Ep. 160: Peeking into the Creative World of Pop-Polymath Willo Perron

Live experience & interior designer Willo Perron grew up in Montreal surrounded by creativity. An industrious kid, he dropped out of high school at 14 to follow his own entrepreneurial and creative path. He got his start around the nightclub scene in Montreal doing everything from designing flyers, to lighting, to scouting DJs, and designing streetwear. Since then he’s gone on to design the now-famous aesthetic for American Apparel retail stores, as well as collaborate with many of pop music’s biggest stars, including Kanye, Drake, Lady Gaga, and St. Vincent. With partner Brian Roettinger, he’s built a multidisciplinary design firm, Perron-Roettinger, that works across interior design, live experience, print, and identity.  A firm believer in life having a way of working out, Willo continues to embrace entrepreneurship, creativity, and collaboration in an intuitive and exhilarating way. 

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Read the Transcript

Willo Perron: Willo, last name is Perron, I live and work in Los Angeles, California and I’m a designer, designer/director, I guess, and I run a studio here with a bunch of talented designers. 

Amy Devers: That sounds dreamy, hanging out with a bunch of talented designers all day, making things happen. But before we get to what you do in this day, I would love to go all the way back to the beginning. I’m always interested in learning about the formative years. Can you tell me about where you were born, what your family was like and what kind of kid you were?

Willo: (Laughs) Born in Montreal, pretty much everybody in my family has a creative pursuit of some sort. Most of them do it as a career. My father was a pianist, jazz pianist, so grew up obviously around a lot of music. My mom also plays piano and sings and paints and does a lot of things. She’s a psychologist, a bit like new wave, new agey. And then I have like aunts and uncles who are all musicians and painters and set designers. My brother is an architect/ interior designer, very kind of like rich in the liberty to have an artistic pursuit, whether it was for career or just as a hobby. 

Amy: That sounds kind of amazing. So I’m imagining there was a lot of singing and piano, but what were holidays and birthdays like, or down time with the whole family?

Willo: We’re from pretty humble means. I grew up fairly poor but everybody has done well for themselves and the family has always been a very kind of like humble. It’s kind of the idealized version of the Christmases where people were like at the piano singing and all that, imagine that sort of working class settings versus the Norman Rockwell, Americano version. With equal amounts of dysfunctionality and realism involved also. 

Amy: (Laughs) That helps, thank you for adding in the -

Willo: Yeah, no matching sweaters (laughs) you know, a lot of weird uncles.

Amy: Did you have weird uncles and eccentric aunts and extended family that were part of the jazz culture that your dad was a part of and people coming through that had various creative perspectives that were always influencing the things you got to witness?

Willo: We grew up in very immigrant neighborhoods, first gen immigrant neighborhoods and I think my parents were what people would consider liberal in America, which is kind of pretty base in where I grew up. My parents were kind of on the extreme end of that. My father was pretty experimental; my mom was this hyper kind of like tolerant, or is this hyper tolerant person and so there was really a kind of mix of people in our house all the time. It wasn’t until I moved to California that I really understood cultural socio political segregation. 

I thought that that was an exaggeration; it was like something that was made up or fictional. I even thought that the kind of extreme racism was like events that were blown out of proportion, until I moved here and really understood that it was an actual part of day-to-day life here. Despite the fact we were poor, it was like, Montreal was pretty idealistic. Me and my brother went to a public art school -

Amy: Wow, yeah, so I mean for context, when were you born, what era are we talking about?

Willo: 1973

Amy: I’m having trouble even picturing the jazz scene in the 1970s, but I’m guessing it’s clubs right, clubs and records?

Willo: Yeah, I think kind of 70s is experimental, it’s a lot of synce and free jazz and - my father, right before we were born, played with Sonny Rollins, he was Sonny Rollins’ pianist -

Amy: Thank you for placing this for me. 

Willo: Totally free kind of like experimental. I think when you get into sort of like our childhood, you’re dealing with when jazz and world music and Miles Davis wears shiny jackets and wrap-around shades -

Amy: Yeah (laughs), I’m with you, I’m with you. 

Willo: His trumpets are anodized purple metal and you know. 

Amy: Yeah, and Herbie Hancock. 

Willo: Yeah, it gets a little more flamboyant and mainstream. 

Amy: So growing up in a creative family, you didn’t have to fight for your right to be creative. Did you have to distinguish yourself amongst all the different flavors of creativity that you were steeped in?

Willo: No, I think that there’s… I think me and my brother really looked kind of, from an early age, picked our lanes. Despite the fact that we grew up in the same household, with the same values and everything, we have a very different aesthetic. Besides that, no, I’m kind of like it’s the opposite. I’m like the commercial person in our family (laughter), I’m the one who went out and wanted to have a big career that was commercially successful. I’m like teetering on the sell-out in my family. 

Amy: Oh, isn’t that interesting? You said you and your brother picked your lanes pretty early, what were those lanes and how were you expressing your creativity by the time you hit your teenage years? 

