Meet Thane Zrongo

April 29, 2024

We were lucky to catch up with Thane Zrongo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Thane, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Every day of my life is loaded with risk just as everyone else’s is. I’m actively choosing to take this question in another direction because I think that it’s important. The risk wasn’t taken all at once, it was slow boil. There’s a common line of thinking that risks happen in a split second, but it’s a lifetime of risks and calculated gambles that build up to a full story. It’s cumulative and made up of many decisions.

There’s the first time I created a pattern or wore my own design, my first suit or dress for another person, there was my first advert and then my first interview, now my first store and studio. It’s all a risk, but it’s one story day by day. The risk is always there and sometimes you’re not aware it was a gamble until you take a moment and let out your breath. All of these things were risks but only in retrospect. In the moment they were the only course of action.

When push comes to shove, it doesn’t matter much if entrepreneurship or employment is for you. Driver or passenger, artist or patron. We only get one chance to do all of it. Risk is all relative and the greatest risk is that you let the opportunity pass by and never had the courage to take the steps necessary to bring it to fruition. What is the risk really, you die? It happens anyway, so if that is the worst thing to come of it is that you just got there a little faster than planned.

To fail is one thing, but to never try for fear of failing is something entirely different. It’s a cancer that eats away at the human heart and is far worse than any catastrophe that could happen.

To a child, the greatest risk is that they fall, that is the end of all the progress made. Every moment of their life has led up to standing and taking that first step. Falling is the worst failure of their life and they have never experienced anything more devastating than seeing their life’s work come crashing down around them. The hardest part is to fall. It never gets easier, but the more times it happens, the more life you have to lend perspective to the event. Risk is the same way. It’s all about perspective.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Thane Zrongo, I’m the Creative Director at The House of Grand Design. Our goal is to create beautiful handcrafted clothing that really embraces the power of beautiful textiles in our daily lives. We provide clients with a wide range of services from ready-to-wear to complete bespoke garments.

We feel very deeply that clothing is as much of an art form as it is a practical tool for covering our bodies. Every seam in our garments is engineered to fit the body while simultaneously evoking an elegance that will stand the test of time. It’s often underestimated how valuable a person’s clothing can really be, it takes ten milliseconds for a person to create an opinion of you. There’s an immense amount of power in that. By the time a person has shaken your hand and learned your name they’ve already created a persona in their mind. Why would anyone squander such a valuable tool as a first impression?

What drew me to fashion and clothing was an odd hybrid of both practical need and aesthetic obsession. My body type is very tall and thin, so many off the rack clothes don’t fit well. The logical step from this issue was to create my own. As I learned and honed the craft, I began to understand why certain designers used certain materials and was able to understand the differing levels of quality available. You eventually tune into how each designer or tailor does things. You start to see the small fingerprints of the craftsman. Their idiosyncrasies become more and more clear. It’s like a language all its own. You can look at a piece and see the phantom marks left by each person who’s had a hand in it. It’s not only in the overall style of a piece but in the tiny brush strokes that create the overall impression.

The style of certain peoples’ lives really fascinated me. I am a shameless aesthete, I was drawn to how these people lived with such grace and elegance or with such unrestrained flare. There were the icons like Andy Hepburn and Coco Chanel who really embodied this unattainable level of elegance, they seemed to exude this lifestyle from their very pores that was like a form of poetry. Then, from the other side, were these artists that lived like dogs let loose. Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Salvadore Dali. They had this feeling like the road was there for them to tear up. I thought, If I could even get a small taste of what their lives were like, I would have something really special on my hands. It really made me think that it’s not just a piece of cloth but an entire lifestyle, which makes sense. You don’t just see it in the mirror, you live your entire life in it. The article of clothing lives and breathes your day along with you. This is what got into fashion in the first place.

What sets you apart?

There are many things that set us apart from other clothing manufactures. The most prevalent being that we produce all of our clothing in the United States. This means that we can provide jobs and keep the craft alive and well. It also means that we can offer opportunities for apprenticeships to those in the area. We will often provide an industry experience for youth to see behind the curtain of the fashion industry. Though it takes time, it is invaluable experience for these adolescents who look to become the next generations of fashion enthusiasts.

