A Problem of State: Exhibition Interview w/ H.I.M. Studios’ Frank Robertson

NOTE: These interviews have been edited for clarity and length. Interview conducted and edited by Antenna Communications Coordinator FreeQuency, photos by Jaelyn “Yaya” Hill. “A Problem of State” is on view at Antenna:3718 from January-February 2026.

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FreeQuency: Just to start off – let me know your name, your pronouns, and anything you want to say to introduce yourself, your studio and how you got into the fashion world.

Frank: My name’s Frank Robinson. I’m born and raised uptown New Orleans and I go by He/Him pronouns. My brand, my studio is called H.I.M. Studios, which stands for “Hands in Motion”. The name came from my days as a welder – I welded for 4 years building naval crafts – and it also has a place in my background as an applied engineer.  

My first introduction to fashion was through a company called Queork which had 2 stores – one on Magazine and one in the French quarter. This was a brand that was doing the ‘made in New Orleans thing’, and that was the first time I’d ever seen that. I was inspired [by Queork] to be , ‘if they did it and they got national notoriety, then I can do it. They actually were featured on the CNBC show called “The Profit”, and I was one of the quote unquote ‘inner city kids’ who wound up becoming a part of their program. After [the program], Queork came to me because they were looking for cheap labor, so that’s where I got my first introduction to making bags. When I worked there, I was doing sewing and assembly and it just came natural. I was doing things like reupholstering a couch, making bags, gluing shoes – it just made sense when I first did it. 

When COVID happened, Queork closed and my brain first went to “I’m gonna go weld” and from there, everything started to gel. I started making my own clothes to wear to work, and that let me know  I can do this. That’s where the boot [from the exhibition] came into place. I wanted to see if I could make myself a boot to go to work in.

FreeQuency: Are they comfy?

Frank: Oh, hell yeah! Believe it or not, the night of the exhibition opening, a great deal of people were asking me, “can you feel the screws?”

[It reminded me] that we don’t really know quality very much anymore because when you’re getting higher end garments or higher end pieces, there’s things you don’t see that most people wouldn’t know is a standard to have when making it like screws at the bottom of a sole. That’s for the cobbler to know this is made with good quality because it’s made for me to take apart. 

FreeQuency: Can you tell me a little bit more about the name “H.I.M. Studios” and “A Problem of State” and how you came to them? 

Frank: I welded at a place called Textron for two years. There was this guy who heard through the grapevine at the shipyard [that I sew] so he was like “hey can you hem me some pants?” and I said yeah. We were walking off together when our lunch break was over, and he was like “hem them cuz you’re him”. My mind pondered that a little bit…at first I thought he was saying something disrespectful, but he was like, “no, I’m just saying, you know…hem them cuz you’re HIM”.  

As the day go on – when you work 12 hour days, honestly the only thing your brain can do is just jog – I’m like “hem, him,…I always wanted a studio, so ‘him studios’, but it can’t just be ‘him’ because someone’s gonna think it’s ego driven, or it’s referring to God, and all that…nah…gotta be something….what are my hands doing? My hands always moving…hands in motion…Hands in motion…H.I.M…“and it just hit me. I went through a few iterations of the name like ‘H1M’ with the ‘one’ standing for ‘originality never ends’, but that didn’t feel right. 

“A Problem of State” came from the idea that New Orleans isn’t known as a fashion hub. It’s known for the food, the culture, but it’s not known amongst the [fashion] community to want to work together. So I brought up “A Problem of State” to highlight how there is a disconnect amongst the artists in the communities, and how we would rather, judge from afar or not acknowledge the commonalities we have.

Through showing things like a backpack or a couch [in the exhibition], it shows the connect we have with one another. One of my biggest things was to leave room for people to ask questions about the textiles. Throughout opening night, people kept asking questions, especially about the boot, like “why just not go buy  a boot and just take it apart and just repurpose that?”, but that’s the problem. The problem is we’ve lost faith in a person standing in front of us saying they made it. I’ve felt for the longest that one, we’ve lost faith in our abilities as creatives or designers, to where when someone says [they made something], you have a lack of care that they said that they did it. I was hoping to create a larger debate by having people ask, “what took you to make this, and why did you make it”? To make people curious again. 

FreeQuency: I’m curious about the denim Boxing Set and your choice to include it in this fashion exhibition – what was your decision making process?

