With the abundance of social media sites, magazines, blogs, and influencers, it’s easy to find style inspiration from all over. However, what happens when you just don’t connect with anything out there? You take it upon yourself to create your own style, that’s what! And, that is exactly what one stylish young man had to courage and creativity to do.

Our More Than Artisans initiative strives to support local artists and entrepreneurs by sharing their stories. This week, we focus on Lucas, the founder of the men’s fashion and style brand, Eleet Fashion.

We interviewed Lucas to learn more about the origins of Eleet Fashion, as well as his inspirations, journey, and goals.

Story Leather: What influenced you to start your brand? / What is the story behind the establishment of Eleet Fashion?

Lucas: When I started our page, I was sitting in my anatomy class during senior year in High School, bored, and not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I remember trying to get into the "street style" world and trying to learn about it, but I always struggled to find a page that could help me with that, and whenever I found something, they would be posting things so unaffordable, that it wasn't even worth following. And so I started Eleet Fashion, I wanted to help real people to better themselves, while staying realistic in what most people are able to afford. I always wanted to have my own brand and as time went on I realized, I was already building a brand with Eleet Fashion, but I was building it the other way around, and we are still on the way.

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Story Leather: Where do you derive your style inspiration from?

Lucas: My mom always tells me that since I was a kid, I would always prefer receiving clothes and shoes as gifts rather than toys. Of course, all of us are influenced by our experiences in life, and the cultures we grow up around and the people we grow up listening to, and me being a drummer, always involved with music, made me open to all kinds of arts. But, like everyone else during the time we started the page, I was mainly inspired by Kanye West, Pharrell Williams. Those guys that were around making awesome sneakers at the time. Shoes were always a big passion of mine, ever since I was a kid. Some of the Air Yeezys are still my grails (sneakerhead term), and with the sneakers, came the clothes and the details put together on every outfit.

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Story Leather: What makes Eleet Fashion unique?

Lucas: I believe the attention to details, and just how serious we take every photo we post, the content we produce for brands, and that attention to detail and professionalism goes into every single aspect of our work, be it our captions, photos, giveaways, anything we do. And my unique ideas, as far as clothes go, are very different, I'm very into the futuristic and unique clothes and shoes, the laceless, zippered, glow in the dark, strapped sneakers, the strangely cut, with unique fabrics and textures clothing, that kind of stuff. I try to slowly implement that into our page, I say slowly because people need to get used to that kind of thing, and be able to wrap their minds around the idea, step by step. My goal is to become a brand that does unique things for unique people.

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Story Leather: What are your short term and/or long term goals for Eleet Fashion?

Lucas: Short term, I'd say keep bringing things that our followers enjoy, continue producing the content for brands that we enjoy doing so much, and eventually in a not-so-long term, I want to keep producing content for brands, but in a larger scale and I want to make Eleet Clothing line and sneakers, things people will be able enjoy, and afford.

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Story Leather: What motivates you to continue building this brand?

Lucas: We've come a long way since we started with our 0 followers, but we are not where we want to be yet. We started the other way around of what brands typically do, we are building the brand, and its following,  before we have our physical products available for everyone to buy. Also, the fact that many brands are loving the content we produce for them, motivates me a lot to keep going. Small achievements like, one of the photos we produced for Coca Cola during their Christmas campaign last year, being labeled brand favorite, one of the photos we took for Amazon Video being used by them on a future campaign, True Religion using our photo on their social media, those kinds of achievements rekindle the flame and keeps us going.

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Story Leather: What does a typical work day look like for you at Eleet Fashion?

Lucas: What we are doing the most now is producing content for brands. We are always connecting with brands and doing collaborations with our page, and because of all that attention to detail, and the creative eye I developed with time, after seeing so many photos and videos, and reading articles, brands have been enjoying our work, and really appreciating the photos we take with their products, it makes me very happy. In our daily work, we are typically connecting and closing content deals with brands, taking and editing the photos for the brands, curating the best outfits we see and reposting some of the best to instagram, we are always engaging with our followers on our snapchat too, giving them a behind the scenes look, and exclusive information and photos. My mom is my major daily help with the page, she helps on everything we do.

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Story Leather: Where do you see yourself and your business/ brand is 10 years? 20years?

Lucas:  I see ourselves producing content for brands on a larger scale, something I have found to enjoy doing very much, and I see our Eleet Clothing as a well established clothing brand, that has its solid fan base, and that people enjoy owning and wearing very much. And the money, as Roman Atwood says, "Money is a byproduct of what you love". If you'd like to join us on that journey, and be part of it, add us on snapchat and follow us on instagram, both @eleetfashion.