Exploring the World of Anime Fashion with Designer Noralache

Noralache is an independent designer and anime fanatic building off of the same phenomenon. The Florida native has amassed an incredible following on social media, and a vast majority of his drops—which make reference to Pokémon, Naruto and more—sell out rapidly. As a fellow anime devotee, I wanted to hear more from the man himself about how he got into the game and where he derives his inspiration.

Nora’s entry into the clothing world can be traced back to 2015, when he first started making custom sneakers. “That’s when everybody was camping out for Js,” he tells me. So he painted a custom pair of Jordan 12s, which many of his friends and followers first thought were an actual Nike-ordained release. To build off of the hype surrounding his first customs, he began telling people about forthcoming plans for his designs. “It was getting so much love that I was like, might as well start a website.”

2017 is when the embroidery—which is now a mainstay of his vision—first began. He was in the middle of taking about a year off from painting shoes, as it had gotten stressful to be producing paintings at such a high volume. He bought an embroidery machine and started getting to work toying around with it. “I had fans from clothes and fans from shoes, so I could really take either route with the fashion thing,” he tells me, but this is when the love of cartoons and anime began to inform his decision-making. 

“Growing up, you wanted to see cartoon stuff on things, but it wasn’t very accessible. Or somebody hadn’t come up with the idea yet to do that. It’s only an image in your head,” he tells me of his thought process upon first getting the embroidery machine. So he started toying around with some design ideas based on his favorite cartoons. “You can’t go wrong with anime,” he slyly notes to me. From there, he shot some product shots of his first work, much to the adoration of his friends, and began launching them on his website.

He says that the Buttercup (from Powerpuff Girls) designs that he did were some of the first that put him on the map. Apparently he was pretty pleased with how that project came out. “Damn, I wasn’t expecting the project to come out that good,” he jokes to me. He posted it to his IG, and immediately got a ton of love from the design. “So this is what you guys want, say less.”

And from there, the floodgates opened. There were so many characters he wanted to create designs with. As for the future, there are a lot of characters he plans to reference going forward: “My next few releases, I’m doing more anime characters from different shows, and I’m using more hypebeast brands with characters just to see how it turns out, to see the reaction.”  He plans to reference characters from Sword Art Online, Berserk (one of his favorite anime), some of BAPE’s iconic cartoons and more. 

As far as what kind of pieces, he tells me: “I just really wanna do more rugs.” In addition to rugs, he’s releasing some Mew-inspired jeans in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes on his socials and website for that drop. We might even see some Pikachu denim. In our conversation, he rattles off a ton of designs and concepts that he plans to work on in the coming days, weeks, months and years. “Way more projects, way more. But that’s a little sneak peek,” he grins to me.

Just like any good artist, Noralache isn’t as focused on the destination as he is on the journey. Since his inception in the fashion world in 2015 through the current day, he has been evolving. He leaves me with a reflection on what he’s done: ​​

"This whole journey, I’ve just been progressing and progressing. Elevating.”