About Cocky

I’ve never been a girly-girl. I’ve always been a tomboy, through and through.  Never wanting to put on a dress when my Mother needed/wanted me to. I was stubbornly adamant about not changing who I was to please other people.  Always wanting to be outdoors, and playing in the dirt; or playing baseball or roller hockey with the neighborhood kids…tackle football with my two best friend boy neighbors across the street.  I was the girl who was tinkering around with K’nex, or asking for the erector set for Christmas.  The unending battle my Mother had with getting me to leave the house without a Yankee hat on my frizzy, sweat-curled hair.  Always with dirt under my nails.  I loved to stand on the softball field, and stomp or kick up dirt to make a dust cloud, to pretend like I was playing in the World Series for the Yankees, and was some badass baseball player…chewing on a mound of Double Bubble. Everything I did, was the opposite of what one would expect a girl to love and enjoy.  As I grew into adulthood on Long Island, I finally began to embrace my feminine side, and began to LOVE dressing myself, and dressing up. I essentially, loved the feeling of having my own style…and being seen as nothing other than myself.  And although the clothes I put on were different than my choices as a tomboyish child/young teen, I was still being myself and expressing that through my own style choices.  I have always been proud of this duality that I possess. A sincere love for who I am in both facets of style.  This duality is the embodiment of the style that is now seen through my clothing brand, The Cocky Brand. 

 

The Cocky Brand, hatched from a microsecond of a moment back in 2016, when I quite literally, saw a chicken crossing the road by Harpoon Harry’s in Key West.  I was freshly relocated to Key West, from Long Island New York.  Having only vacationed in the Keys 3 times before, I never really understood how these chickens had very much so OWNED this entire island.  “They are our squirrels,” as I tell people that ask about them. It was their World, and we were just living in it.  That Rooster that day was on a mission to go steal someone’s lunch at Harpoon Harry’s, and knew he could do so.  He was so “cocky” about it.  I impulsively texted my then-girlfriend, that I had an idea to put a rooster silhouette next to  #COCKY  on a t-shirt.  I had already taught myself how to screen-print years before using some grass-roots methods.  All we needed was to develop a design, and buy some inks and shirts.   Within a few months, we had our trademarks in place, and made our first handmade, hand-printed runs of shirts and hats.  We made our first buck at the local Key West Artisan Market. The rest is Cocky History. 

 

Circling back to my childhood story, and being the tomboy girl…this lifestyle has fully come full circle when it comes to my career choice. I think my ability to be open-minded when it comes to my work environments, made it an easy segway into becoming a screen-printer in my adult life. All of my childhood lifestyle choices have now translated into a full blown career choice. What I do for a living is also not pretty. Nothing about being a screen printer is a “pretty” process.  You are working very physically, for hours on end. Repetitive movements. Heavy lifting.  Ink seems to just appear and jump onto your clothes and hands, or any surface it decides it wants to be on…whether you need it/want it there or not.  If you’ve ever gone a few laundry loads without cleaning a lint trap in your dryer, you should see what a screen print shop looks like after a run of 100 shirts. I’ve often compared my swept up piles of lint to my 8 lb Shih Tzu.  As I said, nothing about what I do is a pretty process. Needless to say, I could never make a living off of being a screen-printing Instagram influencer.  There isn’t a filter or angle powerful enough to cover up the grime that comes along with this process.  However, I’d never succumb to filtering any portion of who I am, or what I do.  This is me. This is Cocky. This is who we are. And we don’t give a CLUCK about what anyone thinks about it. 

 

The Cocky Brand lets everyone know that we can all unapologetically be true to who we are…and be bold and confident about it.  The style brings both masculine and feminine energies to all of It’s looks.  At The Cocky Brand, we pride ourselves on being Cocky.  We don’t hide behind facades or trends. We don’t ride on a bandwagon. We aren’t followers…we are the leaders of the flock. And we believe in the beauty of genuineness.  Because, it is, in fact, beautiful to be you. 

 

Authenticity Weird. Proudly Bold. Always Cocky.