Interview

O’BRIEN: I worked with you on an airline campaign . . .

SPADE: Yeah. We didn’t really have a name for what we did. We just did it as a studio on the side and had a separate LLC. We always loved working on different things. The airline Song actually approached us to do uniforms, then they ultimately asked if we would do the advertising for it. Now, of course, the airline is defunct, but it was a great project.

O’BRIEN: The ads were good. I never flew on it.

SPADE: We did some good ads, we did some good things inside the plane, and we had a great experience. We take on little projects here and there for clients like Method laundry detergent. We did packaging design for Method out of San Francisco, which is kind of a neat company; the guy who runs it is a former advertising guy—an entrepreneur. For The Village Voice, we did billboards like Where Have All the Junkies Gone? and Welcome to McHattan. [laughs] And we did a lot of online ads for them with Casey and Van Neistat, kind of viral stuff. We did the Neistat’s TV show with Jack Spade during those days. Jack Spade was doing a lot of outside projects because, as Kate said, “You only make bags so you can do all the other things.” [laughs] Yeah, I love the bags. You know, you can’t be creative unless you’re solvent.

O’BRIEN: Tell me about it.

SPADE: I mean, you can be creative, but you can’t really make it into what you want it to be unless you have some income. So I mow the lawn and then I can go out and buy a drum set. Some of our friends don’t realize that it’s good to have something rolling in while you’re trying to be doing more. The short films we did were all kind of based on the business doing well. If we didn’t do so well, the films got shorter and shorter. I’m sorry that Eric Goode didn’t come over. I haven’t been able to get him over. He had an idea to do something with his turtles.

O’BRIEN: Well, he’s got the turtle resources. He should have a turtle shop—Turtles & Goode.

SPADE: He saw the birds in our window and said “Well, can the turtles follow?” I said, “Sure, I just need someone to care for them.” We’ve been getting a lot of negative comments on the blogs about the birds in the window, so we went to the New York Bird Club and they sanctioned it and wrote to PETA. The window is heated and we talk to the birds and the birds are fine with it. And so the blogs have slowed down on the negative.

O’BRIEN: They thought you were hurting the birds?

SPADE: Yeah, they thought we were mistreating the birds. They’re basically in an aviary that was designed by a person who works at Birdland. Not the jazz club. [O’Brien laughs] He comes in every day and checks on the birds—checks the temperature, has a little conversation with them, makes sure everything’s okay, feeds them, changes their papers. So we have a sign in the window that says, These birds are being treated really well. We sing to them . . . But there are people who look and see the store window and say that we shouldn’t use birds for commerce. But it’s
not like we’re using them to sell feathered hats or anything.

O’BRIEN: You’re really on one of the best blocks in the city. I love Great Jones Street. The fact that the tire shop is still here is amazing.

SPADE: I asked them if I could have those signs.

O’BRIEN: Yeah.

SPADE: The really worn one with the Volkswagen logo and the one with the Mercedes logo, because we’re doing bags that are painted just like they are.

O’BRIEN: Those are really nice signs.

SPADE: Wouldn’t that be a nice little bag to have?

O’BRIEN: Yeah.

SPADE: That’s the YSL pop-up shop right here.

O’BRIEN: Oh. That building was Jean-Michel Basquiat’s studio. And then it was Eric Goode’s. And then it was a Japanese restaurant . . . Gee, I think the birds look really happy, actually. I wish I looked that happy. And I like the sign on the door that says: guns sold here.

SPADE: Yeah. You know, we decided to fight back with the people on the blogs, so we put that up. . . [laughs] Just to piss them off . [They enter the store.]

O’BRIEN: Where are the guns? Oh, they’re pictures of very nice guns. These are $175?

SPADE: [laughs] We got this gun inventory—photos of evidence, or pieces left over from forensics. We have 50 of them . . . They’re actually very nice-looking, if you’re a gun collector. You don’t want to have a handgun in the house if you go crazy.