Nasty Pig: A New Kind of Family Business

Nasty Pig is truly a family business. Not because it's a "Mom and Pop" operation, although it would technically be "Pop and Pop" anyway. No, it's a family business because of the creative, dynamic, loving partnership at its heart - and because the love that Fred Kearney and David Lauterstein share can be felt in every stitch of every garment produced by the business they built together.

As is so often true of Manhattan romance, the story of Fred and David - a story that is completely inextricable from the story of Nasty Pig - began on 8th Avenue, in a now-defunct bar over $1 margaritas. As Kearney recalls, the couple's first meeting went remarkably smoothly: "David was talking to some guy who was flirting with him, and he saw me and we started talking and I took him home. We became boyfriends after that."

That was in May of 1993. By the spring of the following year, Fred and David were already collaborating on concepts for clothes to sell to their friends, and by December they'd generated enough positive buzz to open their first store in a tiny space on 22nd Street. As Kearney remembers, "we figured that if we couldn't sell enough clothing to cover $500 in monthly rent, we had no business being in business."

Although the couple incorporated their business under the name Nasty Pig, they chose Re:Vision as the name of both their store and the line they sold in it. The idea behind the name Re:Vision - the process of reinterpreting classic styles with new fabrics and body conscious cuts - spoke to the couple's creative impulse while appealing broadly to the people within the pulsating nightlife culture for whom they were designing.

Nightlife must be mentioned because as Lauterstein attests, "Nasty Pig was born on the dancefloor of Sound Factory. In some ways, that club represented the end of the era before Giuliani came in and cleaned things up. It was an underground club, and you went there dressed up and expressed your creativity. It was about inspirations and outbursts, and we were very influenced by that whole scene."

Sound Factory isn't the only scene that has influenced Fred and David's company. Since 1994, one of Nasty Pig's greatest strengths has been to absorb, integrate, subvert and transform the energies and influences of the diverse scenes that have resonated with its founders. Observers can detect the influence of New York hip hop's attitude and business sense in the way the business has grown - David even goes so far as to declare Nasty Pig a hip hop company. "The idea of coming to the street with as little as possible and working your way up, and letting your work speak for itself," he says, "is very hip-hop. That's what we did and what we continue to do."

One must also acknowledge the ongoing influence that leather/fetish culture has had on the company and its growth. The relationship between this scene and Nasty Pig's founders acted as both inspiration and motivation, and led them to reinvigorate a style that many believed had run its course. They introduced a line of products made of a revolutionary new material - Nasty Pig Rubber? - which brought the company world-wide attention and grew its audience exponentially. The name Nasty Pig, which had always appeared on the credit card statements of its customers, became a new motif for tee shirts and logos within the sportswear line. Demand for products labeled Nasty Pig begat more supply and soon eclipsed Re:Vision's popularity. Eventually Lauterstein and Kearney fused both concepts under the label Nasty Pig and developed a brand mark for the line that became a means by which like-minded customers could identify each other.

There is another sense in which Nasty Pig is truly a family business, deriving directly from Fred and David's passionate involvement with the constantly cross-pollinating scenes at play in their hometown of New York City. That is the entity - the family - known as the Nasty Pig Crew. This dynamic group of designers, DJs, dancers, photographers, stylists, and other assorted creative types all have one thing in common - a friendship with Fred and David that works to bolster the creative and operational energies of their company. As Crew member Sam Meredith puts it, "David and Fred treat everyone who is involved with their company as more than just an employee or someone who helps them out. I think that ultimately they get a lot more out of people and out of the company because they make their crew feel like they are part of something that's more than a paycheck."

Which brings us back to the shared love at the center of Nasty Pig. Like so many gay people before them, Fred Kearney and David Lauterstein have built a family of like minds. It just so happens that in doing so, they have also built a movement. As Lauterstein remarks, "the line between our business lives and our personal lives is completely blurred. I don't see myself as having a work life and a home life. I just have a life, my life with Fred." A Nasty Pig life.

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On the web:

Nasty Pig :: www.nastypig.com