The circumstances that led Adam Brush to open the new E
Burnside shop Destroy Clothing in Portland are starting to sound
familiar: He spent most of his life in New York, where he toiled
unhappily in the advertising industry as a graphic designer while
screenprinting simple T-shirts and sweatshirts on the side. When he and
his wife decided they’d had enough of New York, they came out to the
West Coast looking for a new home. They spent a few days in Portland
during the depths of January. Despite the rain that constantly poured
throughout their stay, they loved the city, sold their apartment in New
York, and promptly quintupled their square footage with a Portland
house and a spacious new retail location.
The Destroy Clothing line started humbly enough, with Brush’s first
experiences with screenprinting T-shirts starting as a student at the
University of Delaware. After a disastrously unsuccessful Action Sports
Retailer (ASR) trade show, at which he landed zero accounts, Brush
regrouped and came up with a new collection, finding his way into
retailers. Now, in addition to the dozen or so stores carrying the
line, the Destroy store is a flagship for Brush’s work, and is joined
by lines previously unavailable to Portland shoppers.
Onela is a line of outstanding, supple leather bags and
wallets—technically they’re men’s bags, but that shouldn’t deter
any woman worth her salt from snatching up the big, gorgeous
overnighters and soft briefcases. Handily enough, the designer is a
friend of Brush’s, and he was able to score the line at a lower cost,
offering them up for sale at less than half of what they fetch at
Barneys or Bloomingdale’s. Another standout is UK label
Addict, which this season offers anoraks and cozy, techy hoodies
in varieties of camouflage and color blocking. A women’s variation on
the camo jacket, with ribbed knit details and a hood, is a particularly
choice item in the face of cold months to come.
Viewed from across the street, Destroy could look like the latest in
a barrage of streetwear clothing stores that already pepper Portland’s
streets, but it’s a surprisingly posh, well-edited variation on the
theme. One way or another, people are starting to notice—Brush
recently took flack for a Destroy T-shirt design paying tribute to
Robert Williams‘ famous drawing of a ravaged woman that first
caused a commotion on the inside of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for
Destruction album. Brush admits that the finger wagging resulted in
piqued interest in the design, and therefore the store, but whatever
attracts your curiosity, Destroy is well worth a gander. (Destroy
Clothing, 1712 E Burnside, destroystore.com)