Some archive entries are about clothing.
This one is about the person behind it.
2002 - China Town - First Apartment in Los Angeles.
As I've been building the Clothing That Speaks® Archive and digging through decades of hard drives, photographs, artwork, sketches, and forgotten memories, something unexpected has happened.
I've started to feel lighter.
Piece by piece, I've been reconnecting with parts of myself that were buried beneath time, distance, and experience. What began as an effort to document the work has slowly become an act of rediscovery.
This has been a long time coming.
In 2012, I walked away.
2012 - Final press run before the exodus (Ryan Walker)
I looked at a world I had spent more than a decade building and said:
"Fuck this."
Then I left.
Not because it was easy.
Not because I wanted to.
Because deep down, I knew staying would cost me more than leaving.
I wasn't certain what would happen next.
I wasn't even sure if I would regret it.
I only knew I had to go.
What followed was a decade of unfamiliar places, new environments, uncomfortable lessons, and experiences that completely reshaped how I saw the world—and myself.
2012 and 2019 - When you know…
Most people never knew what I was carrying.
They never saw the sacrifices, the losses, the weight of what happened before I left Los Angeles.
Over time, I felt every emotion imaginable.
There were moments I wanted to burn everything down.
There were moments I wanted to rebuild it all from the ground up.
Looking back now, I think I managed to do both.
2008 - Andrew, Bones and Cash
I've always been independent.
An artist by nature.
Someone who thrives on curiosity, creativity, and exploration, but also needs solitude to make sense of it all.
I've spent a lot of time alone.
Maybe too much.
But for the first time in years, I'm genuinely excited about what's ahead.
2016 - Back to LA. The road out of Hell.
New conversations.
New collaborations.
New ideas.
New experiences.
A new chapter that finally feels aligned with the person I've become.
I've never been happier.
I've never been hungrier.
To everyone who has supported Clothing That Speaks®, followed the work, collected a piece, shared a conversation, or simply stayed connected through the years—
Thank you.
2008/09 Andrew and Adam Alt ( Adam is a Mensch)
It means more than I probably know how to express.
The road gets dark.
The road gets rough.
But creativity has always been my way through.
Creating is how I process life.
It's how I heal.
It's how I move forward.
After all these years, I've learned something that took me far longer than it should have:
2020 - Andrew Hanson
To accept who I am.
A restless curiosity.
An obsession with creating.
A need to explore what's beyond the familiar.
A willingness to follow ideas wherever they lead.
Sometimes that path gets difficult.
Sometimes it gets messy.
But that's the cost of making something real.
And despite everything, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Because at the end of the day, I'm exactly what I've always been.
An artist.
— Andrew Hanson
Founder, Clothing That Speaks®
Born in LA. This is the Art.