Willo: Me and my brother are only a year and a half apart but - I’m younger. It’s kind of a strange time. If you look at my coming of age, I’m 13, in 1986 I’m 13, this is like skateboarding in its infancy and rap in its infancy and hardcore at its infancy and MTV and electronic music [0.10.00] and all of this stuff that had been bubbling up is now kind of starting to hit its mainstream stride. And my brother was kind of like the generation right before, despite the fact that he’s like, kind of like the leather perfecto and rockabilly hair and listening to And you know, The Cure and it’s pretty boy, but it’s like literally months apart you know? His friends all wanted to look like James Dean and Morrissey and my friends all wanted to look like Ad-Rock or you know, Natas Kaupas or some pro-skateboarder or something like that. From early on it’s like we had kind of like different closets, different groups of friends. It wasn’t until much later that we started to sort of cross paths again, but we’ve always been friends, but we definitely trafficked in different environments. 

Amy: Did that mean sibling rivalry? Did that mean a kind of distance, or did that mean collaboration, but from different perspectives? How did that manifest in your relationship?

Willo: I think all of those things. There’s always this romanticized idea of doing things together, as much as there’s conflicts in doing things, as much as we admire each other’s work and our practices, but I couldn’t work like he does and vice versa. 

Amy: Your mom being a psychologist, did you feel like cases or clients and also did you feel an acceptance? It sounds like you and your brother had different personality types and I can see that some parents just get flustered when their children are so different from each other because it’s just a lot more work, I would imagine, to nurture different personalities. But with a background in psychology, maybe that, demystified it a little bit? 

Willo: my friends and I talk about this a lot, I dropped out of high school pretty young, I think I was 14 and it was like okay, you know there was like a bit of a struggle and it was definitely, are you sure about this and blah-blah-blah, but it was supportive. It was like, I get it, I just really hated being at school, I felt like it was a waste of my time and -

Amy: Oh, can we unpack that a little bit? Were you not being challenged -

Willo: Not challenged in the ways that I was excited about. I found myself getting into books and studying by myself and topics that I was interested in and I was more interested in culture and in music and the goings on of the world than I was about getting deeper into chemistry. I don’t know, I just really felt bored and unchallenged and I felt like my life hadn’t begun until I left there. 

Amy: And your parents supported it? That is the exact opposite of what I would have gotten from my parents.

Willo: It’s not so much supported as they accepted it. There were some rules around me leaving, which involved, I had to do something, I had to work, it couldn’t just be, you’re quitting school to just bum around and skateboard with your friends all day. [0.15.00]

Amy: Sure, but it sounds like underscoring that is a bit of trust - They trusted your decision and they trusted you to make something of your life without necessarily having to follow the prescriptive protocol of school. 

Willo: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think my mom really understood that I was going to stubbornly follow my own path -

Amy: (Laughs) Yeah. 

Willo: I was just like, do you want to fight this or let it go and the fight would have been lost, for sure.

Amy: So what did you do at 14 then? Where did you start working (laughter) and did you have the maturity to be on your… I mean you were still living at home?

Willo: Yeah, for not much longer. I think probably a couple more years at home. I mean probably until 17, was just like odds and ends, just trying to figure out the thing worked. And then I started doing a bunch of things around the stuff that I liked, which was, I was going out a lot, like nightclubs were really interesting to me and it was a moment in time where there was a lot of pageantry to going out 

Amy: This is going to be the early 90s, right so this is -

Willo: Yes, this is late, late 80s, early 90s, I’m like 16/17 years old, I’m going to clubs -

Amy: This is Club Kids and -

Willo: Right before rave, it’s kind of like Club Kids, all the gig clubs are super interesting, rap doesn’t play anywhere, you can only go see rap shows in high school basements and things like that. 

Amy: Or maybe across the border in the US. 

Willo: Yeah, even that, club owners were really apprehensive about putting on rap shows. It was like kept at bay. The gig clubs were really cool and house music, I kind of liked early techno it was super interesting and the costuming and everything, they went into that. Yeah, I would bounce around from subset, subculture to subculture and just be like, soak it all in. And then I started throwing club nights and doing that thing, but there was a lot of things I liked that didn’t quite exist. One being there wasn’t good rap shows or rap nights. Maybe a little bit more in the States, and same thing, rave also started to bubble up and we would see things happening in London and on the West Coast in the States. And the drug culture changed, it went from sort of like 80s, cocaine culture and super elitist door policies and that kind of stuff. To kind of like, ecstasy, ‘summer of love,’ 2.0 if you will. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Willo: And all of that was super exciting to me.

Amy: As you’re describing this to me I’m getting this picture of you being kind of an industrious sponge of life. You’re not floating around aimlessly trying to figure out what to do with your life, you’re actually really absorbing the culture and if you started doing club shows, it sounds like there was an industrious undercurrent or an entrepreneurial angle to all of this. Is that accurate would you say?

Willo: Yeah, 100%, I repeat this to anybody who asks me, like how I started or how do I get into… I was like; you just have to make things. Like producing work on whatever form is kind of what informs the world of what you do. [0.20.00] And you can theorize about things and be hypothetical and be like, I can make these great things, but if If there’s not a first step into anything, nobody really knows what you do. And I think that a lot of my work was informed by entrepreneurial decisions, oh, I’ll make this club night, then I have to design a flyer and do the lighting and make sure that the right DJs are there and the right kids are there. You’re setting the scene for a guy who does big concert tours 20 years later (laughs) -They’re the same kind of tools.

Amy: It’s sort of like also the DIY of the punk era 2.0.

