Fantasy Explosion’s Big Bang

“My favorite stuff is from businesses that had no place making any clothes in the first place,” says Kevin Fallon. Fallon, 31, is the proprietor of Fantasy Explosion, an Instagram account that functions as a digital showroom for vintage and rare goods, most of which come from—and are about, in ways both concrete and nebulous—New York City. (The account gives its followers sneak previews of online drops of 30 to 50 items each Friday, with the quickest scooping them up via online shop.)

Fallon does what many present-day Instagram vintage dealers do, bringing us gems on our Instagram feeds, so we don't have to deal with the hassle of rummaging through racks, or the defeat of walking away empty-handed. But Fantasy Explosion is a little different—the best pieces Fallon sells, it often seems, are the ones that shouldn’t exist at all. Fallon’s sentimentality for his city, and his keen eye for the bizarre and unloved, have turned Fantasy Explosion into a cherished resource for deep vintage heads. Call it Fantasy Explosion's big bang: Fallon has so clearly defined what old things he sells that he's now getting into the business of selling brand-new things he designs too. 

At the heart and center of Fantasy is New York. Seasoned New Yorkers will instantly recognize the institutional names: goods from Katz’s Delicatessen, J&R Computer World (RIP), and the Department of Sanitation sit alongside artifacts from cultural moments like the 2003 blackout, and the Mets-Yankees Subway Series.

Situated between that ultra-specific New York ephemera is vintage that sits in the same time, place, and vibe: a promotional Prozac cap, or a homemade-looking tee that says “Microsoft Windows 95 Sucks!” There is also a strong flavor of regional cynicism: tees that read “New Jersey: Look Before you Laugh” or “Welcome To New York Now Go Home!”, and local sensibilities from an MTA shirt that reads “The Shortest Distance Between Two Points…Is A City Bus.”

The thesis of Fantasy Explosion holds that janky earnestness has endless cool, but only when done right, and that doing it right means having a tie to history and personal experience, possibly with a bit of happenstance thrown in. This isn't the hipster irony of meaningless irony of howling wolf tees—instead, it taps a deep vein of nostalgia.

Fantasy Explosion began out of necessity when Fallon moved to New York from Rhode Island in 2013. “I had no money. I didn’t have enough to shop where I really wanted to, so I would do what I knew from home: just go picking and thrift,” he says. Over time, he says, “I amassed an extreme collection of clothing. A lot of it was New York ephemera—local businesses, unions, restaurant institutions, TV stations. Anything you can imagine that makes up New York.”

Fallon’s purchases served as an onboarding to life in the city: “I would recognize a local restaurant, then go grab a slice of pizza from that restaurant, and it was the best pizza I ever had.” After the best slice of pizza of his life, he told himself, “I’m going to come back here, this is my spot, and now I have the tee, so I connected to it. Ultimately, that started happening more and more.” Fallon was tapping into the version of New York that's faded a bit in recent years, as historic storefronts host bank branches, fast fashion reigns, and a good slice on every block becomes less and less likely. 

As time went on, Fallon became a sort of tour guide. “I had all this stuff, and [people] would be like, where’d you get that? Where’s this from? What’s the story behind this?” While working odd jobs in 2017 and dreaming of working for himself, the words “Fantasy” and “Explosion” came together in conversation with friend Nicolas Heller, known to the Internet as New York Nico—a fellow millennial historian of weird New York City. “[The words] flew out of my mouth," he says. "I said, If I don’t do this now, it’s never going to happen.”

Supply for Fantasy is dependent on what Fallon calls “the wild”—the strange, beguiling stuff he finds. “I pick everything because I personally like it,” he says. “In my archive, I have a lot of stuff. I’m not going to release that all at once. I want it to remain special.” No more than half of each drop is New York-related, situated alongside broader vintage that compliments it. 

The vibe is carefully calibrated. On the hunt for MTA gear, Fallon fell in love with the custom fits worn by the city’s operators, official gear souped up with stunning embroideries of city buses and skylines and references to life on the job like NOT IN SERVICE PLEASE BELIEVE ME. “WHEN I MOVE YOU MOVE, JUST LIKE THAT was probably the most striking one,” Fallon tells me, citing a popular version. There is delight in knowing such an unlikely garment exists: a Ludacris hook repurposed to encapsulate the pride in what it takes to make New York City work...just like that.

He began recreating the bootleg design on totes and tees. “I want to make that accessible, recreate it so that everyone can enjoy it,” Fallon explains. But it's not just about cool graphics. Anyone who's had a lifeguard-style hoodie crappily heat-transferred at a shop on the Jersey Shore know that there is style in signaling regionality. Fallon calls this first offering the catalyst for his brand going beyond vintage. “It did bonkers numbers online, and I was just like, holy shit.”

Fantasy’s other notable bootleg was the now out-of-production Guggenheim collegiate hoodie. (The account’s Instagram stories suggests it might be returning). That one blew up  when Frank Ocean wore it in 2019. “That was a big moment for us. It got a little too big, we got a little too hot,” Fallon explains. Still, the attention  accelerated Fantasy Explosion’s explosion, and now a variety of shop gear is consistently for sale outside weekly drops. The designs—like this solid tee with a small Yankees-esque “NY” surrounded by “Fantasy Explosion” in Old English typeface—fit right in. The idea is that the Fantasy Explosion aesthetic has grown recognizable enough to spur its own collection of non-vintage gear.

Despite the success, Fallon insists that a transition to all shop gear isn’t the goal. “I don’t want to be a streetwear brand, but I do want to make bootlegs over the likes of bootlegs,” he explains, “I never want to step away from vintage.” The future of Fantasy, Fallon says, rests in collaborations on original garments to support local businesses, or maybe an expansion into home goods. Ultimately, Fallon wants to make clothing rooted in love for New York, no matter the origins. “My goal isn’t to become a streetwear brand releasing t-shirt designs," he says. "My goal is to create pieces of clothing that people actually want to fuck with and want to wear.”

Originally Appeared on GQ