In Medias Res #2 with Gabe Del Signore
Three outfits, and a whole bunch of insight into Gabe, NYC-based 3sixteen, and much more.
If you’re interested in this newsletter, I bet you’re a fan of 3sixteen. Perhaps you’ve seen my Five Fits With Andrew Chen, founder and co-owner of the brand. While the clothes are great, what I love most about them is their NYC flagship. It’s beautiful, warm and clean—so much so that I’ve asked the shop’s designer, Anton Anger, to redesign my closet/office. Best of all though, is their staff, and their shop manager, Gabe Del Signore, who I’ve come to know through many conversations there. He is gregarious, not jarringly so, and he’s not there to upsell you on product, though he is a massive fan. In fact, this job is Gabe’s first foray into the clothing industry, making a switch—stop me if you’ve heard this before—after the pandemic shook his previous industry, restaurants and hospitality.
My aim with In Medias Res is to feature folks from varying degrees of style interests, and that variety can also be the amount of years they’ve been interested in clothing. It’s fun to feature folks working in fashion, but it’ll also be fun to feature those that work in completely separate industries. I’d love to do a book one day. While Gabe isn’t new to clothing, I wouldn’t consider him an obsessive, which usually makes for the healthiest personal style. It’s how to avoid looking like you’re wearing a costume. He likes clothes, and he wears them well, but he has other interests, many of which we discuss below.
What do you do at 3sixteen, and what were you up to prior?
Gabe Del Signore: My job title is the shop manager for 3sixteen New York. Primarily I manage operations in this shop day-to-day but because 3sixteen is such a small company, none of us are confined by our job titles, for better or for worse. I do a lot of broad customer service, like the info email, broad operations, and shipping and logistics for the store. I’m in charge of all stock and product here. Just by nature of being here with Andrew [Chen] and Wes [Scott], I get roped into design conversations, talking about fabric and colors and release dates and collaborations, which is honestly my favorite part about this company. [In talking to] my friends that work for small fashion companies, the way they operate is pretty siloed. 3sixteen is siloed only by coasts—the LA office and the New York office—but we're all within 15 feet of each other. It's super collaborative. I came from restaurants, which were, like, you do your job. The whole ship is running because the team is working together. There's much more collaboration with the other departments of the business: design, marketing, socials, editorial photography, that all comes out of this space. Just by nature of being here, I've been involved with that.
What were you doing before this?
GDS: I got this job when I was laid off for the pandemic. All my twenties, I worked in restaurants. Partially here. But in Boston, mostly New England. Here, I worked at a restaurant called Alison 18, which was a short-lived restaurant by Allison Price Becker, who also had a spot called Allison on Dominic. It was the downtown hotspot in the ‘90’s, pre-9/11. It was right near the World Trade Center. When 9/11 happened, they shuttered completely and she reopened this place on 18th Street that was a shit-show. I worked there from 2014.
It was a shit-show operationally?
GDS: Everything about it, dude. The food, the management, the chefs, it was a classic shit-show restaurant. The food was good, but we just never had it. Most recently I was running food and beverage operations for the House of Blues in Boston. It was two restaurants, a bar in each restaurant, seven bars in the music venue. That was really directly operations and floor management and bigger picture stuff than I'm doing here. Also, I worked for Live Nation, which was the biggest company in the world.
How did you get here from there?
GDS: We got laid off officially in early April [of 2020]. Constant restaurants shut down mid-March. We thought we would close for two weeks, cancel everything, and then they laid us off a month later. I was just chilling, doing nothing in Boston. Either Andrew or 3sixteen posted one story one time that they were hiring for shop manager here, and I was like, “I don’t want to sit on my ass. I have nothing going on” so I shot Andrew a DM. Things progressed, had an interview with him and Wes first, they liked me, so I had an interview with him and Johan and they offered me the job.
How did you become familiar with 3sixteen?
