Mackienzie King is a force to be reckoned with, I give her a year before she becomes a Jersey City legend. We found each other on social media a few months ago and immediately connected. Mackienzie is 24 years young and has more experience under her belt than most of us…she is a talented clothing/graphic designer, owns a production company and most importantly raises awareness to many different issues our youth faces in society right now.
She invited me over to her apartment in the West Side part of town, we talked about fashion, Jersey City and life. I ended up hanging out with her and her friends for most of the night, they are such fun down-to-earth chicks! We all got along so well that they ended up covering my One Year Anniversary party, and we also have some future projects in the works! #staytuned
I love Girl Bosses.
What’s your name? Mackienzie King.
What do you do? I’m a graphic designer by day and a clothing designer by night.
Can you tell my about your clothing company? Commonless started, roughly, a year and a half ago, and it was just something I kind of wanted to do with my best friend. I’ve actually been involved with a bunch of clothing companies from college, but it was never something that I owned myself.
I decided to break free from all of that and start Commonless, where I was able to do it my way and kind of just go with the vision, which is helping the community, helping the world, educating the youth, and that’s something we’re really big on.
So what’s the idea behind Commonless? Three shades, we only produce in black, white, and gray. The reason why we do that is because right now that’s the way I see this world. I see a lot of negativity, I see a lot of things that need changing, things that need to be taught, and things that we need to raise awareness for.
I think the black, white, and grey is the best way to represent that, and the only time that we will use color, which we have done, is to fight for a specific cause. In the past we had been working with a B+ foundation, Charity Water, and we raised money for a few different small causes.
When we do produce color it’s because we stand behind something.
Can you tell me more about the causes that you are passionate about that your clothing represents? Right now, our biggest piece is something that’s affected me personally, which is student debt. Graduating from college, even with a degree, it’s so hard now to find a job, and you pretty much go to school to do exactly what our T-shirt says, “Majored in Borrowing. Graduated in Debt.”
A lot of teachers are going on strike, my little brother who is having difficulties in school right now because he has a bit of a test-taking issue. Teachers that he’s grown up with that have spent the extra time, unpaid, to help him out, are the teachers that deserve to be paid a little bit more and the states don’t want to give it to them. And so education is failing all over the place, not just college, with our youth as well.
Growing up everyone was like “Be the first one to graduate college, get a diploma, and you’ll do great for yourself,” because back in the day, diplomas meant something. Now, you show somebody a diploma and it’s like “Who do you know?” I think that’s the reason why I fight the things I fight for because there are just so many things that are unfair. Not to mention that I am a lesbian woman that makes it ten times harder.
What’s your creative process with designing your clothing? I wouldn’t call it a creative process, it’s like when a situation hits me hard or if a situation makes me feel a specific way, and I kind of just want to use clothing as like a weapon.
I call it my weapon. Instead of going out there and raising hell and doing things that are going to be more destructive. I tried to find a creative way to teach kids, especially, like my brother, who is one of my biggest fans. So it’s good to put something on his shoulders that he understands. And with each piece, not only does it say exactly what it means, it comes with a postcard that will tell you exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing. So it educates. We’re trying to do something different, but utilizing fashion in a sense.
We keep our prices low, so that people who have grown up in my situations, you know, even if you don’t get yourself out, you’ll still be able to afford, you’ll still be able to be a part of something more than just wearing somebody’s clothes.
Where do you sell your clothes? Right now, we sell our clothes online at Commonlessapparel.com.
Are you from Jersey City? Born and Raised? Yeah, pretty much. I was born in Hoboken, but we lived in Jersey City.
How do you feel it’s changed in the past couple of years? Oh my goodness, it’s changed so much. It’s like everyone from the original blocks, the original hoods are all gone because honestly, it’s like you’re like knocking everything down to put up a “Condo.” They make it so hard to live in Jersey City. I mean there’s good parts about it too, Downtown has turned into something incredible. Despite the high rent…You go downtown and you can go from a pizzeria that turns into a bar at night, Porto pizza, that’s my spot, I love it there. A lot of my friends from Jersey City always say they want to move to the city, but I can’t see myself leaving Jersey City.
