It’s now been a year since the luxury streetwear brand 424 opened its cave-like home and store on Melrose Place, and what the store offers on the block is decidedly different. In the words of founder Guillermo Andrade, “There’s a place for you here.” Andrade, who previously ran his store on Fairfax, offers that rare combination of accessible clothes — hoodies, jackets, jeans, tees — of the highest quality. “I’m giving you something so familiar, yet so new, so fresh, so unexpected, but obvious at the same time,” he tells Keyla Marquez, Image’s fashion director at large.

This week marked 424’s first runway show at Paris Fashion Week, which for Andrade felt like the natural culmination after seven years of making and selling clothes in Paris and Milan. To celebrate this accomplishment, Marquez sat with Andrade at his store ahead of the show to reflect on the effort and vision that brought him here. “It’s never been at this level before,” he says of the 33 looks he put together. Photographer Carlos Jaramillo was at the Paris show on Tuesday to capture some special backstage moments.

Keyla Marquez: We are here on Melrose Place. What’s good, G?!

Guillermo Andrade: It’s like the Wild West. Musicians are inclined to copy the hot song instead of sticking to the spirit in their soul. Because the label is like, “Bro, that song is a hit — if you did a version of this, it would hit.” And it’s this vicious cycle. It’s fully incestualized. It’s so far away from the original that it’s just kind of a chicken with its head cut off. It’s essentially just the blind leading the blind. Then someone stands out because they’re quirky, and then the big machine is like, “Oh my God, this has wheels, it popped off on TikTok!” And then all the main players now suck the soul of this one thing. That’s fashion.

KM: But it doesn’t have to be that way. I feel like with us, it’s really important to be intentional with the stories that we’re telling.

GA: It’s skin color, our family history, our position in this society, the community, you know? Not just L.A., not just the fashion community, but at large, the American community. Our representation is still not defined. How is it possible? We’re like f–ing half of the country. Physically.

KM: What do you think is the American Dream now?

GA: The American Dream shifted so far from that original pitch that was given to everybody. It looks like us now. We are more representative of what chasing that dream actually looks like, because we’re laboriously doing it. Like we are those animals [burrowing] through the dirt — they get to the gold. We’re in that process. I’m even owning this, like I’m patriotic now. I’m American now. Because I think we have to send a positive reflection.

When I did my first presentation in Milan, it was still kind of COVID, and I did a video contribution, and it was in the calendar and the tagline that WWD wrote was “an American in Milan.”

KM: What do you think about that?

GA: I felt some type of survivor’s guilt. But at the same time, you’re able to look at that and say, you know what? That’s my face there. And it says American on the world stage. It’s also important, so that my brothers [see] a face that looks like them attached to it. I didn’t realize that in Europe they call us Americans. I was just another immigrant, another wetback. The thing is, the second you speak English, they know you’re from California. Because especially in Italy, they love California. Specifically, L.A. — they love Los Angeles.

“The show is really a response to the state of all the work that I’ve been putting in, so now it’s time to really send that communication out to the world,” says Andrade.

KM: How was getting into Paris Fashion Week for you? Was it hard getting in?

GA: The calendar is all politics. You have to engage to a certain degree. And they play hot and cold. No matter what happens, you continue to push forward. For example, I’m not doing the show because the calendar says it’s time to do the show. I’m doing the show because I’ve been in Paris now seven years, two times a year. That’s where I do my market, that’s where I do the sales to all my stores. The brand is at a point now where I can’t walk every buyer through the collection every single time during the week that we have to do our sales. Because you lose steam after the 40th, 50th appointment of walking a buyer and telling them the story, showing them the techniques, showing them the product — you start to sound like a broken record. The buyer can really feel it when you deliver a singular message that they can see, that they can feel.

KM: Your appointments are more intentional.

GA: The show is really a response to the state of all the work that I’ve been putting in, so now it’s time to really send that communication out to the world. I’m at the moment now where every single piece in that rack, even though there’s a lot of pieces, they all connect to each other. Nothing in the collection is there by accident. You can wear the whole collection together.

KM: It’s literally like one person’s closet. I’m like, “G just makes clothes for himself and somehow it sells.”

GA: One hundred percent. And it took me nine years now, more or less.

KM: But you found the code that works for you.

GA: This is finally it. It’s never been at this level before. Both the quality of the product execution and to make and deliver production at that level. For independent brands, it’s not feasible. My personal life savings is in that s—. It’s not just like, “Oh, I got some money from these people, now I make nice things.” No, those are painstaking ideas that take years and years to develop.

KM: I feel like every collection is just a different variation of the last, and it just gets better and better.