GDS: The first time I ever saw 3sixteen was probably in fall 2007 in a shop in Boston called Bodega, which was one of the only cool shops—it’s still one of the only cool shops—in the city of Boston. I came from a very normy exurb upstate town. I'd really never been exposed to clothes or fashion in any tangible way. I started to conceptualize clothes my freshman year of college when I saw stores like Bodega, Concepts and The Tannery, places that sold nicer clothes I'd never seen before. I think 3sixteen started in Bodega in 2006. It was shirts and hats to wear with your Jordans and Dunks. People were just starting to wear raw denim in the streetwear world back then, but not really. That was the year before 3sixteen started making jeans.
Was that when you started getting into clothes?
GDS: Yeah. I don't remember a specific moment where I was like, “I want to dress cooler.” The general consensus on Boston as a fashion city is very correct. There's not a lot of good dressing going on there. If you put a little bit of effort into clothes, you're going to be markedly better dressed than the average person walking around the city of Boston.
Do you have any style influences, friends or just people you looked up to?
GDS: Two people for sure. They’re actually brothers. My best friend, Brian Kennedy, was the first person of my friends that started to get into sneakers and streetwear and his older brother, Steve. I was operationally an only child. I have half siblings, but they're much older, so I was raised by myself. Steve was the older person that had the trickle down of cool stuff. I didn't have that older brother figure. He was getting into Dunks, and getting into brands like Mishka and The Hundreds. I remember all those late aughts streetwear brands, even Supreme to some extent, but we had no access to Supreme at all because you could buy stuff on the internet back then, but it was not easy. It was a pain. You could go on Style Forum and have someone proxy from the store, but we didn't have the wherewithal…
I never partook in proxying.
GDS: [Brian] was actually the one who brought me to Bodega for the first time. Technically he's the one that exposed me to 3sixteen. I definitely saw him starting to care about clothes and that made me more interested in clothes. I didn't really care about clothes until I got sober, probably because that's an important part. When you're an active alcoholic, your only interest is booze. So it was tough to develop other interests and hobbies when your main hobby is drinking. But when I got sober, that's when I really started to think that clothing was what I wanted to do as opposed to restaurants. When you stop drinking, it starts being much more frustrating to be around drunk people all the time, especially if it's your job.
How long have you been sober?
GDS: Five and a half years. In 2018, I stopped drinking.
So, you stopped drinking but you were still working in restaurants. Was that difficult?
GDS: It was, yeah. I went to rehab for a month and then I was in a sober house for five months after that. The only reason I went back into restaurants is because my good friend was the GM at House of Blues. It was a dry venue for staff. You couldn't drink on the shift, or after the shift, so it was a bit of a safer restaurant environment. Also, the fact that it was part of a music venue helped because the restaurants were never the main focus. It was always the music, so there was a lot less pressure. That was the big thing for me. I was working in high-end really pressure packed restaurants. The restaurant I worked at before I went to rehab, when I started there, we had just won best restaurant in Boston from Boston Magazine. We were on every Eater heat map, and it was extremely high pressure. In restaurants, you get extreme pressure, extreme stress, and it leads to substance abuse because the substances are sitting right there for you.
Do people openly do drugs?
GDS: Yes. I had a buddy who was snorting caffeine pills. Wild, wild shit.
Since you’ve been working here, have you seen a shift in the customer? Is it more diverse now? 3sixteen could have been, at one point, for a specific type of guy, and now it feels like it could be for any type of guy who's interested in clothing.
GDS: We're definitely hitting a broader range of guys that are into nice clothes and people that aren't even into clothes. We've really found a good spot where we're at right now. Pre-pandemic, probably around 2020 is when it started to shift away from the real heritage-y, workwear flannel-boots-raw-denim look. Obviously, we still make all those things because they're popular, but in this store specifically, we're definitely getting more of the upwardly mobile, 25 to 35-year-old. Tons of tech workers. I still think we are—and this is not meant to sound pejorative—baby's-first-nice-clothes brand; your first time maybe stepping up from more mainstream stuff to something that's a little more niche. We make jeans. Everyone knows about jeans. They're nicer jeans, they feel a little different, but they're jeans. We make T-shirts. They're nicer. They feel a little different. You don't have to conceptualize it super hard in your head. You're like, “Oh, I make more money now, so I should buy nicer versions of the things that I like.” And that's really where we sit.
