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 "Photo: Photos courtesy of Phillip Annand")
A combination of natural style and talent facilitated the beginnings of a lucrative business venture in fashion for one School of Arts and Sciences sophomore.
Phillip Annand’s independent fashion brand, The Award Tour, puts him in legitimate contention for the position of the University’s next famous fashion designer. Annand started custom printing tees for friends in high school, and the brand has expanded to include a summer and winter collection. The collection — including screen-printed tees, hoodies, hats and scarves — is distributed and sold by merchants across the United States and the world.
“In high school, I used to do hand-painted and other kinds of custom shirts for a lot of people. It got to the point where I had a lot of business, but hand-painting the shirts was taking too long. I decided to look into getting them screen-printed,” says Annand. “I got 100 shirts screen-printed, brought them into school, and [they] sold out in two days with triple the profit.” He followed up with a collection of four T-shirts a few months later, and the project only expanded from there.
Now, Annand executes all aspects of the biannual collection himself, from design and manufacturer selection to marketing and distribution. A fellow University student helps him with the actual technical design and coding of the Award Tour Web site, but otherwise, Annand runs the whole business himself while balancing a full-time schedule of classes. The brand’s success over a mere three years testifies to his skills in business, while the pictures and sketches — which appear occasionally in entries on the “Good Times Blog” located on the Award Tour Web site’s main page — attest to Annand’s artistic and aesthetic talents. He derives inspiration for the brand’s colorful style — full of iconography references — from the preferences of his own wardrobe and those of his friends.
“Originally, I started doing Award Tour for my friends and me,” Annand says. “All of my friends were sort of conscious of a streetwear style, so the brand is things that we would wear, stuff that I wear. The collection changes from season to season reflecting my personal style and how it changes from time to time.”
Although Annand designs his line under the pretense of streetwear, people with a variety of tastes could make good use of any of the pieces. The designs, particularly the tees, are extremely wearable in the day-to-day lives of college student. Subscribing to Award Tour’s brand of vibrant, original casual wear could turn that run-of-the-mill ensemble into an eye-catching look.
The future holds big things for Annand and Award Tour. The extent of the brand’s fandom has already allowed Annand such opportunities as attending the recent MTV Video Music Awards and writing for Hypebeast, a pop culture blog collective that gets eight million views a month.
Despite Award Tour’s success, Annand is unsure if the brand will be his career in the future.
“Award Tour isn’t the only thing I’m doing right now, but it’s definitely something that’s going to continue for years to come.”
As for his advice to someone hoping to enter any creative or business career, Annand says, “If you’re going to do something, make sure you’re doing something you enjoy.”
Check out TheAwardTour.com if you are interested in pieces from the summer 2009 collection.
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