In Conversation with Mike Graham
INTERVIEW BY DAVID HELLQVIST
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1970s, when California-born Mike Graham started climbing in the Yosemite National Park, little did he know it would lead him to found a global clothing brand.
The story of how Gramicci came to be starts when Graham got into climbing. He met some likeminded people at southern California's Suicide Rock, Joshua Tree and Tahquitz. From there they headed to Yosemite, the group grew and became known as the Stonemasters. They were pushing climbing and the climbing style of the day. All while wearing colorful hippie clothes, smoking reefers and listening to Jimi Hendrix play the guitar.
At the time, Graham and his peers wore cheap white salor's pants from army surplus stores, paisley haribands and tie dye tops that matched their bohemian lifestyle. But it was a stylistic statement based on functional and pragmatic ideas: the white colour cooled you down and the headbands kept sweat and hair out of your eyes. From day one, substance was more important than style for Mike.
The Stonemasters were dedicated to the art of climbing and were the first ones to climb El Capitan in a day and do the first free ascent of Yosemite Valley's Astroman.
In 1982, when Mike Graham launched Gramicci, the products were designed for Mike and his friends and made to improve their experience and capabilities on the wall. As they were progressing climbing there was a need for new tools. Whether he was importing sticky rubber climbing shoes from Spain, constructing portaledges or making durable and functional trousers inspired by Bruce Lee, Gramicci became an adventurous outdoors brand all about facilitating movement. Then and now.
DAVID: WHAT WAS YOUR INTRODUCTION TO CLIMBING?
MIKE: I grew up close to the ocean on the US west coast, so I was surfing a lot as a kid, but I was into the outdoors generally speaking. Weirdly enough there was a ski shop in Newport Beach, even though we were miles from snow. That was the local go-to place for these kinds of sports, and they had a little tiny section of climbing equipment. I remember finding all the gear fascinating, and I had just seen a famous movie called ‘The Mountain’ with Robert Wagner and Spencer Tracy. It showed them climbing in an interesting way, and I was drawn to that and all the gear they used, like pitons and carabiners. At the same time, I started reading books like ‘The Art of Mountaineering’ and ‘The Art of Rock Climbing’ by Royal Robbins, which was probably the first kind of seminal publication on true rock climbing.
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST CLIMB?
We had sea cliffs in our area, and we would climb all over them using ropes and pitons – hammering our way up these little cracks and overhanging cliff walls. The more I got into it I realised that warm weather rock climbing was my thing – you didn’t have to worry about snow and sleet, freezing to death or losing toes and fingers. This was in the early 1970s, and I took a camping trip out to Death Valley with my parents, and me and my brother climbed the Furnace Creek Peak, which is a pretty precipice-looking mountain just outside Death Valley. I have a picture that my brother took of me, 12 years old, sitting on the top of this sharp pinnacle with Death Valley in the background, and that moment was like the beginning of my whole climbing life.
YOUR OBSESSION WITH GEAR AND THEN WATCHING A FILM AND READING A BOOK ABOUT IT – IT SOUNDS LIKE THE PERFECT WAY TO GET INTO A NEW HOBBY?
Yeah, there’s a lot of gear freaks today. But for me, the gear was just the starting point and when it evolved, we went towards simplicity. We paired down everything to the raw: only packing things we really needed like shoes and a pair of pants. At that time, we didn’t wear shirts much because we were surfers and we just liked getting suntanned and bronzed. But I did do a lot of early big wall climbing, and that’s how I learned how to use the gear.And when I eventually started Gramicci Products, which is what it was first called, the first things we made were big wall accessories, like haul bags and belay seats. We didn’t use harnesses back in the day, only a small lightweight webbing seat that we’d sit in – kind of like a Bosun’s chair but for climbing. And it was these products that got me interested in sewing.
DID YOU COME FROM AN ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE FAMILY, DID YOUR PARENTS IN ANY WAY HELP OR INSPIRE YOU?
