APP EXCLUSIVE: MICHAEL-BIRCH PIERCE CUSTOM TRUCKER JACKETS

Style / Collaborations /
October 2020

Two images of the Levi's® x Michael-Birch Pierce collaboration. The right image if a close-up shot of the embroidery on the trucker jacket for the collaboration. The right image is of Michael-Birch Pierce wearing the jacket they created.

Sparkle. All. Day. These one-of-one Michael-Birch Pierce custom Trucker Jackets are giving us life. We’re talking couture embroidery. Sequins and crystals galore. We’re making a one-time donation to the ACLU in honor of this collaboration. And there are only ten in all of existence. Exclusively available on our app, these beauties are sure to sell out fast.

To celebrate this magical collaboration, we sat down with Michael-Birch (over video chat, because 2020) to chat about creative inspiration, their artistic process and the ever-blurring intersection of art and fashion.

Video going through three images of Michael-Birch Pierce customizing each trucker jacket with jewels by hand stitching and using a sewing machine for this collaboration.

WHAT INSPIRED YOUR DESIGN FOR THIS JACKET?

The design comes from my greater body of artwork that I’m always creating. For this piece, their pinup-eque pose is expressing strength and vulnerability—both within the embroideries and within the poses and figures. There’s something about that pull of masculine energy with feminine energy, which is a common theme in everything I do. Here, the body is tenuously perched on this rocky explosion of sequins that are falling away from them.

WE’RE GETTING A LITTLE BIT OF AN ANGEL-ON-YOUR-SHOULDER VIBE. OR...ARE WE PROJECTING?

Actually, there was one version of the jacket design that I presented where I had the same figure facing both ways, one on each shoulder. It felt a bit like those chest tattoos of mirrored lions faces or birds and still does have a bit of that “little voice in your ear” feel. And maybe he’s naughty and maybe he’s nice. I don’t know. Guess it depends on who’s wearing the jacket.

Close up image of the embroidery work of Michael-Birch Pierce for their collaboration. The embroidering shows an outline of a human lying on a bed of embroidered jewels on a trucker jacket.

JEAN JACKETS ARE A FAR STRETCH FROM YOUR TRADITIONAL MEDIUM. HOW WAS IT WORKING ON THE TRUCKER?

I’m trained in high-fashion, couture embroidery where we send patterns to be pieced into final garments. So working on a finished garment with all the pockets and seams already in place is very difficult to get an embroidery hoop around. It was a lot of puzzle pieces to fit together to make it work—but I liked the challenge.

Working on these reminded me of when I stole my dad’s Trucker Jacket. He wasn’t wearing it anymore so I covered it with pins and buttons. He wouldn’t let me stitch anything on it. I remember getting stopped in the airport because I had too many metal pins and studs all over.

YOU WERE WAY AHEAD OF THE “COTTAGE CORE” SCENE. WHAT FIRST DREW YOU TO FIBER ARTS?

I came to textiles and fibers through fashion. When I got my fashion degree at Virginia Commonwealth University a million years ago, I was really interested in fashion and costume. And it was probably the Spice Girls, David Bowie and Dolly Parton that got me into fashion. From there, I became really passionate about the feeling of a needle and thread in my hand. Going in and out of the fabric. The meditative power of embroidery was really cool.

Two images - the left image is of Michael-Birch Pierce hand-stitching the embroidered design on a trucker jacket. The right image is of a sewing machine sewing a pattern on a trucker jacket.

YOU ALSO DO A LOT OF MACHINE WORK. HOW DO YOU DECIDE BETWEEN HAND AND MACHINE STITCHING?

The two tools add a real dichotomy to my work. For the line-drawn portraits I do, I’ll draw a portrait of someone with a sewing machine. I’m looking at the model and I draw their picture in one continuous line. It takes three minutes. I find this really nice contrast between spending hours and hours and weeks at a time, sometimes on one piece hand-stitching each particular thing obsessively and the meditative power of that practice. But then, there’s something about the immediacy and thrill that comes with the lack of control when I’m using my machine as a conduit.

A lot of times, I’ll do a hundred machine portraits in a night. Then I hand them to someone and never see them again. I like the contrast of either spending a million hours on something or just powering through a vision.

Zoomed out image of Michael-Birch Pierce sitting in a chair and working at a desk with a closer, zoomed in view of the embroidered trucker jackets for their collaboration with Levi's®.

OKAY, LAST ONE. IS FASHION, ART?

Fashion is absolutely art. My whole grad-school thesis at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) was actually taking garments and making them really deeply personal. All the embroidery on them was based on peoples’ memories and stories and lives, imbuing all of that into the textiles.
A lot of fashion is commerce. It’s craft and trade. But I think that fashion is driven by artistic power and artistic energy. It all comes from someplace within the couture realm and those designers are artists who are basically putting on full-on solo exhibitions, but they’re doing it four times a year down a runway and all of that trickles down. So even if it’s something as simple as a pair of jeans, the way that it’s styled and the way that people pull things together—all of that is creativity. It’s all art in some way.

Laydown image of a light wash trucker jacket embroidered with a person sitting on top of a bed of jewels on the upper left side of the front of the jacket, above the trucker jacket's pocket.

Grab your one-of-a-kind Michael-Birch Trucker Jacket, only on the Levi’s^® app. Or customize your own at Levi’s^® Tailor Shop online and select stores.

Photo credit: Carlie Hampton Photography