hi my name is garrison goode... some people call me garri. i was born in New Jersey and lived in a city named South Orange until the age of 8. my family then moved to Michigan where we lived in two cities Portage & Ann Arbor Michigan, for a total of about 4 years. then we moved to River Hills, Wisconsin where i ended up attending middle/high school. we moved so much because my mom is a rockstar & kept on making big jumps in corporate America as a lead communicator for large companies.

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moving a lot growing up, i embraced being the new kid in different schools & on different teams. also, i have always been somewhat tall for my age so i always stuck out. thus, i was quick to embody who I was & did not shy away from it regardless of the situation i was in. although it got to a point for me that i desired to make sure i looked different on purpose. standing out was something that just happened naturally since many times i was the new, tall, black kid. but then since i was comfortable in my own skin i made a subconscious shift of desiring to wear different clothing in order to stick out more. the main goal of this was to make sure, at all times i was wearing something different from those around me... regardless of the situation.

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in addition, my family was/is a sports orientated family... my parents met at Northwestern where my dad played basketball. My older sister play volleyball at the University of Michigan. my younger sister played soccer, basketball, volleyball and ran track and field up until high school. i was good at soccer, baseball and basketball. i only played two years of football growing up, because i disliked being tackled. also, i got cut from my the volleyball team because i went to a powerhouse who didn't have time to teach me. so, i chose to focus on basketball in high school & ended up doing okay. 

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i was recruited to play basketball at some colleges & narrowed my decision down to Bradley University in Illinois, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, & University of California Davis. Of course i chose the Cali school. i have always believed i was a California kid at heart so when i got the chance i took it & ran with it. it was the best fit for me academic wise, lifestyle wise, athletic wise, weather wise, etc. some of my best friends to this date were my teammates at UC Davis. 5 of the 10 groomsmen i had in our wedding were from the team. & i met my lovely wife their too.

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anyways, we won 2 championships at Davis. in 2017, my sophomore year we went to the NCAA Tournament. we beat our rivals, UC Irvine in the Big West Championship Game. the next week we went to Dayton to be in the First-Four. There were played NC Central. & guess what we did... we went ahead & got the school's first win in the NCAA tournament. a couple days later we were in Oklahoma City, playing the #1 seeded Kansas Jayhawks. u can probably guess what the outcome was, but i will say... we gave them a goode fight. 

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the next year, we ended up winning the Regular Season Conference Title. please ask for more details on that because it was an insanely fun time. unfortunately we did end up losing in the conference tournament that next week so we ended up going to the NIT Tournament. in the first round we went to Utah, and gave them a tough game, but ended up losing by a few points.

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the next year in 2019 my time at UC Davis came to an end... i graduated with an Economics Degree & ended up going to grad school in the United Kingdom. i went to the University of Nottingham which is in the Midlands of England. i studied Entrepreneurship, Innovation, & Management while also hooping for the Uni & playing for a semi-pro team named the Nottingham Hoods. it was such a lovely experience living abroad because i was exposed to so many new cultures, people, food, perspectives, & of course fashion. while being busy playing basketball out there, i somehow managed to hop over to Manchester once & London a few times & let me tell u. magical... those cities are filled with good energy. in the words of my dear friend Rogers, the vibes were immaculate. it is safe to say i could see emilee & i living there one day.

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the fashion was stupid over there... i fit right in (kinda). i thought the 6 suitcases full of clothes i brought was enough, but i was still underdressed over there. they do not play around. there was inspiration everywhere i walked around, from the tourists walking, to the locals on the bus, to the old streets/buildings... it just felt like a runway. i felt like i had to wear a nice fit to Tesco or Sainsbury's (grocery stores).

 

so im there doing my thing, & then covid hit in spring of 2020. so i come home, do school virtually, & have a lot of time to reflect... that time had me realize that i was falling out of love with basketball & falling more in love with fashion.  

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also, i ended up reconnecting with my now wife, Emilee since we were pursuing our faith around the same time. it was like my first week back from living abroad & i knew that there was going to be an online gathering of Christian Athletes. an organization called Athlete in Actions  (AIA) runs these meeting & i was aware of it because i was a part of this organization at UC Davis. anyways, i see Emilee on the zoom & i was shocked because she was not a part of AIA when i was in school. fun fact, Emilee was on the dance team at Davis while i was playing basketball... so long story short, right after that meeting, we ended up talking as friends & after we few months of chatting we started hanging out, & then in August of 2020 we started officially dating & the rest is HIStory. 

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okay, so im back home because of covid. but to keep it short, for my Entrepreneurship Degree, we had to do a dissertation which consisted of creating a massive business plan/pitch for an organization you want to start one day. so, i chose to do a business plan for this brand & as im doing it, it started to really make sense & become something that was feasible to achieve. at the same time, because of covid there was less gym time, & my time away from the game showed my lack of desire to get back to that grind... so i had no other choice, but to re-direct my focus/attention to fashion. (also my faith had a large part to do with it as well so if u would like to learn more about my faith journey, connect with me)

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thus, even tho i hated the concept of school, after graduating from Nottingham, that fall i ended up going to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. since i was living in the Bay Area at the time, i completed everything remotely since the school was in Los Angeles. i studied Merchandise Product Development which is mostly business of fashion with some design elements to it as well. the classes i took consisted of Hand/Digital Sketching, Machine Sewing, Pattern Making, Fabric Identification, Sewing, Trend Research, Sustainability Research, Merchandise Assortment Planning, & Global Sourcing. throughout my time at FIDM, i thought of so many concepts/designs that i may never would have thought of if i did not have that education.

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so i graduated from FIDM in June of 2022, got married the next month on July 15th, and then in August, moved down to Oceanside, California where we still currently reside.

 

if u would like to learn more, contact me.