“Michael Scott is my biggest inspiration right now when it comes to running the brand.” I’m sitting with Nick Holiday in the back room of his shop on Melrose, both a brick-and-mortar store for his clothing line Holiday and an HQ of sorts for the multifaceted brainchild that stretches beyond just T-shirts. “To the rest of the world, Michael is an idiot and just does bizarre shit — but then somehow, his branch is the best branch throughout the whole corporation, and it lasts the longest, even when everything shuts down. Every episode of that show, there’s no explanation. And Michael, we don’t know if he does or doesn’t have one, which is beautiful. That’s so fun for me.”
That said, you’d be hard-pressed to compare Holiday’s actual work ethic with that of Steve Carell’s character — who frequently takes naps at his desk after bingeing on sugar or wanders aimlessly around the office while his staff gruels away, with no real tasks at hand, except for perhaps showing off an NSFW email chain. Holiday has been hard at work far before he even set foot in Los Angeles, or started his brand.
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Though we’d been in each other’s orbits for some time, I first sat down with Holiday four years ago. One might think a lanky, eyeliner-wearing designer might reek of too-cool attitude, but Holiday is bubbly, funny, highly sensitive. Emotion, he told me, is his primary inspiration — at the time, connecting it to the rich colors he’d chosen to hand-dye new Holiday hoodies. He spoke candidly and humbly about St. Louis and how growing up there shaped him, in particular, the time he spent hanging around a local streetwear store, learning the ropes — they’d show him HUF line sheets, quiz him on brand creative directors, have him sweep the floor. But armed with lessons from St. Louis, Holiday took the path less traveled, adopting his own approach to “streetwear” and owning a brand in that space has only drifted further from the norm — and further from that space — as time has passed.
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But some things have remained the same. “With Holiday, I’m [still] really enjoying the idea of making stuff that emulates the emotions. I don’t get to experience enough of them throughout my day,” he tells me, perched on his desk behind the shop. A whiteboard of ideas, collaborators, drops frames his sloppy halo of spiked blond hair. “I wish I could just sit and watch The Office and watch funny things and laugh all day. With Holiday right now, I’m really focused on making stuff that makes other people do that. Satire is my favorite thing right now. The age of irony is dead!”
Though since his first break as stylist for the alternative boy band BROCKHAMPTON, he’s held quite a few other titles — most recently adding creative director of Kreation Smoothies to his portfolio — it’s not a stretch to say that most, if not all, of Holiday’s work brushes up against music in some form. As we run through the brilliance of Michael Scott, I can hear the shop speakers blaring on the other side of the wall. “Swing, Swing” is ending, and the first drum fill of “Brick By Boring Brick” has just kicked into action. Every so often, we pause just to listen, before carrying on our conversation. I ask him about the playlist, selfishly wondering if it was put on just for me. But Holiday is a real one. Not only does he know the days of mall culture and pop punk, he’s burrowed deeper in than most.
Nostalgia, hand in hand with emotion, is in the very bones of his brand, and he’s injected it into the very space we’re occupying. Beside the glossy, glassy stops on Melrose, neat white spaces showcasing plastic-wrapped rare sneakers and the like, Holiday stands out like a sore thumb — a shop constructed to look and feel like an Abercrombie & Fitch from the early aughts, down to the details. The walls are wood grain with burgundy drapes, the carpet is red plaid, and vintage chests stand as coffee tables on top of which Bruce Weber books are displayed. “We signed the lease April 1, and then we opened June 16,” he tells me, grinning like a mad scientist. “We didn’t start building until May, because I took a whole month just coming in here every day when it was empty. There was no carpet, no walls. There was no chandelier, no paint, and I would just sit on the floor and look around for hours and play Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance. I was really trying to channel the things I’ve pulled from my childhood and think about how younger me would feel walking in.”
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I mention to Holiday a TikTok about mall culture and music I’d seen, which humorously defined a new subgenre, “Abercrombie emo,” defined as “a genre for kids whose parents wouldn’t let them into Hot Topic,” featuring more pop-leaning bands like Boys Like Girls and the Click Five.
