The first band I ever claimed for myself was New Order. In 1989, I went to summer camp in Seoul, where Korean-American kids learned the language and were immersed in the culture. We attended OB Bears baseball games, visited palaces and traditional villages, ate dried squid fried over an open flame, and absolutely destroyed Bubble Bobble at the arcade. Most of the students were high schoolers. I was ten years old, the baby by far, tagging along with my fourteen year old brother.

That summer, I had a puff of my first cigarette (a brand called 88), tasted soju for the first time, and encountered the first “cool” Asian kids of my life, ones who lived in big cities with large, diverse populations and who introduced me to the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, and New Order.

New Order was the first band I’d ever listened to and consciously decided, I love this. My brother got a bootleg cassette of Technique from a small record shop in Itaewon. The hand written cover read “New Order, Technigue.” Later, when we were back in Baltimore, I would sneak into my brother’s room and steal his yellow Sony Walkman Sport and Technigue from the top right drawer of his desk.

I have BMG and Columbia House to thank for fleshing out the rest of my New Order catalog, authorized copies this time, with album art that seared into my brain. The twelve CDs for a penny offer was the only way I could complete my Cure and Depeche Mode collection. Before I knew it New Wave became a gateway to dance/club music and punk rock and then post punk and indie and experimental and then back to electronic and my entire cultural blueprint was inked. The best thing about the 90s for me was that culture was so interconnected. Liking The Beastie Boys lead to liking X-Girl and Sonic Youth which lead to Mike Mills the graphic designer which lead to Mo Wax which lead to DJ Shadow and on and on. To discover one thing was to discover an entire living, breathing web. New Order was my first taste of this interconnectedness and Peter Saville was the first graphic designer’s name I ever knew.

Saville was the in house designer for Factory Records, producing the iconic New Order album covers that filled my ravenous tweenaged heart. His carefully considered eye for sometimes absurd juxtaposition, clean and elegant typeface, and referential teasers was a post-modern kid’s dream, especially one whose formative years would later include the advent of the internet.encompasses some of our most treasured values and notions. We believe that what and who you choose to keep near you defines you, and what you keep persisting with is a reflection of your character. We believe that earning your keep entails taking responsibility for your own existence, and we celebrate the challenges that come with making and doing.

At the end of the day, we know that it's not the holey shoes or the beat up laces that will endure. What keeps are the things you remember doing when wearing our shoes or clothes, the memories you have of your wanderings, the feelings you've experienced along the way. As you travel your unique path, we want to be the well-worn shoes on your restless feet, the thread bare shirt on your back, the lucky charm in your pocket. We thank you in advance for taking us with you.

Untangling the clues and references was a nerdy scavenger hunt for those in the know. It was one of my earliest experiences with subculture, and therefore one of the first times I felt as if I belonged to something, a community.Our Factory t-shirt uses Saville’s color wheel found on the inner sleeve on Power, Corruption and Lies, the codex for his “hieroglyphics of technology” printed on three other Factory releases: Blue Monday, Confusion, and Section 25’s From The Hip. For those who are New Order fans or Saville stans, we hope you recognized us as one of your own and had fun decoding.