Frank: I come from a big family. I’m the youngest of 9 kids and I have like 38 nieces and nephews, and on my mom’s side, I had an uncle who unfortunately passed away. I looked up to him and oddly enough, he did some time in Angola and his style was something I’d never seen before. I don’t know what it is about Black culture – when a relative gets out of jail, for some reason, they look a great deal different from when they entered. When I seen him and his style at that time, because he was boxing, he’d come home with bandages and scars on him and all that – a cigarette in his mouth, bandana tied, tank top tucked to some Levi’s with some military boots…and I’m thinking, ‘yo, I want that style when I’m able to buy my own clothes’. 

I wanted to create something as a testament for him first and foremost, and second for the fight for denim to stay relevant throughout fashion, and also our fight as Black folk by being a part of a system that really pushes the actual impact that we have on fashion to the background. [The items in the boxing part of the exhibition] can actually be worn in an actual bout. The crotch guard can actually be used in a fight, as can the Speed Bag, the Punching Bag – everything. 

That’s something I enjoy highlighting – that it’s not just fashion from a theoretical point of view. These pieces are all theory and application so you can actually use all these pieces. You can actually wear this denim kimono, you can wear this backpack or the boot, and you can sit on a couch and run PlayStation 2. I actually brought this punching bag to the New Orleans Boxing Club and had one of their boxers hit it. They were a bit surprised ’cause they never had a person come in and say, “Hey, do y’all test punching bags?” and because [they were] looking at the person who made it. It was interesting to see that and have them interact with this fully functional piece. 

FreeQuency: I see you used a lot of denim in “A Problem of State” – tell me a bit about this material and why you choose to use it for this exhibition.

Frank: I love denim, obviously – I think it’s very apparent that I’m obsessed with denim. It’s part of a bigger collection idea called “Denim Diet”. I have this dream of having an apartment that’s literally surrounded with denim – like the remote for the TV is denim, the oven mitts are denim, the shower is denim, the shower curtain is denim – all of it. Denim has a historic [cultural] relevance to it too. I make all of it. I do all my own pattern drafting on my own sourcing and cleaning.  I decided to make nothing but statement pieces out of this textile – such as a denim couch, a salvaged denim kimono, a director’s chair etc – to give praise to this textile that one has history amongst Black folks due to the nature of our history with cotton. I wanted to bring that forward, while also maintaining a sense of individual style with the textile.

My 1st chance to work with denim was at a fashion competition in Shreveport with six designers from across the United States. Gurleen (who has a concurrent fashion exhibition upstairs at Antenna:3718 called “i thought about killing a man’) and I were figuring things out and she asked, ‘what textile are you going to use? this is your 1st fashion show, you need to have something that makes you stand out‘.

I brought up my uncle being in prison in Angola and how when he came home, he was dripped out in all denim because that’s what the Angola inmates wore. She said “you should do that”, and I said, ‘okay’. This is also when I was doing studio tech work at Material Institute. They drove us to Vidalia Mills, and at this time, I didn’t know that it was one of the last few textile manufacturers exclusively of salvaged denim in the United States . When I seen it, it was just this mound of denim, and if you can imagine a designer seeing that, the fire in me grew. It turned into lava and I just started rummaging through it. It was trash denim oddly enough, but that’s where the first idea came. 

I really, really became obsessed with denim while making this boxing collection. It made me realize I want to make pieces that are historic – because like I said, this denim mill no longer exists, it is now out of commission. They filed for bankruptcy in late 2024, so that was a moment in history. We have the government saying, “oh, bring [manufacturing] back to America’, but this is something that has now since closed…so it’s a bit redundant for that to be said…

FreeQuency: What is it that you want people to take away from the exhibition “A Problem of State”? 

Frank: I want people to be curious again about what they’re seeing and open up the door for wanting to work together more. I’ve tried a few times inviting other designers to work with me, or work with an idea, and it has always fell flat on its face. There’s always this idea that someone wants to be the HNA, and I find that very, very difficult because the person who is the most capable usually is at the back of the line because they can actually facilitate better than the people that’s a part of it. So…I just want people to be curious again, man. That’s really it. I just want people to be a little bit more curious about what they’re seeing and be a little bit more curious about, ‘can WE do something?”, but unfortunately, there’s a HNA problem. 

FreeQuency: you say you want folks to get curious and re-familiar with the means of production, what role do you think fashion plays in the larger art world? 

Frank: I don’t have a traditional point of reference in fashion, I only have the technical side…I’m the grunt, basically, the person who made the thing.

