DIRTY GUYS

Dirty Guys is Paul Gleason and Leo Lüpertz. Dirty Guys is created and produced in Berlin, Germany. The name and concept was founded in Berlin in May 2003.

Paul Gleason, originally from Minnesota, USA, moved to Berlin in 1990. He studied fine arts at Parsons School of Design, Paris. He graduated in 2003 with a concentration in painting and graphic design. Leo Lüpertz is German and was born and raised in Berlin. He also studied design, in Berlin at the Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule (BTK).

In May 2003, Paul returned to Berlin from Paris. Soon after arriving back in Berlin, Paul and Leo decided to form a t-shirt label called Dirty Guys. The logo was Paul’s logo from his graduating painting exhibition entitled “I’d Rather Bomb Paint”. The exhibition was inspired by the second Golf War in Iraq and was an anti-war protest, yet simultaneously advocating a pro-graffiti opinion. The paintings in the exhibition were oil paintings that appeared to be stencils, but are in fact paintings. These painting provided the first print designs for the first Dirty Guys t-shirt collection, which were exhibited with the paintings together in Berlin in 2003.

Philosophy:

Dirty Guys is a concept of creating clothes directly out of, or linked to, art. Both Paul and Leo are the creators and designers of the Dirty Guys graphics. Yet, in the beginning, they did not know how to screen print. Therefore they created the first t-shirts by cutting stencils and rolling fabric paint over the stencils. This technique makes each individual t-shirt or garment unique and one of a kind. The idea was to bridge art and fashion, not to simply mirror art or design onto a t-shirt.