Willo: Yeah, I feel like that’s a little bit later now, like I feel like we’re still late 80s, early 90s, we’re still in punk, we’re still in like first gen, like I remember going to see Asexuals and PIL and with my skateboard in my hand. Then going to a rap show.

Amy: Yeah, I guess my point is punk really has this feeling of, we can make our own records, we can make our own choices about the music we play, we can find our own venues and just do it and we don’t need necessarily rules, we’ll just do it ourselves and then 2.0 kind of feels more produced. A little more curated, a little more technically savvy, a little more culturally astute, less like fuck the man and more like hey, let’s cater to a kind of scene. 

Willo: If you really think about it, all music genres kind of have that moment, they’re sort of like, both the DIY moment and the industrializing moment, warehouse parties, we would throw warehouse parties in a literal abandoned warehouse 

Amy: I know, so fun, I miss those days (laughs). 

Willo: Yeah, they were just like go until the cops shut ‘em down. Nobody would get arrested, nobody would get a fine, they’d just be like, move along. 

Amy: So as you’re doing this, are you learning what it is you really enjoy about it and what is it? Is it the creation of the experience?

Willo: No, I think I’m probably reactionary until in my mid-30s probably even later. I’m just like reacting to the things that I like and trying to bring them into my circle and whether it’s through knowing the people that are making the things that I like or to hosting or to developing them myself. I think I’m just reacting to being in the collective conscious or just like in the wave of whatever the moment was. 

Amy: So this is all still in Montreal at this point and are you a big fish in a small pond? 

Willo: Yeah, it gets to that point. We do everything from club nights or making clothes, open retail stores, have a record shop, there’s not much that you can export out of Montreal at this time. It’s changed a lot since then, but everything is very local. It’s very difficult to make any sort of money and I think that at this point I’ve kind of done everything that I can do there.  It does become big fish, small pond. 

Amy: Does that have something to do with moving? Did that precipitate your move to California? 

Willo: So I originally… I would design for local clothing companies [0.25.00] in Montreal. One was like skate/snowboard company, the other one was like a club streetwear brand. And I did both, just to speak about being industrious and motivated. I would do both of these brands simultaneously and throw a club night. I was just like, couldn’t be busy enough you know? And some of them started showing and selling to shops in the States and doing trade shows in the States and getting a little bit of attention, and I started meeting people at trade shows in California -

Amy: What trade shows were you going to, like Action Sports Retail and -

Willo: Yeah, exactly that (laughs), I’m surprised you know this, but yeah (Laughter). ASR is pretty formative for a lot of people in early skateboarding and one of the people I met there by fluke was Damon Way who owned DC Shoes and I don’t really know, we stayed in touch, we became friends and he got word that I’d left the companies I was working with in Montreal and opened a record shop and blah-blab-blah and he just called me one day and he’s like, hey, do you want to come run the clothing departments for… DC had a skateboard apparel brand called Droors and they had a snowboard apparel brand called Dub and he was like, do you want to come run Dub and Droors? I was like, sure - Yes, I just moved (laughter), so I just moved to LA  did that for a few years and really, I liked the challenge of the work, but I really hated LA. It made me really miserable. 

Amy: What year are we in now? 

Willo: Ninety eight. And it was like great, because it was like meeting people every day, they were legends that I grew up watching skate videos. It was insane, my first day of work was like Steve Rocco and just like crazy, it was just like, oh, I can’t believe that these are my bosses or peers -They would shoot skate videos in my warehouse. Yeah, it was just like this thing, it felt surreal a little bit and at the time we had the best skate team and the best snowboard team, so it was just like, all these guys would just hang out and I think that that was the moment where I was like, oh, skateboarding and streetwear is maybe not for me. It was like way too, kind of like dude-ish - And it was like at the peak of sort of like [** 0.28.56] Bravado and sort of like… Just packs of dudes hanging out, which I’d never done, growing up in Montreal it was just like hyper social and mixed, I was like, hmm, I don’t know this energy (laughs).

Amy: And I’m curious about why you were miserable in LA? I have my theories, I lived there for a long time, but what would you say was the chief contributing factor to your misery there?

Willo: ’98 in LA was, nobody was on the streets. I also made a weird decision, I didn’t really know the city, so I moved to the beach down south and so it was like, I don’t know, it was like, felt very desolate and socially and culturally not very interesting. And I think that that era is probably the low point of LA, everybody was living behind gates and people were afraid to be in the streets. There wasn’t much synergy in neighborhoods -

Amy: Yeah, and not only that, there were pockets of flavor, but if you weren’t in one of those pockets, it was really inconvenient to get to one and to explore it and discover it and become part of it. 

Willo: And this is also right before people had cellphones. It’s just like you could ruin your whole night by missing meeting somebody at a street corner (laughter) -

Amy: Totally!

Willo: And then be like across the city and drive back… And for me, growing up in a kind of small cosmopolitan city where it’s just like, you know everybody, you can go to a club by yourself and run into 50 people and that leads you to another thing and it leads you to another thing. And there are like, every night was an adventure to… Every night just kind of ended as a dud here and I don’t know, it just felt very blah to me. 

Amy: But you’re back in LA now -

Willo: Yeah (laughter). So I left, went to New York -

Amy: Connect the dots for me, okay? You went to New York in ’99 or so?

