THADDEUS O'NEIL
The Miracle of Self Creation
Photography: Sarah Charlie Benjamin
I first discovered Thaddeus’ clothing while working on a pop-up fashion concept 4yrs ago. I was struck by the quality of the materials he uses, and his juxtaposition of colors, prints and textures. His namesake line is both artisanal and luxurious, with a rebellious bohemian quality that invites you to go surfing or travel the world.
O’Neil’s journey started as a child surfing in Eastern Long Island, but has since found diverse points of inspiration including a Master’s degree in philosophy of art, working as a model, writer and photographer’s assistant to his mentor Bruce Weber. With the sea as his muse, O’Neil’s has been a finalist of the International Woolmark Prize, CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund and is currently part of the 2016 -2018 CFDA Fashion Incubator.
We got to hang with Thaddeus, his son Cassius and their dog Hemingway at their beautiful home in the East Village. Thaddeus spoke to us about the importance of play, his childhood and surfing. Cassius showed us his collection of stuffed and cardboard snakes.
Kiser Barnes: Tell me a little bit about your childhood and what your relationship with your dad was like. Do you notice a difference in your philosophy and approach to fatherhood?
Thaddeus O’Neil: In many ways, I had an idyllic childhood. My family home abutted a wildlife preserve that backed up to a river that fed into the great South Bay and Fire Island. I grew up surrounded by the most stunning wildlife. I spent my days playing in the woods and on the bay with my father, who clammed commercially, and at the beach surfing. My dad loved nature, and he had a subtle and poetic perception for it. He was a loving, emotional and physical person, and very athletic. He was a gym teacher and he loved to play and to make children love play, especially the outsider kids, the kids who he could sense didn't get a lot of positive reinforcement or attention at home. He had a very natural and intuitive sense of psychology - the opposite of academic - and would find a way to lift up those underdog kids and make them feel good about themselves and to go out for track and cross country and, perhaps for the first times in their lives, truly excel and esteem themselves. I can't tell you how many times I've bumped into his former students and athletes who absolutely revered him. He was a father figure to a lot of kids who came from not so great homes. He had an uncanny ability to immediately make people feel at ease and to build rapport with them. The vehicle for this was always his keen physicality. Anyway, if I were doing chores with him he would always say, "make it a work out son!" so that if we were, say, wheel barrowing wood to stack, he'd be lifting the handles of the wheel barrow nearly overflowing with wood, "hit the delts and traps" [deltoid and trapezius muscles] - wooh wooh - breathing into the reps as he pushed the wood barrow, only to suddenly pause and point out a beautiful red cardinal in a scrub maple. And so I would do it too and chores became carefully executed fitness regimes cross Audubon outings and you forgot what the hell you were doing and then poof - all the wood was stacked.
“My dad is in many ways a miracle of self creation. He didn’t get any of this from his father who was a decorated war veteran and who could be extremely physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive to my father. So we fathers keep trying to improve the state of things. With my own son Cas, I consciously bring a lot of the best of what I learned from my father and omit or at least try as best I can to dampen things that need to be left behind. It isn’t always easy.”
He had a swelling, contagious positivity. Then we'd go walking through the woods and he'd be pointing out a particular tree for the graceful balletic articulation of its growth, a pattern of moss or a Rodin of a decaying tree stump. He had this innate, unselfconscious, un-academic, pure aesthetic response to the world. He paid the world great attention. At any rate, I think I took on some of his sensitivity, tempered or maybe reinforced by his Irish upbringing in Cambria Heights, Queens, where a single sentence could acrobatically enlist every expletive known to man. I've tried to curb this habit around my own son. He also expressed his love through touch. He would sit me down on the floor between his knees at night and give me what felt like an hour-long hair scratch - "get the good oils up from the scalp into the hair!". I would look like Einstein on a humid day after a monumental epiphany when he was done with me. Touch is so important. It's so powerfully pre-linguistic. My dad is in many ways a miracle of self-creation. He didn't get any of this from his father who was a decorated war veteran and who could be extremely physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive to my father. So we fathers keep trying to improve the state of things. With my own son Cas, I consciously bring a lot of the best of what I learned from my father and omit or at least try as best I can to dampen things that need to be left behind. It isn't always easy
KB: Surfing is a big part of your lifestyle and inspiration for your brand. Talk to me a little bit about how you discovered surfing and all the places it has taken you.