GA: There are a lot of pieces that I’ve been making every season since I started, literally the same piece over and over and over and over again. And a lot of them arrived basically at the point where it’s like, don’t touch it, it’s done, it’s finished. And they’re going to stay permanently. They might not be merchandising to every single season, but when we do use it, it’s finished — the trucker jacket finished, the trench coat finished, the wide leg pant finished, the skinny leg pant finished, the baggy shorts finished. I’ve finally arrived at the place where finally that jacket’s done. But we will continue to tweak it, to improve the construction to maximize our production efforts to make sure that we’re really making the best quality clothes possible.

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KM: I feel like whatever medium you would have gotten into, you would have been a great storyteller. But why fashion?

GA: I’ve been chopping and screwing my clothes for as long as I can remember. I had no idea that that was a thing people do. Or that fashion was a job that people could do.

I was super poor growing up — getting evicted for living in your car poor. Actively trying to figure out how to pay your bills. But I never felt poor, so I always used clothes as a way to protect myself or shield myself. And I dressed great. I would go to wherever I had to make sure that I looked sick at school. I was just always a really savvy shopper; I was always particular about the things I would buy. I grew up wearing bootleg clothes, fake sneakers, Goodwill or thrifted stuff. I didn’t even know what thrift stores were, I just thought it was a place where rich people sell their clothes because I would go in and I would buy blazers and Armani Exchange stuff. I would buy goofy s– that was way too big on me, like pink polos or rugby shirts, and I would just oddly stitch them in the back, so in the front it would look like it fit me but then I would put a coat over so you wouldn’t be able to tell. It was super punk rock; it was more like styling just to make it look cool on me. The Oakland flea market, usually everything that was super popular they had it there, so I would just buy it, and then kids started thinking that I had a plug that they didn’t have, so then I would sell them that s— at a premium.

KM: You were already doing this in high school. It was like survival-style hustler.

GA: Since I was a kid. I had no clue that it was ever going to be my job.

KM: How long have you been making everything in Milan? How was that transition?

GA: 2017 I was ready. I wanted a perfectly sewn shirt.

KM: I was going to ask, are they annoyed that you’re always there?

GA: One hundred percent, they hate it, and when I started bringing [Valeria Semushina, my partner who styles our shows], it was even worse because she understands the language.

Yasiin Bey at the 424 Paris Fashion Week show.

Valeria Semushina: I think Italian fabric [designers have] never seen anybody crazier than you, because once [G was] like, “I want destroyed leather, it should be very destroyed.” They couldn’t understand what it meant. So, we put it on me and there is this video of me and it was very rainy outside, it’s super dirty. I was just rolling around and trying to scratch all this leather. And [G] said, “That’s how it should look.” But what’s funny is that when the product was done, they were like, “Que bello!”

GA: No one goes into Loro Piana and actually finds something cool to wear. Because when they conceptualize this dream, they did not have us in mind. Ralph Lauren included his universe, and as beautiful as it may be, it didn’t take us into account. By default, it can never be for us. We have to assimilate if we want to be a part of this world. If I want the highest quality, I have to go to a brand that offers it — and that brand never expected me to come and take part in their world. I love quality, I love products and I love interesting stories. Those brands that I just mentioned, I love them, I think they’re awesome, they just don’t love me. I have to adapt who I am as a person to take those products into my life and make them look cool on me. 424 is that: It’s saying, I get it, I love it, but I understand it’s not for me, so here’s my version.

KM: I told you, I bought your sweater three times. Three times. The first one, I bought with my best friend Isaiah at the store, we bought the same sweater together. Then we both put it in the washer, not realizing. I still wear it sometimes. It’s just not as cozy, just a little harder but still fits; I wear it to sleep sometimes. Then I bought it again on some random website that was selling it, but the story doesn’t end there. I was going to Paris for Fashion Week and randomly the girl sitting next to me was also wearing a 424 sweater. This should have been a sign to hold on to that sweater, in retrospect. But then I got hot, took it off and I lost it at the airport — I had the Uber take me back, I literally went up and down and I was so sad. I was like, “Not again!” Lastly, SSENSE had one, their last one, an XXXL, and I just bought it. It’s huge but I don’t care, that is how much I love this sweater. Three times. I am your forever customer. That’s what I love about your pieces, that they are forever pieces. I’m going to wear that sweater forever.

So, what’s next?

GA: I absolutely love the good, the bad, the ugly of everything that’s happened. Everything here is really like pure. Everything here is what I always wanted it to be.

KM: I can tell there’s so much love here. G, it’s really beautiful. Coming to your parties and just seeing everyone come together. This energy you’ve harnessed is really beautiful to experience.

GA: We have a new thing that we can do. The block, the pull-up is different now. You can pull up to Melrose Place. There’s a place for you here.