Sophia Amoruso, the woman who founded Nasty Gal, was always into vintage T-shirts way before she founded the online fashion site that rose like a rocket and then came crashing down.
But she is still very involved in the vintage T-shirt world, particularly when it comes to legendary Ts from metal bands including AC/DC, Jane’s Addiction and Led Zeppelin.
Her involvement has led her to a recent partnership with Mntge, a real and digital premium vintage clothing brand with Web3 integration. After much work, the partnership is releasing a 40-piece capsule collection on Thursday of NFC-chipped vintage metal and metal-inspired clothing curated by Amoruso.
The capsule collection has T-shirts from bands such as The Ramones, Megadeth, Jefferson Starship, The Germs, Metallica, Van Halen, Rolling Stones, and Def Jam. Most of the pieces are from the 1980s and 1990s and sell for $60 to $400 on Mntge.com. The collection also includes sweaters, hoodies, jackets, shorts and pants.
“I’ve always been a fan of band Ts and love the process of sifting through vintage and secondhand racks, trying to find that really special one,” Amoruso wrote in an email from Europe. “Thankfully, when working with Mntge, you’re working with the best of the best vintage collectors and designers in the world.”
Mntge is a relatively new business founded by Nick Adler, best known as Snoop Dogg’s brand manager; Sean Wotherspoon, a streetwear designer; and Brennan Russo, a former Adidas marketing manager. They created a company whose online merchandise is vintage apparel residing in a blockchain world with NFC chips providing information about a garment’s history, construction, provenance and more.
“I think what makes a vintage T is the story that comes along with it,” Amoruso shared. “I know it sounds cliché, but there’s nothing like finding a vintage piece with an actual story behind it and you can see it yourself on the garment. You can see where it has been torn, burned, bleached, even cut — all probably for some very interesting reason. …In some decades, a lot of brands utilized a specific heavyweight 100 percent cotton T from the United States that you just can’t get anymore.”
Russo said the Mntge team worked closely with Amoruso, tapping her love and passion for vintage, especially vintage music Ts featuring bands she loves. “We dug through piles and piles of vintage pieces on a few sourcing trips to Los Angeles and hand-selected each piece,” he said.
Adler said he partnered with the Nasty Gal founder because they have been friends for years and he has always admired the way she works. “She has unprecedented knowledge of style, especially vintage, and her level of commitment to entrepreneurship is unmatched,” he explained.
Amoruso began selling vintage clothing pieces in 2006 when she started an eBay store that was ahead of its time. It morphed into Nasty Gal, a Los Angeles-based online fashion site that six years later became one of the fastest-growing retailers in the country. At one time, revenues topped $100 million. In early 2015, Amoruso left the company, and a year later the venture filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was sold to British online retailer Boohoo.com for $20 million.
Meanwhile, the online maven wrote a bestselling book called “GirlBoss,” which in 2017 was made into a Netflix movie.
Today, Amoruso said her top project is Trust Fund, which invests in early-stage companies helping entrepreneurs start and build their businesses. She also hosts an online course for entrepreneurs called Business Class.
