How MSCHF Hacked Internet Culture
How MSCHF Hacked Internet Culture
SPEED DIAL is SOTA's new, unfiltered interview series featuring the visionary minds behind the world's most innovative brands and culture projects.
Gabriel Whaley, founder of MSCHF, first caught our attention in 2021 during our time at Highsnobiety. The Brooklyn-based company consistently grabbed headlines with their viral product launches that regularly had us thinking, "Why didn't we think of that?"
MSCHF, which according to every publication and fan is known for something different, is in fact, according to ChatGPT “known for their unconventional and often provocative projects, blending art, technology, and cultural commentary.”
Among their eye-catching releases are their ‘Jesus’ shoes filled with Holy water, Birkenstocks made from real Hermès Birkin bags, and their ‘Eat the rich’ popsicles in the shapes of famous plutocrats. More recently it’s been their Big Red Boot and headline-grabbing solo exhibitions at Gallery Perrotin that have found a life of their own online, and subsequently in the real world. In their own words:
MSCHF, AS A PRACTICE AND AS AN ENTITY, MANIFESTS THE AMBITION FOR CREATIVE WORK / A CREATIVE ENTITY TO WIELD POWER (IN CULTURE; ON THE WORLD STAGE).
We rather embrace this ambiguous definition of a company that straddles creative industry boundaries, thrives on risk-taking, and leaves every brand wondering, “do we collaborate or sue them?”
Regardless, the team at MSCHF has mastered the art of capturing public attention, and we’re eager to uncover how they do it. In New York we found the answers.
5:30PM, Friday April 12th
Brooklyn, New York
Lounge sofa, MSCHF HQ
Christopher Morency: Gabe, before we start, what’s a question you hate answering?
Gabriel Whaley: How do you come up with these crazy ideas? What’s the magic sauce? What’s the silver bullet? What’s the secret? There’s just no secret to it. The people who somehow ended up here, in this space, at this time, see the world in a very particular way, speak a very particular language, and the ideas are the outputs of all of the inputs, that’s it. There isn’t magic to it.
What’s the common thread between everyone working here then? It reminds me of early VICE days when I was working there at the start of my career. There was this same energy, no set template.
GW: Someone from the OG New York VICE office walked in here recently and said the exact same thing. We have no idea what we’re doing. There’s no playbook. It’s a group of people who like each other, and aren't too precious about anything. When bad things happen we laugh about it and tend to figure it out. We’re going to vibe our way to the finish line wherever that is.
From a business perspective, how can you do that?
GW: You have to be a religious person, you just pray. It wasn’t like I sat down with my original guys and said, ‘Let’s map this out and make money’ it was more like, ‘Let’s make some ideas together.’ We did that for a while and we weren’t making any money.
Then one day we decided to take these Nike shoes and put water in the soles. It looked like you were walking on water. What if we call it the ‘Jesus’ shoe. We made them after the twelve disciples. And then there was a Bible verse, Matthew 14:25, let’s charge $1,425 for these shoes because that’s where Jesus walked on water. I’m not even allowed to reveal this but we made so much money on that and we didn’t even know what we were doing.
There are probably a lot of people that hate us because we don’t come from the culture, but if you think about where that culture started, it started from the outsiders who then create the culture. We’re the outsiders and we continue to be that in every space that we touch.
What strength did that give you? We talk about this as well, we didn’t study fashion or journalism but we always loved that because we didn’t feel like we needed to adhere to the same rules.
GW: Totally, we could never be put in a box. Being an outsider means, one, you don’t know the difference between risk or no risk because it’s all risk. When you have that mindset it’s pretty empowering because you can create opportunities to be really surprised. You can create opportunities for this lightning serendipity which is the foundation of MSCHF, surprise. We’re surprising ourselves and I think also the world at the same time.
INTERLUDE #1: MSCHF BY THE NUMBERS
Over 250 releases in 5 years
3 lawsuits… and counting
Over 10 cease & desists
~30 active members around the globe
The destroyed croc Birkin ‘Birkenstocks’ cost $48,000
Drop #12: text +1 (405) 266-1401 for fake feet pics
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