Willo: Yeah was the art director for a record label called Raucous for a few years, like ’99 end of 2001 basically. That was like the polar opposite, it was like super-rich and kind of like out and about every night and it’s just like in museums and bookstores and just filling the void of what LA had been for the previous couple of years. Also I knew a bunch of people in New York, which I didn’t know anybody in LA, so it felt like much more interesting and I also worked for a record label that I was a big fan of, which was another kind of happenstance story of somebody just calling me one day and being like hey. So I don’t know, I was in New York for a few years until -

Amy: It sounds like you never had to hustle for a job, you were just out doing what you were doing and people were taking notice and then eventually when they needed somebody like you, they’d call you up. 

Willo: Which goes back to make] stuff - because there’s no reason, especially now where the mediums are so easy, there’s no barrier for entry in doing 3D or graphics or music or photography, you don’t need anything. You have it; everybody has it in their pockets or their laptop. It’s not making things is like… It doesn’t need a mandate to make things. 

Amy: Right, nobody needs to give you permission to make something; you just need to make it. 

Willo: Yeah, you can just like world build on social… It’s super easy, there’s no cost involved. (Laughs)

Amy: So how were the Raucous years formative for you and it sounds like maybe it was also a little more community centered than LA and maybe a little less dude-ish?

Willo: Yeah, I mean rap is pretty dude-ish, but it was like the city wasn’t dude-ish - You weren’t segregating your little pocket of the people that you see and yeah, the city was great and alive and I don’t know, the whole thing was super fun. Sort of independent rap was now like underdog, gotten attention and was like on the back of the [0.35.00] New York basketball jersey, golden era of rap was like this little brother that came in and just did all this interesting thing. And I know Mostafa and Kwalee and Eminem and Kanye and all those people kind of come out from that era of sort of like lyricists and it was a little bit more intellectual, it was less bravado. I don’t know, it was super interesting, it was like sort of the confluence of skateboarding and rap. These are all things that I was very familiar with and kind of… They were all just starting to kind of merge together. And even electronic music was kind of seen, kind of like a little bit of cross-pollination in there and I don’t know, it was super fun and challenging. And I stayed there basically until post-September 11th -

Amy: Oh, okay. 

Willo: Yeah, I’m fortunate that I wasn’t actually in the city that day, but I was actually out in LA and on my way back from Asia or something and I was like, I’m maybe not going to go back to New York, maybe I’ll just go to Montreal and hang out with my brother. And all of my friends in Manhattan were like, where are you? It was like a bunch of my friends just drove up to Montreal and stayed in my house for a while, or my brother’s house. And so it was just like New Yorkers camping out in Montreal, until everybody kind of got their bearings a little bit. 

Amy: It sounds like they needed a place to galvanize and sort of, reaffirm community. 

Willo: It was also…we’ve just gone through one of these events where nobody knows in real time what’s happening - So it’s like everybody is familiar with the feeling of this thing happens, this horrible thing happens and you don’t know if that’s just the beginning of more horrible things. 

Amy: Right. 

Willo: So everybody was just like trying to figure out how to distance themselves from this as much as possible and I think that the handful of friends that were in New York that were like okay, Montreal seems easy and far enough and kind of not involved in this at all. 

Amy: Canada did feel safer than the US at that time. 

Willo: Oh yeah. Still does (laughs).

Amy: How long did you hunker down and what did the recalibration look like? 

Willo: I decided to just get a place there and kind of never went back to New York. I’d gone back and I still had my place, I still had an apartment in New York, but I went back and I don’t know, it felt like super grim and also my visa had expired. It was just; I have to go through military checkpoints to get to my apartment. I have the option to not be here, so let’s not be here. So I just got a place in Montreal and I just wound up staying there for a while. The funny thing is, all through this, all through being in California and New York, I still had the stores, I had some shops in Montreal. So I just kind of went back to the guy who had some shops in Montreal, just did that for a little while.

Amy: Did you have any psychological processing to do? You’d been through a lot of change in a short period of time and then 9/11 is no small thing. 

Willo: I’ve no connection to 9/11. Despite being [0.40.00] a New Yorker at that time, I wasn’t there in the sort of post-9/11. I just stayed away and I took some time to go back and then when I went back it just felt like a bit brutal to me and I was just like, I don’t need to live in this dystopic film. I’m not from there and granted, America has been super generous to me and let me do a lot of things, but I don’t feel American, ever. So it’s my second home, despite the fact that I live here, and I have a home here, of nature, it doesn’t feel like my home-home. It’s a weird thing to say, but that’s probably why I don’t have a difficult time uprooting myself and being like, okay, that was great and then did what I needed to do. 

Amy: So after going back to Montreal and being a guy with some shops there for a while, we need to get to the place where you found your own studio. Connect the dots for me, how did you get to the place where you founded Willo Perron & Associates, which is now Perron-Roettinger?

Willo: In Montreal I took a little store front and continued doing design work as a freelancer or a small agency. And that’s kind of the inception of that, it wasn’t really branded, didn’t really have, it was like me and a couple of my friends and my brother kind of intermittently because he was still studying. And from there we just did design projects for a bunch of people and everything from the local to not. And one day, by another fluke, I feel like (laughs) Willo’s life was just a bunch of flukes. 

Amy: I think there’s something to that though; I think when you have, when you live with a creative intention, then -

Willo: It just comes to you. 

