Brand Spotlight: Grail

What’s your Grail? What are you chasing after? Whatever it is, Grail Apparel and Accessories is the brand to support your dream through fashion. FLOURYSH spent 5 minutes with one of the brand’s founders, Phillip Sidberry, about the inspiration behind the name. 

 

Enter the #FLO

Letisha: Welcome Phillip! 

Phillip: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Letisha: What's the inspiration behind your name? 

Phillip: Yes, that's always the big question. The inspiration is actually just based on dreams. Based on dream chasing. Whatever your grail is, that thing that you've been searching for that you've always wanted to achieve. And no matter how big or small it is, no matter what industry it's in, chase your grail. 

Letisha: Your collections are so unique like “Wings” and “Adulting''. They're so different yet it's all cohesive. How do you come up with your collection ideas? 

Phillip: I'm glad you got that. We put a lot of work in our collections. It's just inspiration itself, like with the shoe it's something that I personally have been wanting to do. So I challenged myself to do it. And then I was thinking Muhammad Ali, he was like one of my favorite icons. So I was thinking of a quote he had about imagination: "if you don't have an imagination, you don't have any wings." I thought that was a cool place to start. And then I just start sketching from there and just building a collection around that concept of imagination and wings and where wings can take you. 

Letisha: How freeing is that, that you're able to take an icon that you love, then take what he has said about life. Then take that quote and turn that into a sketch. That process has gotta be so gratifying to you. 

Phillip: That's the main reason we do it. Because even back to the name, we're creators. We're not business people, we try, but we're not business people. So we get the gratification from executing. And hopefully the public likes the ideas. 

Letisha: Which collection encompasses the heart of Grail? If you were to choose one. 

Phillip: I want to say “Wings” but that may be because it's our newest collection. And it's personal for me, I guess. There's three of us. I'm going to either say Wings or Origins, because I had quit. And then we decided that, okay, we're going to start over. So that's why it's called Origins. That's one of my favorites and I feel like that kind of encompasses us because we quit like every day and I feel like it 's probably the most relevant. 

Letisha: Where should a customer start on their journey with you? 

Phillip: I think it depends on the customer. So if you're really into cultural things and you're Black and you want to show Black pride we have our “I will, we will” collection. If you like sneakers or you just like the concept of imagination and wings You feel like having something like that on your body will inspire you to do more, buy the wings collection. 

I think it depends on who you are and where you are. So if you want to test us out, you might want to go with apparel because accessories and bags are a little more pricey. 

Letisha: How would you describe your style? 

Phillip: We struggle with that a lot because we aren't streetwear, we're not using graphics and stuff like that. But we aren't completely contemporary cause it's not like super-duper dressy and stuff like that. It's for adults. Working adults where you can take something and it's not too flamboyant to where you can't wear it to a casual event.

And it won't bring too much attention to you. it's a lot of subtle details in it. So that's why I say contemporary streetwear. 

Letisha: Welcome to FLOURYSH, glad to have you!