C: How does your distribution work?
Andre: It’s pretty much just distributed from Mark’s apartment! Our product really gets out through all of our friends. We’re always at the bar [Max Fish], where we meet tons of people that own skate shops like, “Oh you have a brand? We’ll carry it.” We’ll meet one person who links us to another who hooks us up with another guy. We’re just building a ton of contacts through word of mouth and through friends. We have had a ton of help with everyone here in New York from the skate shops like KCDC and Autumn to DQM and Supreme. They all have been incredibly supportive. Brands are hooking us up with props as well like In4mation and Rockers NYC, so it’s like a big family kind of thing.

C: Who designed the logo?
Athena: Tino drew the logo. He was working on a lot of calligraphy at the time, and we all like anchors. No real meaning, but the anchor is a good strong image, and we’re all into it. The anchor makes the V for Verte, and the name relates from the French word for green, “vert”. We also all grew up in Vermont, so for us, that’s all about green mountains, and friends. It’s also a key tie in with skateboarding—you know, vert skate ramp.

C: Verte seems to have more of an organic feel than some of the hype brands. Do you consider yourself part of that world?
Mark: We don’t look too much at other brands, it’s more about working with each other and letting it happen. A big part of the brand is that it’s just really New York. We never tried to cater to exclusively skateboarders, but because we skate and we’re in that world, it works. A little while back we did this Hawaiian shirt at DQM, and they sold out in like 2 days, so those guys kept ordering them. I’m like, “Who’s buying this shit?” It was all these hoodie kids matching the gear with the shoes, and that’s dope. We pull a really random and diverse crowd.

C: Is that what makes it a New York brand?
Athena: Yeah, because people here continually take things and re-appropriate them; make things their own. So it’s hard to say it’s going to be this, because people will take things and do what they want with it. There’s so many things that we like that don’t necessarily fit into categories. We’re all over the place.

C: Do you want to see the brand grow to the next level?
Mark: We do, but we’re not going to push it. If it will, it will. When we first started, it was just one or two t-shirts. It was just at Autumn and KCDC and now it’s all over New York, and in Harpers Bazar and in rap videos. And now we have a sneaker!