“Surfing and being in the sea is first and foremost an opportunity to have a spiritual experience. I make these metallic sequin wetsuits for myself to surf in. For me the suits help me envision surfing in an altered way, they are a ritualistic mask akin to a medicine man’s. It’s an adornment to signal to myself and others that something out of the ordinary is about to happen.”
Photography of Thaddeus surfing by Scott McDonough
TON: Surfing and being in the sea is first and foremost an opportunity to have a spiritual experience. I make these metallic sequin wetsuits for myself to surf in. For me the suits help me envision surfing in an altered way, they are a ritualistic mask akin to a medicine man's. It's an adornment to signal to myself and others that something out of the ordinary is about to happen. It reignites a sense of mystery and suddenly surfing reappears as the extraordinary spectacle that it is. If we define art as a way of looking at reality, which I do, then surfing truly is an art. In this respect, the sea is also my muse, which is why I get dressed up for her. And this is also where surfing and fashion collide. They are both intimate and lyrical. They are or can be expressive, spontaneous lightening rods of our immediate feeling
KB: Your brand and personal philosophy has a romantic and nomadic ideal. From surfing on the beaches of Eastern Long Island, working as a model, writer, and then photo assistant to Bruce Weber, how did you end up designing clothing?
TON: Designing clothes and starting my own brand feels like fate, like it was there all along, a concise culmination of and platform for my talents and interests. Researching, collecting ideas, concepting, experimenting, formulating the internal logic that is a collection, taking pictures, making films, articulating the happenings and interventions that are fashion shows, etc. Life is funny. Surfing is a powerful teacher and a lot of what you learn from being in the ocean and nature is profoundly analogous to life in general. To me designing clothes is one very limited aspect of that life in general, and yet for that reason, when I'm doing it correctly, like a magnifying glass held just so to the sun, it is a very potent concentrator of my general life and the things I care deeply about.
KB: How do you define the narrative for each collection?
TON: Building a collection is a journey and that's how I treat it. And as with all good journeys, I like to leave the door open just enough to chance and happy accident. To a certain degree the narrative, if we can call it that, determines itself. The details and ideas accumulate until it reveals itself and tells me what it is. When my approach is right, and not castrated with predictability and overdetermined by obviousness, it's an adventure in the true sense of the word. In a way there's a Walt Whitman quote from Song of Myself that is apt here, "Do I contradict myself. Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." To me, a good collection is about the relation of felicitous contradictions, I'm not interested in a streamlined oeuvre in any way.
KB: You describe your clothing as luxury playwear. Talk to me about the importance of play in your work and with your son Cas.
TON: Play is the magical interplay of people and objects, and creates a space and time out of bounds of ordinary, quotidian space and time. It is truly a magical realm that arises in the intimacy of relating to another person or thing. Those implications apply whether it comes to relating to a child or to clothing. Play is also just incredibly exciting.
KB: I’m curious to hear your perspective as a fashion designer on design for kids and parents, and your thoughts on some missed design opportunities.
“To be honest I don’t think we need all this stuff to raise our kids well. I think there is too much stuff already. Take them out into nature. Play with them. Draw with them. Get lost with them in their magic little worlds. And forget about all the stuff.”
KB: How do you craft pieces that last and are relevant for future generations? What is the legacy you want to leave for other creatives and what is the legacy you want to leave for Cas?
TON: Posterity will determine what is truly relevant. There will always be trends. But if you make something well in beautiful cloths with a true and pure heart I think it will last and it will be appreciated in the time to come.
