CANVAS REBEL
Meet Stanton Ridley
By // Jenny Tran
Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stanton Ridley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Stanton thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
This is a great question. For me, I think I knew this freshman year of college at Hampton University. This is the year that our clothing brand started and I knew then that designing clothing came at a natural pace for me. It was also clear how much I enjoyed it. Now the actual plan/path professionally, I had no idea how that would happen, but I did know that it was possible.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
For me, everything started as a teenager at St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, New York. Going to a private Catholic School was a super pivotal moment for me as it is where I first discovered designing clothing. We had a certain day throughout the school year called “Dressed Down Day”, where students would pay about $5 to wear their own clothes to school for the day outside of the normal school uniform. For my friends and I, this was a big deal as we could show off our cool sneakers and outfits. On one of these particular days, my brother and I decided to make vest that I would wear for Dress Down Day. That’s a great moment in my life as the first item of clothing that I ever made with was with my brother Sterling. From there, I literally made clothes every single day, and most times I had no idea what I was doing technically. I had to learn how to make clothing as I went along.