Brands today have taught us to buy, buy, buy, but not be curious about where it comes from. It’s crazy how ‘Made in China’ has the same value of what you’re standing looking at in front of you right now. It’s a bit weird that you’re not curious about who made that, you’re not curious about how are they feeling that day? Was it a child? Was it a was it a person working on retirement? Were they working with one hand? Did they had limited bathroom breaks? I’m curious about that. Where do we draw the line with what we care about and what we don’t care about with fashion? 

It’s interesting because there’s a few brands that I’ve looked at up here, and they are saying , ‘hey, we make everything here, we do it all here’, but I still see they’re hailing ‘Made in China’ more than what they make.

FreeQuency: I’m curious about something you said earlier. We’re at your exhibition so I’m approaching you as an artist, but you said something like “I do the grunt work, the more technical aspects”. How are you drawing that line between fashion and the making of functional things knowing we all can’t be around naked versus when it becomes a part of your art or creative process? 

Frank: Through wearing it everyday. I’m usually wearing about 90% of my own work. This year i plan on making shoes. I’m capable of making my shirt, my underwear, my pants, my belt…just existing with it every day to where it becomes normal. Prime example – when you become vegan, you’re like “I’m just not gonna eat meat for like 2 weeks”, and then that 2 weeks becomes a month and then a few years passes and it’s just normal to you. It’s no longer about how long you’ve been doing it, but just, has it become normal yet? 

FreeQuency: But also, it is about how you’re doing it…because, you can be a vegan and eat the unseasoned leaves on the tree outside… 

Frank: Yeah, that’s a quality associated…yeah… 

FreeQuency: …and it’s same with you. You can make a really shitty, ugly pair of shoes or you can make some comfortable ones or some stylish and comfortable one. I’m asking where that negotiation is for you as a creator…even if you don’t necessarily consider yourself an artist, there is some aesthetic consideration happening. This isn’t a standard issue jacket in your exhibition. You put some design, thought, color, etc. into it. So what’s the difference? 

Frank: I do have the technical ability first and foremost, because as I said, my background is in engineering. I built naval crafts for three, four years, so I do have that aspect of seeing something all the way through and maintaining quality throughout the entire process. I do have  my own perspective from reading mangas and playing video games to give it style, so I feel I’ve learned the fundamentals to be able to sit here and execute my own lens and creating from that. 

FreeQuency: you were talking earlier about how fashion is excluded from the New Orleans art scene…I’m wondering how you would like to see it show up? 

Frank: Through New Orleans designers actually taking the quality of their work serious which means that if you’re saying something is worth $500 or a $1000, it needs to look double that in quality, and it needs to hold up just as much too. That is a thing, I ain’t gonna lie. For example, this backpack, if I’m saying I’m selling it for two grand, it needs to look like it’s worth five, but it also need to be in comparison to the higher thresholds of fashion when you go to places like Paris and you see an actual bag that was made by one person with a photo of that person and if there’s blemishes or imperfections, they own it because it was made by this one person. So really taking the quality of the work serious and I would hope that more designers that call themselves designers or studios or fashion houses, capitalize on that. Don’t just be creative for creatives sake, genuinely, learn how to make clothes. If you’re a big fan of Rick Owens, he probably said it the best, “learn how to make clothes”. Shut the fuck up, learn how to make clothes, learn how to pattern draft…fuck sketches, just make the thing, but make it right. 

FreeQuency: Do you think that New Orleans has a particular style about it? 

Frank: yeah, I do….it’s gonna sound a bit harsh but…New Orleans style is very…you can say it doesn’t have class. It doesn’t have this sense of  wanting to wear something of good quality because it’s so hot up here. There’s no reason for people to want to wear the best quality clothes because you don’t really care about that. 

The style that I believe New Orleans does have is very ‘fast food’, if I can say that. I feel that the clothes and the quality of what people want to wear is just…if fashion in New Orleans existed, then people would treat it as a drive-through at a Rally’s or a McDonald’s. That’s just my personal opinion. 

FreeQuency: Is there anything else you want to highlight or say or make sure is mentioned about this exhibition? 

Frank: These pieces are actually going to be rotated. I could give a sneak peek of what it is…it’s going to be a a denim golf bag, fully functional that’s gonna take the place of the denim kimono and a basketball with the matching Nike Dunks. It’s coming. A denim basketball…There’s more to come.