I’m not sure whether wearing a shirt designed with NSA homepage code is funny or if it’s a sign of the apocalypse. Regardless, it sounds like the folks at Montreal’s Variable Fashion are having a good time with their new Kickstarter project.
Founder and CEO Jon Gulick wrote to us about his team’s “business clothes for geeky people,” and their goal of raising $17,000 in pre-sales cash by September 2 to purchase inventory. The campaign has only raised $4,300 thus far, but there’s still 29 days to go.
The shirts are pretty funny: one actually has HTML code from the NSA website, another called “planets” plays on a standard polka-dot print, instead with little saturns. The “circuit board” shirt features the blueprint of an actual computer circuit board. Another is the math homework of one of the founders’ friends that they scanned.
“We have the philosophy that just because you are working in an office, doesn’t mean you can’t be yourself. You can show off who you are and still remain professional,” said Gulick.
The CEO joined industrial engineer Aliki Maragis and designer, Wilber Tellez to create the geek chic men’s clothing company.
This season’s patterns are based on calculus, astronomy, HTML code from the NSA website and circuit boards. “The point is not to be so bold that people are uncomfortable wearing the shirts,” said Tellez. “There is a little hidden something to make the wearer feel like the shirt is expressing a part of who they are.”
Gulick is a former circus acrobat of 12 years, who performed in 36 countries doing aerial ropes and double trapeze. “Sometimes I’d bring my geekiness into my art. One thing I did was making LED bras controlled by an iPad that for some of the dancers that we were working with,” he said.
But eventually he returned home to attend the John Molson School of Business. There, the founder didn’t like wearing all the formal attire that comes with such a program. “Which was weird for me because I’m used to wearing spandex.” Simply, he wanted to “express who I am while remaining business-appropriate.”