“We blend both. Mayday Parade is one of my favorite bands. But also, I love Silverstein. That’s kind of like Holiday, a blend of Hot Topic and Abercrombie, which is just core,” Holiday responds. “That said, I am strict about the stuff we can’t play. I’ve walked in before and contemporary music has been playing, and I’ve gotten pissed! Like dude, not actually mad, but it throws my vibe off.”
But emulating adolescent years spent running rampant through the mall goes deeper than the playlist. “I was talking with Kenna, my cousin that works here, about how Abercrombie was such an important thing to childhood for a lot of people — it’s because the price point was actually obtainable,” Holiday explains. “I think it’s really corny when brands are like, ‘I’m inspired by Abercrombie,’ but then their hoodies are $400 and their T-shirts are $80. I don’t like seeing high prices when it comes to being inspired by the low.” And that kind of accessibility is something Holiday has kept at the forefront since starting the brand almost a decade ago. The brand, for him, has always been more about creating a feeling and a community. Having a store has only allowed him to come closer to those goals — throwing chaotic parties where Holiday gives out a free car like the king of some suburban dealership, they make elaborate videos of workplace antics, while slinging T-shirts and ideating on fun collabs for Holiday’s new smoothie gig. “I want to be a kid forever. But I think these are just the things I gravitate towards in life.” Holiday eagerly pulls me into the storefront, to show me a Pete Wentz-signed guitar that’s on display above a rack of hoodies. “And it’s funny: We definitely talked about this in our last conversation, about my childhood and how I made Holiday. But now, what I’m making, I just want to keep living in that positive time that I had as a kid, and for that kid. It’s cool.”
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There’s a lot going on for Nick Holiday. There always is. The brand is always going, growing, and it feels as though every day is another party, event, DJ gig, collaboration. “Right now, I am working with a lot of St. Louis people! Frost Children, Jordan Ward — an artist from St. Louis, I met with him about doing merch.” And there’s far more under the surface we’ll likely never see — the immense amount of merch Holiday has designed, for one. Somehow, he stays grounded. Though he doesn’t necessarily want to project that image. “I don’t sleep or eat much, but I don’t really want to. I’m kind of cool to just cook myself until I’m 40. I actually started putting makeup on under my eyes. It looks like I’m just tired right now… I love looking tired. It’s my favorite thing. It’s also become a really good defense mechanism here, because whenever I’m working and someone walks in, they get a little scared.” Holiday laughs. Like his hero Michael Scott, it’s hard to tell when we’re in a bit. He points to the black-and-red eyeshadow clinging to his undereye. “But also because I went to see My Chemical Romance this summer, and I was seeing so many people in great makeup. I was like, ‘That’s the sickest thing ever. Why don’t I just get to be the version of me that I thought was cool as a kid?’”
Over the course of a couple hours, Holiday and I have talked extensively about Gerard Way, Pete Wentz, nostalgia festivals, the parallels in our stories — beginning with an obsession with alternative music and ’00s culture, winding up in the fashion industry, only to find our way back to the start somehow — and very little about his actual designs. But from what I’ve learned about Holiday, both the person and the brand umbrella, his interests and the things he’d geek out on as a kid are actually the main ingredients in everything he touches. Whether it be a beverage, a shirt, or an experience. I also learned that he would rather not explain any further. He wants you to have fun, to imagine, to be taken back.
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Holiday tells me a story about getting ice cream one night. As the server was scooping his cone, he started rattling off ingredients, facts about what the ice cream was made up of, what it was best paired with, what percentage of sugar it contained. “I was annoyed,” he exasperates. “Like, well now I know too much. I know everything about this thing that was supposed to just bring me joy… Even if I were to eat something I’m allergic to, that’s fine. That’s all me. Should I get sick, I’d be like, OK, maybe next time I need to ask, ‘Are there almonds in that?’ Once it’s all broken down, I’m like, ‘It’s no fun.’ Literally no fun. I don’t want to know if it’s real or not.”
Recently, Holiday posted a clip of Bam Margera open-hand slapping him in a parking lot. Little context given. Like Michael Scott, the mystery is part of the fun. Like his ice cream, we’d rather not know what went into it. Whether his chaos is controlled and methodical, or it’s just pure, unfiltered childlike wonder, he’s running on joy. And it’s something he’s hoping to share.
Zamar Velez
