Made in St Louis, Missouri

69 Tearz is a collaboration between Lauren dela Roche and Curtis Campanelli. Initially formed as 96 Tearz Vintage, after the ? & the Mysterians song “96 tears,” in 2020 as an outlet for Lauren’s bins addiction. After finding another company in Canada with the same name, we flipped the numbers around and dropped the vintage.

In July 2021, during a residency in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Lauren was experiencing a creative block in her fine art career. During this time, Curtis made the first pair of elastic waist pants out of heavy-weight seamless feed sacks and had Lauren draw on them. Over the next months, we traveled and lived in Laurens hand built cabin in East Central Minnesota where we developed the style more. During that time, almost no two pairs repeated imagery. Now we have a developed brand and image that you know and love.

Curtis sews the garments, and Lauren draws on them. Originally, all the work was done between the two of us, but we have grown to outsource some of the work to a couple of local STL makers. All of our items are either handmade, hand-drawn, hand-painted, or screen printed (or a mixture of all) in very small runs. We use antique, deadstock, and vintage materials sourced from all over the US, most commonly heavy-weight cotton seamless feed sacks. Sustainability-focused, slow fashion forward. We make unique, long-lasting one-off pieces.

Press:

2022, Caron Callahan Collaboration CLICK HERE

2023, DEGEN Collaboration CLICK HERE