The shop environment, the storefront, and probably the ability to see into the store from the street, there are a lot of different things that you guys have going. It's a great space in here with chill dudes. I’m friends with a lot of the people at other downtown stores. Some of them can be intimidating. They have lines and door guys.
GDS: We try to consciously push back against that New York downtown cool guy mentality that seems extremely pervasive. So many times, people will come in and be like, “You guys are so nice to us. We were just at this shop, this shop, this shop and they didn't give us the time of day.” I'm not here to talk shit about anyone, but we're never trying to be the big-time cool guy in the shop. We want to be extremely welcoming. My favorite interactions are the people that are like, “I've never bought a nice pair of jeans before. I've never spent more than a hundred dollars on a pair of pants.” Those are my favorite people. You can see it click in their brain. It allows us to talk about the construction a little bit more, the quality of the fabrics, how it's all proprietary mills. No one else is making things out of these fabrics. We're not just picking out of a book like lot of brands are. Also, just the fact that Andrew and Johan have been doing this for 20 years with no investment support, so no one else to answer to. They're the top of the ladder. When I have to kick something up the chain, I kick it up to one guy and he's top of the company. That makes us super agile and it makes us able to punch way above our weight as a company. I tell people that 11 people work for 3sixteen and they're like, “What?” We do everything in house. We do all our shipping, manage all the stores, do all the wholesaling. All the design is Wesley and Andrew and Romeo at this point. Andrew and Wes have put so much work into being intentional with the brand, not just with the clothing, but with the messaging that goes into the clothing, the causes we support, the things that we talk about in our blogs and editorials on our Instagram. In all the customer service interactions I've worked, this is the most highly positive ever in terms of people coming in, being stoked to be here, enjoying the clothes and leaving happy whether they buy something or not. It feels like we're set up to have people have a very positive interaction with the shop and with the brand. And that's a testament to Andrew and Johan’s work for two decades to get us to the point where we can have an all-encompassing vision of the brand, which I think for brand our size is super rare. You see small brands that do one thing really well and make a really good pair of boots or a really good jacket, but we do two 20-plus-items seasonal collections a year. We have 60 different core items. We make a lot of fucking clothes for a brand our size, and you can come into this shop and get a full outfit, minus underwear. Pants, shirt, shoes, socks, jacket, sweatshirt. We got it all, dude.
I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday about my photography, and it's a similar thing. It took some mental work to figure out how to display my photography in a way that brings me the type of client that I want.
GDS: You create a little ecosystem.
I'm getting the people that I want to work with or who understand what I do. It's hard, but if you can figure out how to clearly message what you're doing and you're not trying to be something you're not… If you have a very clear message about what you do or what you make, you're going to get the right kind of people coming into your shop. It helps that you guys have such a strong community around the brand in general.
GDS: And that makes me want that to be a consistent through line with your experience in the store. We put ourselves out there as we're super chill, we're nice, the clothes are good. We don't take ourselves super seriously, but we care about the shit that we do. That's the exact vibe I want people to feel in the store. Comfort, ease, not intimidation. Nice clothing stores, to people that are new to clothes, in general are intimidating.
They’re still intimidating to me sometimes. I've been in the industry for a long time.
GDS: Me, too, dude, I’ll go to a store where I know the people that work there. I'll go into Knickerbocker and I'll be like, “I'm scared you guys.” Young men lacking a little confidence regarding clothes is a tale as old as time. We’ve experienced it, right? Being like, “I don't know if I want to wear this.” That's a journey. “I'm scared to go shop in that store, scared to go talk to these people.” I want to try to alleviate as many of those feelings from people as possible.
What else are you fucking with right now outside of 3sixteen?
GDS: On the higher end, I'm always fucking with Christophe Lemaire, whatever he does. If I could afford to dress exclusively in it…
Do you get any of the [Uniqlo] U stuff?
GDS: Sometimes, yeah.
Some of it's really good. I have this sweater in three colors.
