Joe Boxer
The interview was featured in decode magazine April 1997

Has everybody gone crazy? Why should the closing show of New York fashion week end in Reykjavik, Iceland? Well, designer Nick Graham founder of the famous underwear Joe Boxer, thought that was a brilliant idea and in the end everybody else agreed. Nick Graham, described as a shortsighted visionary by industry experts is the founder, CEO and Chief Underpants Officer of Joe Boxer, Corp. Nick Graham.

A native of Calgary, Canada, Graham moved to San Francisco at the age of 27 and started a small business making men's novelty ties in 1985. Convinced the stuffy world of men's undergarments needed his unconventional approach, Graham turned his sights to designing men's underwear. Graham drew upon his graphic design background and created a line of boxer shorts with a range of unexpected designs, typified by the Imperial Hoser, the famous red tertan plaid boxer that came with a detachable raccoon tail!

When Graham presented the line to buyer from Mace's department store, the exuberant response resulted in Macys purchasing the entire line at first glance! From there, Graham took what started as an idea with less than $1,00 in capital, and built the multi-million dollar underwear empire, recognized worldwide as JOE BOXER.

Since then, Graham's bold humorous and unexpected graphic patterns have paved the way for an entirely new category in mens wear-novelty fashion underwear. Under Graham's direction, Joe Boxer produces more than 1,000 eye-catching designs annually for it's five divisions: Men; Women; Kids; Time; and, Active! Which is the newest division. Currently JOE BOXER markets a broad range of lifestyle apparel and accessories, including sleepwear, loungewear, activewear, innerwear, basic underwear, hosiery and neckwear. Marketed internationally, Joe Boxer has a global fan-base that eagerly awaits each new collection.

We caught up with Nick Graham in hanger 4 at the Reykjavik airport, where he held his spring/summer fashion show, and also closed the fashion week in New York…strange isn't it!

When did you start Joe Boxer.

Eleven years ago, now!

Can you tell us a little bit about how it got started?

I started actually as a musician, a singer and I was always interested in clothes, not seriously, but I needed clean underwear so I thought it would be fun to start my own company. And I just started making them one at a time, and just kept on sowing faster and faster ( laughs ). I just taught myself how to sow.

So you don't have any education in the designing field?

No, I never went to school. I got kicked out of high school so,...(laughs)! I don't draw! I can't draw a straight line! Its not so much about drawing designs, we are a graphic design company!

Was Joe Boxer an instant success?

No it took about four or five years, but that was pretty consistent work. But it's still a lot of work, but for the last four or five years Joe Boxers has become much bigger. It's exciting, I get to do crazy things like these (laughs). AND IŽLL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN! ( Shouts and laughs )

So it must be pretty hectic right now?

Yes it is. But it's all coming together and we will have all this ready in time.

So why Iceland?

People keep asking me that (laughs) Why Iceland? It is much because of my friend Joni Sighvatsson. We had been talking about this for about three years, and he said "you got to do a show in Reykjavik" and here I am doing a show in Reykjavik, he said people would love it, and Joni was right.

What about the website you're making?

Well this company called Plastic out of San Francisco, who is hired by Microsoft, is building the website. Microsoft is a major sponsor for this event. Microsoft really need content...I mean what are we going to do with all this bandwidth, so this was a great opportunity for them to fuse fashion and technology and come to the incredible part of the world, the whole story is big. So they are building a whole website about Joe Boxer goes to Iceland. You should see this one, I do this Viking/Elvis (laughs). This will be going on all weekend, we have been documenting on digital cameras and video all week, so we're building this whole site around it all, it is going to be video, music. It will probably be one of the most sophisticated sites in the world.

You like being here in Iceland?

Yeah! I didnŽt want just to do a runaway show, I'm trying to design a 48 hours of what Iceland is from the President to Botnledja (a.k.a. Silt), from the Vikings to Salmon, So when they come home they are not going to know what happened. There are so many aspects of the trip. There are going to be many intense things happening.

And at the same time introducing Iceland to the rest of the world?

Oh yeah! And after we have finished, a hundred million people are going to see and hear about this. AND PEOPLE KEEP CALLING ME CRAZY

Thorbjorn Ingason wrote the foreword