Dear Kids,

Before my mom passed, she wrote in a letter: Dear Kids, always follow your dreams. Those words never left me. They became the name on the label, and the reason there is a label at all.

It all started in 2018 when I fell headfirst into streetwear. I was fascinated not just by the clothes, but by the communities that formed around them. The way a shared aesthetic could pull people together, build something real, make a person feel like they belonged somewhere. It gave me the sense of validation I had always been chasing. Clothes became the language I used to say the things I didn’t have words for yet.

Dear Kids was born in 2023, in Appalachia. The ideas came from there. The people who believed in it first — my family, my friends from home, people I’d met in college halls and hollers — they all came from there too. Every one of them woven from the same fabric as me, worn out from the same experiences. I didn’t always see it that way. But you can’t outrun your foundation, and the longer I tried, the more I understood I never wanted to.

Dear Kids is for the people who don’t need the room’s approval. Who have gone through something, taken a breath, and kept going anyway. It’s a brand with rough edges and soft spots, for people who connect with their clothes’ stories and let them do the talking.

The vision is long. To grow out of this mountain state and into the world, from printed graphics into full cut-and-sew collections — sourced in Appalachia, brought to life on our own terms, on our own land in West Virginia. And if one day the name shines up there among the big ones, it’ll be because we never forgot the letter. It’s going to be because, dear kids, we always followed our dreams.

— Ryan Shatto, Founder