Amy: Yeah, the path unfolds in front of you. I think sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be. I know I do, or I have, trying to undo that, so I love hearing stories like this where you kind of just stayed in your interest and stayed connected to it and kept making things and then opportunities kind of kept coming in front of you and you chose the ones you wanted to do -

Willo: Yeah, I think if you force opportunity, that gets messy a little bit too. Some people are really good at just like, kind of like speeding up the process. I always have faith in things showing up when they’re supposed to show up. 

Amy: I like that. 

Willo: So Dov Charney who at this point was like early American Apparel as this consumer facing brand. He’d been making t-shirts and stuff for the printables market and we knew each other from way back, he was just a kid around Montreal. He’s a tiny bit older than me, but we had a bunch of friends in common and he walks into the studio, which was like this little storefront and he’s like, “What is this? Who are you guys?” (Laughter)

Amy: I can see this, I want a movie of this. 

Willo: Yeah, like chair was kind of back to the front door, so I turned around and he’s like, ah, Willo, it had to be you. It’s like, what are you doing? And I was like, well, I got these stores. So we walked around and went and looked at the stores and I was like, actually a couple of our stores sell your blanks, but it’s just such a mess, we can never get enough, they just sell out blah-blah-blah. He’s like let’s go to the warehouse and just like, pack up some of the stores with American Apparel blanks and they sell out. And he’s like, let’s open a store next door, because there was a space [0.45.00] next door to one of my stores. And that’s the first American Apparel store -

Amy: Wow. 

Willo: Which was in Montreal and it’s like me and my brother worked on, Dov’s dad worked on it, it was a funny mix of people. And then people don’t line up for [sure?] in Montreal and there’s no fanfare for anything and this was that. 

Amy: Wow. 

Willo: Which was like, you’re talking about a very difficult customer and for it to be received in that way was like okay, there’s something here. I spent the next three/four years of my life on the road building stores, finding locations, staffing, kids, like designing stores, getting permits, not getting permits. And god knows how many of these we built, but I was on the plane every couple of days across the planet and doing that thing for Dov and American Apparel. But independently, still working on other design projects, but that consumed 90% of my life. I would kind of almost never set foot in Montreal, I’d be on the road and get an apartment for six months, southern American states and stayed there and just built a bunch of stuff around there and then go to Korea and do the same. And so very… None of us knew what we were doing, so kind of an interesting learning curve in real time. But I think all of us were too stubborn to admit that we didn’t know what we were doing (laughs) so we kind of figured it out. It’s an interesting super important moment in time. I feel like I meet people all the time who are doing incredible things, that their first job was American Apparel. And you’re like, oh, you didn’t have an option when you’re a teenager.

Amy: Yeah, it definitely was kind of seismic on both the fashion and retail fronts and in many ways, because it was revolutionary that t-shirt blanks could be so important, but it was also revolutionary the work you did with the retail stores because they seemed hyper cool, but not super corporate, which was a very important space to occupy, particularly at that moment in time. 

Willo: Yeah, it’s like right post-GAP and it feels a bit punk. It’s like how do you do hundreds of stores and they still feel like rebellious and messy and - the reason that it didn’t sustain, the reason that it didn’t sustain is because it never kind of optimized. There’s a point where you can be like big ideas blah-blah-blah, you can kind of synergize culture and get everybody on board and at a point it has to become like somewhat practical -

Amy: Right (laughs). 

Willo: I don’t think Dov ever wanted for it to just get to like feel corporate and get organized, so. 

Amy: I’m interested in this space where it’s possible that what made it so special and what made it skyrocket to the top was also kind of an unsustainable vibe, like one that couldn’t last or translate -

Willo: You look at whatever, like we were into when we were teenagers and, I have no idea how old you are, but you know (laughs), you might be a teenager. But whatever we were into as teenagers, it’s just like stay out all night, you were a bunch of drugs blah-blah-blah, it’s like there’s a point where you’re like, okay, that’s super fun [0.50.00] but you’re going to die if you keep on -

Amy: Right (laughs), right. 

Willo: Or junk food or whatever, it’s just like your luck is going to run out at some point. 

Amy: I sort of remember a distinct moment, like the partying was kind of… Wasn’t as fun, it was a little more work than it used to be (laughs), you weren’t guaranteed a good time and then it was like, yeah, let me maybe ground myself in something a little more nutritious. 

Willo: Yeah, you realize that the way that you looked at older people when you were younger, you’re like, oh, that’s why! (Laughter)

Amy: Yeah, this also sounds kind of like a hard life, travelling for three to four years - with rapid expansion of these American Apparel stores, was this the beginning of your studio -

Willo: After leaving American Apparel, I actually moved to LA because I was burned out pretty much, I just came here to visit a friend and he lived in like a nice part, it felt really, I was in my early 30s, felt very serene and I was like, I’m just going to hang out here for a bit. Got recruited by Apple, went over there for a little bit, wasn’t really my speed. Left there, went travelling for a little while and met Kanye when I was travelling. 

Amy: How does one meet Kanye when travelling?

