What is STAZ?

It’s not what but who. Staz is all of us. Staz is who you want to be and the style you want to embrace. Staz is your true self when you feel confident in yourself. Staz was me. Staz IS me. Staz was what people called me even when it wasn’t me anymore. Let me explain.

Staz was a nickname I was given in high school when I first started racing bicycles more seriously and was trying to understand who I was as a person. As any high schooler typically does I went through several different clothing style extremes to try and land on the perfect mix where confidence and attractiveness intersect. A personal brand worth carrying into adulthood. At least that’s what the goal feels like when you’re in your late teens being tasked with making decisions that people claim will map out your entire life’s trajectory. Let me just add here THAT SHIT IS A LIE! There's no need to rush to find your identity as a teenager so just embrace being weird and uncertain. Take your time and enjoy the process of growing and getting older. It's never too late to start something new or to change who you are and what you value. These things are not set in stone.

Anyway, at this point in my life, my style was heavily influenced by stoner bands, hip-hop, and the hyphy movement in the Bay Area of the late '00s. Seven oh seven what up! If you’re reading this then you are likely a fan of cycling in some capacity and can imagine how this sort of style profile doesn’t exactly fit the mold of a road cyclist pursuing a dream of becoming a professional racer in the European pro peloton. I’ll try to dig up a photo that summarizes my vibe from this time but I’ll describe it as a placeholder. I was wearing a black-on-black fitted cap with the bill turned up, an XL white tee on a 5’10” 150lb frame with big block letters on it screen printed in my friend's garage, black Dickies shorts, and a pair of lime green glow-in-the-dark Nike Dunk highs (I wish I still had these). Somehow through a popularity contest, my class voted this icon of fashion the best dressed in the yearbook. Ha! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t super proud of this achievement. I did take pride in what I chose to wear and often made sure my socks matched my outfit even if they were hidden under high-top sneakers and long pants. 

Staz was a name given to me for two reasons and neither had anything to do with my style at the time but I use this as an inflection point where I lost my interest and passion for fashion in pursuit of becoming someone I was supposed to be. A professional cyclist. A professional cyclist doesn’t dress like this. I need to dress like a professional cyclist if I am to be taken seriously. This was not a conscious decision nor one that happened quickly. But I raced bikes seriously for over 10 years and between teammates, team managers, sponsors, and competitors subtly and not so subtly telling me what to wear it completely transformed me. I think it’s important to add here that some of the best people in my life I met through my 10 years of racing, I have learned more from that time about life, business, working hard, and how to behave as a human being than I can even express! The focus of writing this is that I lost my sense of style and upon reflection 10 years after I quit racing and reinvigorating my passion for fashion I am learning about the things that contributed to the change over time.

The point of Staz as a brand is to highlight the personalities behind the handlebars and motivate people to blaze their path of creativity through the clothes they choose to wear on and off the bike. 

I’m sharing this story because I chose to re-embrace the Staz name but not as my nickname. It’s a name for you to use as a reminder to never give up your creativity to fit into a mold you think you should fit in. You can be into heavy metal and hip-hop. You can wear Louis Vouton with leopard print Vans. Why not? You can dress like you’re homeless while working in product design at Apple. You can be a professional athlete and still have a personality and emotions.

So now you know where Staz comes from.

Where do we go from here? The destination is unclear and irrelevant. What we do along the journey is all that matters. Our journey starts with a handful of t-shirt designs developed with some close personal friends who embody the early vision of the Staz brand. There’s only one goal with this brand: to build and maintain a platform that creative people within the world of bicycles can use to express themselves through clothing designs. We’ll explain the who and why behind each collaborative design and share the profits with the artists and athletes we collaborate with.

We hope you choose to wear Staz because you support the individual athlete and/or artist who designed the item you’re wearing and because you believe this type of project is one worth doing.

Cheers,

Chris Stastny