How many people are on your team now with Commonless? I work on it with a couple people. Everyone that works on it is my circle of friends. Alena, who’s helping me with the photography and everything, Brittany, she’s my lawyer and business partner the one who started it [with me], and Gabrielle who helps with everything all together. A group of girls making clothes for the masses.
Other than Porto do you have a favorite hangout spot? A favorite food place? I don’t really get out much, I’m always working. Definitely, my favorite pizza spot in Jersey City is Gino’s. I grew up on that stuff, playing softball in Washington Park. You know, you grow up with Frankie and Andrew, and you go there now and they’re like your parents, it’s just like a homey place, it’s like places like that that you grow up on. Mom and Pop shops, I’m all about Mom and Pop shops.
What are your future plans for the brand? We were also going to join forces with a few brands that I helped produce gear for, they wanted to do a collaboration and help the community as well. So we were going to go into the local YMCA’s and see if we could fund some kid-on-kid basketball games. And I just wanted to let you know, as of last month, we are officially 100% Vegan.
Are you Vegan? I am not vegan, but I really am just one of those people who wants to be able to cater to every single person. The reason why my last run overseas, even though it’s very cheap to produce gear out there, and it also helps us double back our money to help us give more to the charities, I want to keep the business in the U.S. I want to be that 100% Vegan brand so that anyone can wear our gear. If you feel Commonless, I don’t want to stop you.
Can you tell me about the charities? Well, Charity Water is something I founded last year. We did a campaign and then we raised $900 just off of donations alone, not even selling any gear. It’s very, very creative, really cool, and I want to say, they’re graphic design marketing campaign is just amazing. They use the money to mass produce canteens for kids and families in countries like Africa, India, and Cambodia. They also build well-systems that bring water [to the villages].
Normally a young woman (because the boys go to school) wastes about three hours of her day walking to get water, carrying as much as she can handle, and walking three hours back, which is also dangerous. There is wildlife, anything can happen to a young woman, unprotected out there by herself. Not only does it protect the women of the villages, but it also allows them to go to school. So that was something that was really big for me was the fact that they would now be allowed to educate themselves, instead of taking a six hour trek to go get water, that we honestly use to flush our toilets.
Did you ever think of doing something specifically for Jersey City? Yeah, I personally sponsor children in the community. So if you’re a dancer, skater, an artist and you reach out to us and want to be sponsored, I try to help as many kinds in the community as possible. Most of them that reached out we dancers, we had a few skaters, and a few graffiti artists. We do anything we can from getting them equipment to getting them studio time to me donating my time helping them make videos so they can put them on YouTube to help get them exposure. So we personally sponsor the youth in the community. I try to give back, because honestly, if someone would’ve done those things for me growing up, I think my life would’ve been a little different.
What do you do now as your fulltime job? Actually, I just left my fulltime job to do this fulltime another production company—Neverland Productions.
What’s Neverland Productions? It’s my production company, we do video editing, videos, photography and graphic design. We help other brands establish themselves, so if you come to me and say “Look, I only have $500 in my budget, what can you do?” We help you get where you need to be within that $500 and if there’s any services I can do at no cost, personally, I try to pay it forward. So, that’s the only requirement for Neverland, we do something for you, you have to pay it forward.
Anything else you want people to know about you or Commonless Apprarel? I’m a very reserved, behind the scenes type of person. There’s a lot of brands out there that produce gear and they sell it for $200 when it’s a T-shirt with print on it and it’s like what’s the purpose? If you truly care about the masses and the people you’re selling to, especially in urban culture, you should know that most of the people you’re catering to need the $200 to provide for themselves and their families.
If you really want them to love something that you’re creating, make them love it but also let them afford it. For me, Commonless is just so much more, and we’re just getting started. It’s been a dream of mine to pave my own way because honestly with the way that everything is going on in the world and how—leaving college even up until today—difficult it was even to make something of myself even with a degree, even with the GPA I had and doing everything right, I still got the shit-end of the stick. So one day I just decided to do it for myself, no one else is going to help me. Don’t get me wrong I love networking, I love meeting new people, but if I’m going to go into an interview and they’re going to ask me “Who do you know?” I’m going to say, “I know myself.”
http://www.commonlessapparel.com
She is incredibly cool!