That kerfuffle between Top Model winner Adrianne Curry and Perez Hilton hit a little close to home with one of my friends.
It's one thing for a celebrity to shoot off their mouth and take the flack for it themselves, but it turns out that any company for which that celeb might have posed, spoken, modeled or worked - either currently or in the past - ends up feeling the heat as well.
Apparently Curry was a model for Von Dutch Watches several months ago, therefore my friend KenE who runs all the marketing for Von Dutch got a deluge of calls regarding her comments. Never mind that Curry wasn't a current model for the brand, or that Von Dutch Watches is actually separate from the other Von Dutch companies. It was such a loose connection, yet he still spent the better part of two days doing damage control. I'm all for free speech, but people should be conscious of just how loud their voice is and how far-reaching the effects can be.
The upside of all this is that I learned a lot more about who Von Dutch (Kenny Howard) the person was: an artist, mechanic, metalworker, painter and innovator of pinstriping and Kustom Kulture.
All reports indicate he was pretty eccentric and liked to stay close to the edge:
"I make a point of staying right at the edge of poverty. I don't have a pair of pants without a hole in them, and the only pair of boots I have are on my feet. I don't mess around with unnecessary stuff, so I don't need much money. I believe it's meant to be that way. There's a 'struggle' you have to go through, and if you make a lot of money it doesn't make the 'struggle' go away. It just makes it more complicated. If you keep poor, the struggle is simple. "
Keep poor, kids. Metaphorically speaking.
