Off the Cuff with WRecords by Monkey

Getting Into the Groove

Inspired by last week’s emerging music fest CMJ, I decided to check out Patrick Chirico and Brian Farrell, the designing duo behind Williamsburg-based accessories line WRecords by Monkey (WBM), who recycle vinyl, and craftily “bridge the worlds of fashion, art and music.”

The designers who met while students at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology, in 2003, started to produce their signature vinyl bracelet cuffs, in their dorm hallway. Now, 60,000 and counting cuffs later, their work is sold in 20 states. Among their retailers: several art museum stores, including the Chelsea Art Museum in Manhattan, the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art and Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center.

The collection also makes regular weekend appearances at the Brooklyn Flea in DUMBO and at the Emerging Designers’ Market in SoHo, as well as a handful of local boutiques, including Billyburg’s own Fuego 718, which was among the first to offer WBM’s work, carrying them back when WBM was selling to only Manhattan boutique Atrium and stylist/designer Patricia Field, said Chirico.

The cuffs have also been on track to social good. WBM has donated to non-profits such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Girls Equality of Brooklyn, as well as the obvious recycling of old records inherent in the jewelry line’s production.

“No good music is harmed in the process. All of our bracelets are made from post-consumer dead stock, either warped or scratched unused records from DJ’s record[s], collections, etc.,” WBM co-founder Chirico pointed out in an email interview. “And the jewelry is made from record labels’ and musicians’ brand-new records that just didn’t have an outlet to sell in.”

Completing the WBM RPM of life: the pair set up a pop-up shop during CMJ along with Glass Note Records at club White Rabbit on the Lower East Side—not to mention their past couture work for MTV and the GRAMMY brand.

“Music is the universal language,” said Chirico, “More than 8-track cassette tapes, CDs, or MP3s, records are the symbol of music, and the people who still appreciate it. And let’s be honest: who doesn’t like or listen to music, really?”

It is this very mélange of art forms—sculpture, fashion, music—that the WBM design team sees here in Brooklyn, inspiring them to move across the East River in 2005, first living in an old Bushwick opera house-turned-“artist dormitory,” as Chirico terms it and later in with their girlfriends in Williamsburg, “where the food is great and so is everything else,” said Chirico.
“I mean, where else are you surrounded by creative people, great food, shops, Italian everything-you-can-imagine, and you can walk everywhere and are only seven minutes from the city,” he continues.

Voila the raison d’être of WBM’s latest release. Their Off the Train collection, features earrings, pendants, pocketknives and home decorative arts in addition to their signature cuffs. At the ready to bedeck local pads are a folding chair with a record comme seat and a light switch cover with surround sound—or more likely, a gussied-up old vinyl. According to their press release, the designers feel that the pieces embody what they see as Brooklyn style, defined: “sleek design with the grittiness of the city.”

That’s turning the tables of fashion on its head.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the label’s namesake is Chirico’s childhood nickname that he was unable to shake off once he moved to the city. “And,” he says, “Let me tell you, I’ve never heard so many people say ‘that’s my nickname too.’”

Which brings us to the musical interlude of the hour: “Audacity of Huge,” from “Temporary Pleasure,” the latest album by British electro group Simian Mobile Disco, who are playing this Friday at Webster Hall.

Photos courtesy WRecords by Monkey