Willo: So, the record store had in Montreal, we then built a small record label and the club nights and stuff, there was a DJ called A-Trak he had then won the DMC World Championships and become sort of like, became on the world stage a little bit and then had become DJs tour DJ. So I was in South East Asia and saw that they were playing somewhere, I called them and just met up and went to the show and he introduced me to Kanye who wasn’t hugely popular at this point. Was known, but underground, like he’d had a couple of records, I think he had Work Plan and Jesus Walks, which seemed both really big at this point, but he could walk around the streets, anywhere, he’d be fine. He wasn’t like, just Kanye. Yeah, and we just got along, we just met up, got along and just started working together from that point on. We actually, when we all got back to LA we actually set up a design studio with him, which was the formation of Donda, Yeezy, all of that stuff, that exists now, was we had this little design studio which was six or eight of us, just like working out concepts and tour and everything else that needed to be done. 

Amy: Did that feel to you like your next chapter you were going to be immersing yourself in because it sounds like after American Apparel you were kind of a free agent. 

Willo: I was doing stuff but I decided to take some time off and [0.55.00] and yeah, it kind of happened and serendipitously and we started kind of cranking away. One thing led to another and you know, we were just super busy, working on everything from clothing to [grammy?] performances, to tours and then his first big tour, which was Glow in the Dark, which I worked on. Yeah, and it was just kind of a new challenge, a new medium, a new way of communicating. There was no such thing as creative directors for artists, but at that time there was, you know the record label would suggest photographers and a web designer and you would just get hit up by your agent from six different sides. And I think what’s interesting about me and ?? relationship was that we’re like, let’s take all of this back from other people’s hands and really dictate our own visual outcome and so we just built the team around that. I just hired people, some of which are still around and -

Amy: I mean it sounds so intuitive, when I think about it. I remember that labels had control of everything and you sort of had to work with the people that they suggested and it was this piecemeal kind of cobbling together of whatever your representation to the public was going to be. And pulling it inhouse and having some oversight over it feels like, of course. 

Willo: I know but it’s funny, coming from more conventional, I don’t know if American Apparel is conventional but American Apparel and doing sort of brands, like clothing brands, where everything is important. The usage of brand identity needs to be consistent, the color palette and then you would look at music acts and be like all over the place because - This company would do the website and the website didn’t look at all like the album packaging and the album packaging wouldn’t look at all like the videos and you know, in comes also social media at this point and blogs and sort of the communication from artists goes from early days, which is an album cover and a couple of videos and maybe a tour to a bunch of TV performances, a bunch of videos, a bunch of social media content, a bunch of blog content and packaging and the reality of having teams around successful artists is just… And to have somebody to guide a consistent through line, was the most important thing. And that’s the advent of the creative director for musicians, you know? I don’t think that had ever been treated that way before that. Yeah, I mean life changing for me, I think life changing for Kanye too and kind of influenced everybody else to do the same -And I kind of wound up doing that for Gaga and for Rihanna and just like a bunch of other people. That’s kind of the inception of the office, is kind of when we start, I started kind of doing multiple acts at the same time. 

Amy: (Laughs) You work across many fields, you do these live experiences, concert performances and things, but you also do interior, more retail as well as identity and print. [1.00.00] I love that you’ve never pigeon-holed or specialized, you still get to be that absorbent sponge that gets to go wherever you’re interested in and then you get to, I guess ring yourself out into this work -

Willo: I think that I did really immerse creative with musicians for the better part of the last 15 years and I think that you have to be totally immersed to do it well. You have to like live the person that you’re working with. Like taking handfuls of drugs at raves or eating junk food every day, there’s sort of like an expiry date on how much of that you can do. And I think I went from doing that, because you sacrifice yourself. Your life goes into the work.

Amy: Yeah, you can’t really have your own life if you’re also immersed and imbedded in the culture of the -

Willo: A lot of 4:00am, 5:00am phone calls and a lot of, hey, we’re flying across the world today and a lot of that consistently. And you have to also imagine all the creative that goes into doing, a lot of these peoples, that’s one person’s job, is maybe one person and to decide that you’re going to do that for four or five people was just like a test of will and a resilience to go from Kanye to Drake to Rihanna, to Gaga,I literally leave one and just go into the other world, like constantly. 

Amy: Did you lose your bearings? That’s also not real; those people don’t live regular lives, so how did you keep your sense of center?

Willo: It’s beautiful, it’s dreaming, you realize that the world has parallels and not everybody has to live the same way to achieve something. I don’t know, it’s like full dream, it’s incredible. To achieve success in artistry, and uncompromising, I don’t think there’s anything better. It’s also tormenting (laughter) but I think that’s probably the most incredible thing. It’s incredible to just go sort of like, skip from one totally dream fictional world to another, in part I created and other people created and just like, no, it’s incredible. You want more of it, but again, it’s like sugar, you can kind of have so much of it. 

Amy: I’m really interested in this idea of parallels but I can also see that you’re almost like an imbedded journalist as well, needing to immerse yourself so deeply in the ethos and values and creative culture of this movement, character or brand that you’re creating for -

Willo: I think embedded journalist seems really passive in its observation. I think it feels more like coach or something like that. You’re in the game - You’re not observing the game. You’ve active into this, you’re not just passively kind of observing the thing. You have to observe everybody’s movements and what they need and what the ripples are. [1.05.00] But you also have to be able to sort of criticize the thing from an outside perspective. 

Amy: Yes, you’re not just observing in order to report back. You’re an active influential… You hold an actual influential part in the whole scheme.