GDS: I love our compatriot brands. I love Knickerbocker. Randy's Garments, another New York City brand. I shop a lot at the homie shops, so I shop a lot at Self Edge, [and I wear a lot of their] brands. These pants are Buzz Rickson. It's all World War II, repro military stuff. I'm not a big outdoors gorp-vibe person, but this brand called Earth Studies—feels like an 18 East type of vibe—I just got a pair of pants from them that are incredible. Always fucking with Wythe. Just by nature of working here, I do wear a lot of 3sixteen, but I never feel like I’m wearing a uniform at work, which is great.
Is there anything you're on the hunt for?
GDS: Dude, I'm on the hunt perpetually for black boots. Just always. And a leather jacket. Slimmer jackets in general are hard for me. My arms are so long and my chest is so skinny, which is a bummer, which makes one of my biggest frustrations about my body is that it's really hard for me. I see so many vintage things that I like and the amount of vintage shit that fits me, even in a way that I could tailor it to fit, is so limited. Dude, I cannot buy vintage pants. I cannot buy vintage jackets. Some tees and short sleeves work, but it's tough. So, I spend a lot of time trying to find newer versions of things that I want that I see vintage, which again, is a giant pain in the ass, which is why I like a lot of Self Edge Japanese made stuff. A lot of it has some type of wear added to it or is going to wear to the point quickly where it looks like vintage. Black Western boots are my main goal.
Give me your five favorite restaurants in New York City.
GDS: Lovely Day; it hits everything. It's two doors down from the shop. We're homies with the people that work there. It's reasonably cheap, so you don't feel bad if you eat there twice in one week. You can always just sit down. It's great. That's our after school spot for sure. I love Raf’s up the street. Win Son, which is right near the crib.
It was right near my crib, too, when I used to live over there. Those fan tuan are crazy.
GDS: Knickerbocker bagel. B&H Dairy on second Ave. Old school Jewish diner, lunch counter type of vibe. They have my favorite tuna melt in the world. Tuna melt and matzo ball Soup from B&H Dairy is maybe my favorite meal in New York City.
When you’re not working at 3sixteen, what are you up to?
GDS: Recently, my mom is sick. She lives in an assisted living home, so I spent a lot of time upstate taking care of her, dealing with her stuff. So, for the last year and a half, a huge amount of my free time has been going into that. When I'm not, I love to go to museums and galleries. Yesterday I went to the Frick Madison. I love to go out to eat, obviously. I started running like a year and a half, two years ago. Andrew and Wes—Andrew especially—got really heavy into running, which has been a big influence on me getting into it. I was never a regular exercise person. I played hockey growing up, but I was never a regular exercise person until I started running. I just love running, dude.
I wish I did. I fucking hate it.
GDS: I was never able to go to the gym or even do a workout class in my house or anything like that. But running I just like, it's nice. I think it's all self-motivation. It's not external at all. You have to get up and do the thing. I think I like that. I always feel very good about it.
Let's end this with music. You and I always talk about music. Anything you're really into this year?
GDS: I've been listening to a ton of Spiritual Cramp. They just put a new record out this week, which is phenomenal.
I don't love their old stuff, actually, but I love that record.
GDS: I saw my friend Sean's band Glom, which is another favorite band of mine. They opened for them two Sundays ago. They were so fucking good. If they're around you, we have to go see 'em. Big Drug Church year for me. Those are the hometown homies, dude. They're playing with Alkaline Trio in March at Knockdown Center. New Fiddlehead record. New Shame record. Aesop Rock is my favorite musical artist. He’s got a new record out today, dude. I've been listening to a lot of George Harrison. All Things Must Pass is one of my favorite records.
Slept on Beatle.
GDS: The best Beatle solo material, for sure. That record is so good. I'm like 80% still in the post punk, post hardcore world.
How do you feel about that new Beatles song?
GDS: I didn't even listen to it.
So, I guess we can't really talk about it if you didn’t listen to it, but to me it sounds weird. The song is beautiful, but Lennon’s voice sounds bizarre. It’s isolated. It sounds far away.
GDS: I don't like the idea of it, that's for sure, dude.
Neither do I. Slippery slope. Whenever they release posthumous albums, it’s really eerie.
GDS: I don't think it's good. I think you just let the dead be dead.
What are the pants in the top photo with the 3Sixteen bomber jacket?