We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cody Montgomery a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cody, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

So the story goes that I, Cody Montgomery, was living in rural Iowa on my families tree farm in a tiny off-the-grid cabin called the Danger Shack. One day I discovered that a mouse had chewed all these little holes through my t-shirt. At first I was mad, but then I was like “hey this actually pretty cool.” I washed the shirt and started wearing it all the time. I tried to make some more using scissors and stuff but none of the shirts had the same organic randomness to it that I loved. One day it clicked, quite literally, and I found myself out behind the Danger Shack blasting holes through my clothing with my brothers old 12 gauge shotgun. From there I started experimenting with all different kinds of clothing and textiles and came up with the name Totally Blown. At that point I felt I had something unique, exciting, and original to work with and headed back out west to introduce it to the world. I soon discovered the wild desert city of Joshua Tree which felt like a perfect match of rugged and raw and opened up shop. The brand quickly took off and now nearly 10 years and thousands upon thousands of pieces of clothing later, we are still based in Joshua Tree, we still use shotguns to distress our clothing, we’ve made our mark upon the international fashion world with features in Elle and Vogue to name a couple, but now we are also taking one step further by giving back a portion of our profits to help end gun violence.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So my name is Cody Montgomery, and I’m the founder, owner, and creative force behind Totally Blown. I was born in Detroit and raised mostly in Iowa before studying textiles out east and then commercial photography out west. I’ve always considered myself an artist, but I prefer to make objects that people can use and not just look at. Totally Blown is a great outlet for me because it puts together a lot of my different skills in fashion, photography, textiles, art, design, and business and also has a social/political competent to it as well in addressing and helping to end gun violence. The clothing itself its super unique and original and people love the story behind the brand as well as our mission. We’ve found a niche in creating wearable art that challenges people to think critically about gun use while at the same time creates gorgeous and raw one of a kind pieces of clothing that people look and feel great in. Part of what I love about the clothing is how much depth it has to it. Yes it’s holy clothing (though we do offer most styles not distressed as well), but it also symbolizes us as people in a world that has strengths and weakness, transparency and mystery, perfection and chaos all existing at the same time. We’re not scared, we’re not perfect, we are a product of a radical and crazy time in the world that we dare to challenge and recreate through the language of what we wear.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

So one of the most exciting parts of Totally Blown is our unique manufacturing process where we essentially use a shotgun to blast little holes in our clothing. So obviously there’s no hand book here, so it was essentially trial and error coming up with a technique to distress the clothing without blasting it to shreds. Over time I developed a technique where I make a barricade way out in the desert and shoot from a certain distance, with the right barrel length, ammunition, textile, thickness, etc. But when I first started out and hadn’t fine tuned the production yet and I got this huge order from Urban Outfitters and there was a deadline and a lot of money invested and I just went out and totally destroyed like boxes and boxes of t-shirts trying to stack them all up and stream line the process. Luckily I was able to modify a lot of the pieces into tank tops and tapestries for later use and I did learn quickly from the experience and was able to come up with a solution to successfully fulfill the order, but omg was it ever a disaster in the beginning there. Now our process is super reliable and streamline and we even offer distressing services for other brands which we have done a ton of, but it sure has been a wild west gun toting adventure along the way and really still is. That’s probably one of the main things that has kept me going with Totally Blown, is never exactly knowing what I’m going to get, so for me as a creative, that surprise moment of chaos followed by revel is still a thrill.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Totally Blown has had to adapt a lot over the years, particularly the last few. Covid was certainly a curve ball. I was able to get through it okay though by adjusting to more online sales by focusing on the e commerce website and doing more social media and online promotions as opposed to in person events. Next came dating a woman (now my wife) who lived in Pasadena with her young son so I had to figure out how to manage Totally Blown from two locations with a lot of back and forth and cute little buddy sidekick. The latest and by far the most challenging chapter has been raising our own baby boy. My attention has had to shift heavily towards taking care of the kids and thus figuring out how to immensely streamline Totally Blown to get as much accomplished with the least amount of time and sleep imaginable. The good news there is I love my family to death and were almost out of the woods with daycare and 2nd grade right around the corner. I’m so excited to get back spending more time on Totally Blown developing new products, doing fun photoshoots, and expanding the brand to meet the expanding needs of my family. Kids clothes, home line, original art, and lot more to come!!

Contact Info:

• Website: totallyblown.us
• Instagram: @totally__blown
• Facebook: facebook.com/totallyblown
• Linkedin: Cody Montgomery

Image Credits
Images copyright 2023: Cody Montgomery Male Model: Avery Theus Female Model: Mataji Booker Graham