Willo: Yeah and karina was referred to Tyson’s trainer as kind of like my physician, you know, like this person who took Tyson in and -

Amy: Okay, you’re in the ring with them. 

Willo: Yeah, not quite in the ring (laughs). 

Amy: Okay (laughs), I think I’m getting it though, I’m getting closer. 

Willo: It takes a lot of will and courage to go stand in front of people and put your guts out there and -There’s great rewards and great criticism and attacks that come from both of those things. I admire those people tremendously. I don’t do it, I put my work out there but it’s kind of easy for me to skate out of it if I really needed to. And a person that stands on the frontline, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to do your thing in front of hundreds/thousands/ten thousands/millions, it doesn’t matter. 

Amy: Yeah, it does take a tremendous amount of courage and I can imagine that you might feel, if you’re creating a supportive landscape and environment for that art that is part and parcel of the art, I can see how you’d feel, not only invested in the collaboration and the totality of the work, but also really invested in how your contribution might really engage the audience in the whole experience, in the whole ambiance of it. 

Willo: My thing was just to make it be a better version of itself. Find the strong points and make those stronger and take the weaknesses and try and remove those and if things work, it’s like what about that thing that works? Let’s study that and you know, it’s game tapes (laughs), it’s literally game tapes. It’s game tapes from somebody who has a kind of profound love for art and design and music that can kind of be like, knows what the other game tapes are? 

Amy: Yeah. What is the most satisfying aspect of this work for you?

Willo: When it works!

Amy: When it works?

Willo: Yeah, when it works, when like all your theories kind of take shape and it works.

Amy: Do you ever feel, I don’t know, a kind of post-project vacancy, (laughter) like a, what do I do with myself kind of space?

Willo: Like all this type of stuff started to happen, I was already in my 30s. So I wasn’t like a kid, you know? I wasn’t a full grownup either, but I wasn’t like a… [1.10.00] This sort of idea of crash and burn or doing too much, I knew that. So I always had a step out of this. It was like, okay, this will button up at some point and this is not where you anchor your life into 100%. This could be a moment in your life. And so I just kept on working on other stuff too, you know? It wasn’t just this. And it did get to a point or it has just gotten to a point where I’m just like, okay, I’ll do a bit of music and selectively so and I can do the completely immersed version of it, I can do parts of it, to be able to have an existence and a practice of my own. 

Amy: Yes and do you have a life of your own?

Willo: Yeah, I had -

Amy: Because I’m worried about you because you really did give yourself over in your 30s, I want to make sure that -

Willo: Oh no, my whole life, I used to sleep under my desk, but I think that’s not something to be worried about. I think it was something that was like, man, I hope that people find that much passion for something, that they just, that’s all they want to do. I’m sure how prolific Picasso was, I’m sure also it would have been cancelled at this point, but like how prolific it was, he just wanted to work, you know? Just like he sucked at everything else (laughs) in his life, apparently, but he was really good at, Warhol, they just worked and just did that and lived the work. Not that I’m either one of those people, but you don’t get to have that spot without working that hard. I don’t think that people understand it. Yeah, you’ve got talent, but you have to back it up with a tremendous amount of conviction and hard work. 

Amy: It sounds to me like you have a kind of old soul wisdom where you recognized that this is the kind of thing I can do now, while I’m young. And I want to, so I’m going to lean in and give everything I’ve got to this chapter, so that I can squeeze it for as much as I can get from it. But also knowing that I don’t need this to keep going for the rest of my life in order to validate my career. I can do this now -

Willo: You know the funny thing, I always really admire architects and I feel like, at least from my generation, now there’s young superstar everything, that are like Doogie Hoser like every career, but you didn’t really get to be kind of a prolific… You didn’t really get the big gigs if you were young. You had to kind of like earn your stripes and duh-duh-duh and I always thought of my career as something that would start in my 50s. Like this part was just like stripes. I never -

Willo: Really saw this as this is the career part, this is the preamble to the career and maybe in the last three/four years where we’ve set up a studio and me and Brian Roettinger, really kind of cemented this thing that it feels like a thing that’s mine.

Amy: Well, if your career is going to start in your 50s, then this has all just been your education and you’re about ready to get started. 

Willo: Correct! (Laughter) 

Amy: So I’m looking forward to that. [1.15.00] Which direction are you pointed in?

Willo: The last couple of years has been leaning into me making all things, which is everything from furniture, we’re about to publish our first book here, that comes out this month I believe, yeah, it comes out in a couple of weeks. And -

Amy: Wait, what’s the book? 

Willo: We’re doing a book on a company called Parachute that was like a fashion brand from the late 70s early 80s, initially from Montreal and became kind of like the North American avant-garde, the way that [**] was for Japan, this was for North America and every big star at the time from Michael Jackson to Peter Gabriel to David Bowie wore Parachutes. And then it just kind of went away. And fashion ebbs and flows and fades, but they ebbed (laughs) and so in the era of internet, every so often I’d be like, I was really… I don’t know why, but really young, I was just drawn to this place. They had a couple of shops in Montreal. And it was like very progressive, it didn’t feel like a clothing store. And I would just visit it, I didn’t really have the means… I’ve also never been somebody that dresses up… I’m personally not very like peacocky, but (laughs) I was just very interested by the place. And every so often I would try and do a deep dive online to try and find information about what happened or just even photos online. And I had a folder on my desktop that just said ‘Parachute’ and I would just put things in it when I’d find them. And then probably about a year ago my brother called me and he was like, hey, do you remember this brand Parachute. I was asked to do the exhibition design for a retrospective show about them. And I was like, I love, you know, it was like it’s formative blah-blah-blah and then the museum asked us to design the book and we’re like, yes absolutely and they couldn’t quite find a publisher and I was like, we’ll just do it. This feels too like important for us to just send it off to somebody who is going to do a medium job. So that’s our first book that’s coming out. 

