We caught up with Dallas and Cole Chreptyk of Alterior to chat about the brand, the store, working with family, collabs and leather. 

Hey guys whats goin on? Hows life treating you?

Yo Tom! No complaints, life is good man. Vancouver has been fairly mellow restriction wise for us, so business has been as usual for the most part.

So for those who don't know, Alterior is the brand and A Living Taste is the store?

Yeah that's more or less the concept. Alterior is our label and A Living Taste is our overall curation that we have built around Alterior.

Can you explain a bit about both for us?

Alterior started in 2014 as our line of handmade leather products. We began by making items for friends, and a few select shops and brands. Our goal was to create a brand that was focused on the ethos of producing what was necessary and not just creating things for the sake of it.

A Living Taste basically has been the organic progression of Alterior over the years. It's our way of expressing what we are really trying to do, but not only in the form of a leather product.                                                                         

Alterior is a bit of a family business. How and when did you guys start working together and how is being brothers and business partners working out?

It truly is haha. Being brothers, I guess in a way we have never not worked together. We're with each other everyday and in the past have even had a lot of the same jobs working alongside each other. I don’t think we have a “business partner” relationship; we're just brothers who both share common goals and want the best for each other.

You guys are busy! Lots of little projects going on. How did the recent collaborations with JAM and Theme come about?

Yeah man, we like to keep ourselves busy haha. The problem is there isn’t enough time to do them all! These projects came out of concepts that we had been thinking about for awhile. We knew Sam (JAM) and Tom (Theme) were the ones we wanted to execute these ideas with. Working with talented artists like them make collaborating incredibly easy.

Is it safe to say your main skill / love is working with and creating products from leather?

I would say our main skill is working with leather just because that's what we have put most of our time and energy into. But our main love is simply the process of making and designing a well thought out idea. We love to obsess over all of the details that go into executing a project.

How did you get into working with leather specifically?

We got introduced to leather through working with our good friends at Livestock. We had the opportunity to have a hand in producing a leather piece with them and after seeing the process, we were hooked and wanted to keep learning. Up until then, we had only been working on graphic t-shirts, etc and we were pretty uninspired with that.

Whats your favourite item to make and whats the most difficult?

Our Standard and Narrow belts are the most staple items we have and are probably our favourite to make. The most difficult would be something like our Full-zip wallet due to the intricacy and amount of stitching involved.

Youve made leather goods for brands like Braindead and Mister Green right? How did that come about and who would you like to work with down the line?

Yes we have made some exclusive leather products for both Braindead and Mister Green. Again, these were collaborations that we had been wanting to create for quite some time. We had the pleasure of getting to know both brands and through all of it, were able to organically create these items for them. Special shout out to Ariel at Mister Green, as he has been a real mentor to us over the years. We are super stoked on the homies out in Philly who are running Allcaps Studio. Really excited to do work with them in the future.

Whats next for you guys?

Just continue to build out our web store and to keep up with our current work flow. We have lots of projects planned for this year. Its time to get after it!!!

Shop our exclusive collection by JAM for Alterior here and the new Alterior x Tomorrow hand made leather incense burners and lighter holders here and check the mix we did for the guys below.