We are also a part of a dying breed of fashion houses. People are now afraid to say that something is not good enough, the standards of a lot of the world are slipping in lieu of profit. I look at statements like that positively. It’s not as simple as saying this isn’t good enough, it’s saying it could be made better. It’s our mission to create a more sustainable world through the highest caliber of clothing we can produce. This is as fundamental a part of our ready-to-wear as it is in our bespoke. It’s a fantastic blend of bespoke technique and ready-to-wear all under one roof. As the producer, tailor and consumer we are constantly tweaking the process to make alterations more effective, fittings more enjoyable and the client more pleased.

Many people have never had a suit made from scratch and wonder what a bespoke experience might entail. Much of what makes it such a special article of clothing is the process itself. We call it an experience for a reason. From the start, we work very hard to filter out any other creative noise. We provide the client with a beverage, sit down and have a discussion. It’s not about what’s in vogue or what others want, it’s about what they want. The objective is to find what he or she not only wants in a garment, but what they’d like to feel when they wear it. We’re not only in the business of clothing, it’s a very emotional business too. We walk that ephemeral line between cloth and thread, how those elements make us feel, the emotions those elements draw out of us.

We will then walk through buttons, collars, cuffs and fabrics to find the best combination to bring that vision to life. That’s where the process leaps from an aesthetic process to a mathematical one. We can take upwards of 50 measurements to painstakingly gather as much information about the client’s body as we can. These include notes on shoulder irregularities, dominant hand, wallet preferences and even which wrist they might wear a watch.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

That’s a very interesting question, I feel it has two parts which might seem contradictory. There’s the obvious answer that is to put more money, support and infrastructure into the arts. This is something that countries like France do very well. As a culture, there is a sense that art is a cornerstone of society. They have laws that protect it and the culture that surrounds it. That’s very noble, but is a very difficult thing to cultivate on such a broad scale. You do see that in the United States, but it’s in more of a pocket form.

There is another side to that, which is possibly less popular. That is to have the greater part of society not accept artists. There much to be said for that, as unclean as it is. It works almost like a crucible. Society stifles the artist so the artist hones their art until it is too powerful, too spectacular to be ignored. I think of this when I hear music or see art from after the war, particularly from England. We had a society that was socially strict and then was brutalized by another. From that we got The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Beatles. I don’t know about you, but that seems like pretty good evidence. We saw that in popular culture in the USA in the 60s. The United States had a very divided idea of what the world should look like and the pressure became so intense that we had an explosion of creative minds. We saw Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe and many others. Of course it’s not a battle cry to suppress art by any means, it’s some food for thought that without adversity, where is the strength to speak out?

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

With any journey, there is a learning curve and we all wear the yokes of misinterpretations that are pushed on us from a young age. There is one lesson that took many years to clear from my mentality. When I was younger, my mother made sure to instill a sense of frugality. She pushed the mantra that “any goods that were expensive were unjustifiably so”. The idea behind it being that any name brand and off brand were virtually indistinguishable. The extravagant was just as good as the humble when it came to price. This is simply not true. When it comes to quality, it usually comes with a higher price tag. This left me with the impression that no person would ever pay more than $25 for a shirt. I found this mentality made it very hard to turn a profit when I was first starting out because the materials alone could cost that much.

It took many years to learn that there is not only a market for shirts that cost more than $25, but there are people who are willing to invest in an article of clothing that is made exactly to their specifications. There’s a man I know who recently summed it up in a perfectly unvarnished manner. We were discussing the difference between luxury and utility cars. He said, “There’s an ass for every seat” and I can’t think of a more concise way to put it. There are people who want a shirt that keeps them from being naked and people who want one that makes them feel like they are floating on a cloud. The two are not the same and you can’t please them with the same item. It sometimes takes an entire lifetime to understand that and I’m glad that I understood it when I did.

Contact Info:

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