuerza’s streams are insane because they’re getting all the Mexicans in the U.S. and in Mexico. But yeah, they’re really cool. I love being able to constantly work with interesting people. Now that I know Fuerza, we can do more stuff together if we want. They’re super entrepreneurial. It’s really cool to see how it works behind the scenes. That was inspiring. I really love that.

KidSuper was built more on an idea than fashion. It was me, as a kid, dreaming and thinking I could do anything — and working with different people. The fact that I get to do that now is really cool. Sometimes I’m like, damn, I can’t believe this is happening. Even the stuff I just did in the soccer world — I designed seven of the Club World Cup jerseys. They all played in them. It’s insane.

Even the other day, when you called me, you were running around trying to find a jacket for... who was it? J Balvin?

Yeah, J Balvin. And now me and him are really close. I went to his birthday party in Italy. That kind of stuff — you really have to pinch yourself.

Is that a typical day for you now? Just the most random, all-over-the-place chaos?

That’s my life. But also, there’s still a lot of work — designing, different projects, collaborations. But yeah, now it’s getting a little crazy. Like even this week. Monday I’m doing something with TV. Tuesday I’m meeting with this brand’s CMO. Thursday, I’m launching the soccer field that’s on my roof. Then, that night, I fly to Hamburg, Germany to paint a mural.

And then the next day I have to go to Ibiza for another brand thing. So yeah, it’s getting kind of nuts.

That’s what struck me about the brand name. I associate “KidSuper” with this kind of sporty, colorful, spontaneous, childlike imagination. The name encapsulates it.

Even my most recent fashion show, The Boy Who Jumped the Moon, was based on a short children’s book I wrote. That was the theme of the whole show. If you read it, it’s very KidSuper. And this idea of “KidSuper” — I don’t know if “proud” is the right word, but I’m really glad I went down that lane. It’s evolved into something that perfectly encapsulates my spirit.

And I really was that kid. In one of my first magazine interviews, I remember the writer asked, “How long is this child persona gonna last?” And I was like, what the fuck? Persona? I am the person you see. I really am as childish as people think I am. For me, it wasn’t an act. If I had a philosophy about how to live life, a child’s spirit is a good one to mimic.

You have to keep that inner child alive, especially for creativity.

Yeah. I really was, and really am, that person. Nowadays, when you launch a brand, the face of the brand is super important. It’s hard to build a successful brand in this era without being forward-facing.

Some people think being mysterious and hidden is cooler — that it’s more about the art or whatever. And maybe you agree with that. But I just don’t know if it’s possible anymore. Unless you have someone backing you in a huge way, with massive marketing behind the product… I don’t know how you get known.

You’d have to be screaming from the top of every mountain. I can’t even think of a young brand that’s doing well without a very defined person behind it.

Unless they’re, like, Uniqlo or something.

Right. Huge. Like, billions of dollars.

Maybe that’s why bigger brands like Louis tap you — because you have such a clear sense of self and identity. And like you said, you didn’t build the brand just to build a brand, you built it to build community.

Exactly. And it’s not to say I wasn’t trying to build a brand. I just don’t think that was the main emphasis, maybe for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to meet people and collaborate. But two, the idea of even having a successful brand felt far-fetched. Especially when you start young, you don’t really know what a successful brand even looks like. There was no rubric, no obvious path to follow. In some fields, it’s clear if you’re doing good or bad. In the clothing business, when I was starting out, I just didn’t know anyone. I had no one to follow.

Were you at NYU when you started? Take me back to that.

I started making T-shirts in the high school cafeteria in Brooklyn, with my friends. We all thought, This is gonna be awesome. Our gods were Supreme, BAPE, 10.Deep. But those brands felt lightyears ahead of us.

Then in college, we were still printing T-shirts and bringing them into the cafeteria. Instagram wasn’t even, like, 5 years old, so this was before social media was everything. We weren’t really posting or anything. Then I met a kid at NYU who could make websites. I was like, oh my God. You make the site, I’ll make it look cool. So we did that, and musicians started wearing the clothes on YouTube. Very small, but it was something.

Eventually, I converted my dorm into a store. That was kind of a brilliant idea. Not brilliant like I’m a genius, just something that really introduced me to the idea of creating physical spaces for people to come. And I got addicted to that. That was the early days.

What dorm? I went to NYU too. I lived in Gramercy.

Gramercy! I was in Gramercy too. I played on the soccer team, and if you’re an athlete, you get to pick dorms early. The top floor was called Penthouse, so we were like, Oh, we’re living in the Penthouse. That’s how we booked it.

I loved Gramercy. I was on the fourth floor though.

Yeah, it was still pretty new when I went. I graduated in 2014. I just remember us being like, “We have the Penthouse.”

And people would come to the dorm, like, as a store?

Yeah, they’d come to my dorm. It was two double rooms, one single, and a shared living room. I got the single room, and everyone who lived with me knew what I was trying to do and supported it. So I turned that single room into the store. I’d move my bed around — into the living room or wherever — and people would come look at product. It wasn’t the best store, obviously. I just had racks of clothes and spray-painted the walls like an idiot.

NYU Housing eventually found out and gave me all these write-ups. Told me I had to take it down. Then I got caught again, and they told me I had to leave the dorm. But you know, everyone moves out junior year anyway. So that summer I thought, If I can turn a dorm into a store, maybe I can turn a store into a dorm.

I found this storefront on Craigslist. The eighth photo was a bathtub, and I was like, oh my God, I could totally live here. So I moved into the back of a store in South Williamsburg, under the train. Before that neighborhood was even what it is now. I moved in with my girlfriend at the time, and we made it work.

You went to school for mathematics, right? Does that ever come into play?

It comes into play in ways where, like, I’ll meet a brand that may or may not trust me right away, and then they hear I was a math major and go, “Oh my God, he’s so smart and trustworthy.” So that helps.

It also helps in the sense that in mathematics, you’re always problem-solving — always trying to figure something out. That mentality has been super useful. I always think there’s a solution, even if it’s a really difficult problem. That mindset definitely carried over into the brand. And I didn’t drop out. Even though I had the brand while I was in college, I kept going. That kind of commitment helps too.

What’s something you learned as a kid that you carry with you at KidSuper today?

Before I was 12, I had seen and experienced so many different lives. Different people, cultures, customs. But also, I moved through different social classes. Some places I was poor, some places I was rich. That’s a pretty unique thing to experience as a kid. You start to realize, yeah, there are differences, but those differences aren’t that different.

Another thing is, I always thought I was going to move again. So I had this mindset of, I need to make the most of whatever time I have here. Every time I moved, I was like, “Hi, I’m Colm. Let’s become best friends and make the most of this, because I might leave tomorrow.” That gave me a good outlook on life. I learned how to make friends quickly. I’m good with people, and that’s important for all of this.

Who’s the coolest person you’ve met recently?

I met Ronaldinho. He’s my God. He didn’t even need to be cool, and he was cool. He was already my God before, but now even more so. Also the Fuerza guys. Jesús from Fuerza, he’s awesome. And J Balvin is incredible, too.

Photography: Diego Villagra Motta
Styling: Angelina Cantú
Grooming: Kennedy Trisler

Lighting: Bri Mancini
Styling assistant: Quinn Tommy Herbert
Grooming assistant: Yzabella Faustina

Managing editor: Matthew Wille
Executive creative producer: Angelina Cantú
Story: Ivan Guzman
CCO & CEO: Brian Calle

All clothing throughout: KidSuper