Amy: I’m excited. I love your whole life story Willo and the way that… You’re incredibly industrious and entrepreneurial and deeply connected to your creativity, I can tell. But the way that opportunities kind of unfold for you defies conventional wisdom or conventional logic in a way that makes me believe a lot more in, magic (laughs) in a good way. Not that you haven’t cultivated relationships and a work ethic and proven yourself and have a track record. Of course these opportunities come in part because of that. But some of it also feels a little kismet, you know? And I think that your willingness to trust that your life will unfold in a really interesting way and your commitment to following your interest is really beautiful and I love that you shared this story because I’m excited to share it with our listeners. My hope is that it will inspire people to just start making.

Willo: It’s funny [1.20.00] because I’m not very patient (Laughs). I’m actually quite impatient, but this is one of the things that I’m patient about, is that I really believe in, I don’t know if it’s karma or cosmic, but things are supposed to land where they land. And you can swim upstream all day but you’re just exhausting yourself and you’re just going to wind up exactly at the same place that if you plant seeds, if you plant a bunch of seeds and you kind of nurture these things… Not all of them are going to come to fruition. 

Most of them are going to come to fruition, but if you plant a lot of seeds, there’s probably more that’s going to come to harvest. And I think that’s kind of how I’ve played things always, is a little bit quieter. I like to observe more than I like to talk and let the people that will find you, are the right people.

Amy: I love that philosophy. I’m going to take some notes and incorporate that (laughs) into my own way of being. This has been really beautiful, I’ve really enjoyed this talk, thank you. 

Willo: My pleasure. 

Amy: Thank you so much for sharing your story with me. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you feel like is important to share? 

Willo: (Laughs) Probably a lot but -

Amy: Are there any secret talents or surprise skills that we should know about? 

Willo: I like not knowing things, is one of my favorite places, the discovery and that could be as much business as it’s mediums in wanting to work or it’s like the idea of being able to learn something new and immerse yourself to the point where you’re great at it. It’s kind of an interesting job, it’s the same thing as athletes go through, you just keep pushing yourself to figure out if you can kind of do more, be better at something. I think there needs to be a little bit of that to be kind of engaged.

Amy: the moment you feel like you’re an expert, then you lose that curiosity that’s required to keep you really actively paying attention. But the other thing is, is so many people are kind of daunted by not being an expert, by being a beginner or going into a space where they feel like they should know more than they do. And I think that’s not serving them. I owning the discovery phase is an important thing to do, that you’ve just kind of highlighted for all of us to think about. 

Willo: 100%, nobody is good at anything when they start. I mean some people might have natural talent at running faster or hitting harder, but nobody is great when they start. So you have to kind of like be bad at something. It’s good to be bad [actually?] you know?

Amy: I agree, but can you tell us one thing that you’re bad at, just so we can leave here feeling human? 

Willo: I’m terrible at taking photos, horrific. Horrific, I don’t know why, I just don’t have it in me, I don’t… I admire people with, great cinematographers and film makers; I just don’t have it in me. I kind of promise myself I would make a film in my life to just put myself through the hell of being somewhat okay at something that I really suck at. [1.25.00] I’m not very good at things that are very… That take a lot of minutia and detail. I don’t have the patience -

Amy: Okay, thank you for sharing that, I’m also a terrible photographer, so I feel I can relate to you now! We have something in common. 

Willo: It’s almost comedy. Like there’s fingers in a lot of my iPhone photos, I have to crop out my fingers, it’s terrible. 

Amy: (Laughs) That’s awesome. Thank you so much, this has been really wonderful. 

Willo: My pleasure. 

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What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?
“Learning how to say no” 

How do you record your ideas?
“I don't I just keep them in my head”What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?
"People”

Why is authenticity in design important?
“I think authenticity in everything is important to me but inauthentic things can also be interesting. People not having gone through the gatekeepers and right of passage have come up with brilliant ideas. I tend to lean towards knowing the codes and the authenticity of things but great design is not just from one set of rules.”
Favorite restaurant in your city?Shibumi

What might we find on your desk right now?
Nothing, I like to keep my space clean. I can never find a pen. 

Who do you look up to and why?
I look up to people who are self-made and have grown despite their successes. People who have been capable of building their own language and world despite pushback or challenges. 

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?
Probably my studio, not the actual design but bringing together people and giving myself the permission to work across mediums. That’s the thing that makes me happy. 

What are the last five songs you listened to?
Nimco Happy (https://m.Youtube.Com/watch?V=awpyzge-fkk&feature=youtu.Be), CKay by Love Nwanatiti, I Don’t Want Nobody by Eddie Harris, You Know, You Know by Mahavishnu Orchestra, Rainy Dayz by Raekwon

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

@willoperron
@perronroettinger
www.p-r.studio 

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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