It was my mom who taught me how to sew and I became pretty good at it! And my dad was a builder, and he built big high rises. When he became a superintendent, I would go to work with him in the summer. I’d have my own hard hat, and I’d be cruising around getting to see first-hand how it was all put together through architecture and engineering. And when I came to start making clothing, I had the same ideas. For me, building clothing is like architecture and engineering. And those were the ideas I put into Gramicci, to make things function in a better way.
IT MATTERS BECAUSE IF YOUR EQUIPMENT FAILS THE CONSEQUENCES ARE POTENTIALLY LETHAL, SO IT’S ABOUT FUNCTION OVER FORM?
Yes, form was never the criteria for the product. It was all based on the function and then I guess we were lucky to get the form right as well!
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE FEELING OF ELATION WHEN YOU’VE REACHED THE SUMMIT, WHEN YOU’VE COMPLETED THE CLIMB?
Part of mountaineering is about the conquest, where the summit is an objective, and when you get there, after a lot of mental and physical work, the relief and the beauty of the view rushes through you, and that’s an amazing feeling. But, for me, that was always overshadowed by the actual climbing, where you did the moves to get to the top, they became more important than the actual summit. I prefer that feeling of movement, the motions that you go through, how your body adapt, and how your mind stay calm and collected. You can also put yourself in a little bit of peril, and you’d get a little bit of a rush out of that as well. But it’s not like you’re a thrill seeker with a death wish; it’s just you have all your senses firing all at the same time. You know, touch and feel with the climbing and then the little bit of adrenaline that you get going, because of the heights, and it may be the positions you’re in, it’s amazing what it does to your body. Yeah, when you finish something super scary and super hard, you’ve got the biggest smile you’ve ever had, because you’re still around to talk about it!
THAT SENSE OF DANGER, WAS THAT SOMETHING THAT MOTIVATED YOU?
I wasn’t a thrill seeker per se, but it was those thrills that made you feel part of something, or that you had accomplished something. It’s a little intimidating, but you’re going to overcome it, that was your challenge, to overcome that little hesitation and that takes you to the next level. And it helps your performance: I climbed the best when I got a little bit out from the last piece of protection, and I got to a point where maybe you can’t get any more protection and you had to make a decision, and usually the call was to carry on and go up. And if you’re feeling good, your mind is in control, and you just do it!
SOMEONE DESCRIBED CLIMBING AS A MIXTURE OF CHESS AND BALLET, DOES THAT RING TRUE TO YOU?
Yeah, it’s because if you’re bouldering and there’s a ten foot climb there is a sequence to it and working out that sequence is a bit like a chess game where you’re planning and making several moves to get to the top. And the ballet part is managing your centre of gravity, and how you can hold a hand, push on a foot, hang on three points, and when to trade off. You’re always switching your centre of gravity from left to right as if you’re moving up a ladder, hanging on with one hand, and you reach up with the other hand while pushing with your feet.
I SUSPECT THAT THE THIRD ELEMENT IS ATHLETICISM, HAVING THE PHYSICAL STRENGTH TO DO IT?
Yeah, strength plays a big part. But I’ve seen a lot of people that have truly been trained, even world class gymnasts, that I watched come through the climbing circles, and they’re the strongest guys you’ve ever seen, but they relied on their strength so much that they actually faltered as climbers because a lot of it is about mind control.
THAT MAKES SENSE SINCE A LOT OF SUCCESSFUL CLIMBERS ARE GIRLS WHO MAYBE AREN’T AS STRONG AS THE BOYS?
Yeah, when I was about 15, I watched Sibylle Hechtel, who was one of the first women to climb up El Cap with Beverly Johnson, I watched her just walk up a hard face climb at Suicide Rock as good or better than all the guys that were there that day. Then you have someone like Lynn Hill who became the first person to free climb El Cap in a day. That just proves that it’s not really about strength, it’s about poise and footwork. So, I knew quickly that climbing was a very equal sport.
DO YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE CLIMB OR A SPECIFIC MEMORY OF AN ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT LIVES WITH YOU TO THIS DAY?
I do have a couple climbs that I’m really proud of which probably make them my favourite ones. I did a lot of travelling in the late 70s and the early 80s, putting up some nice climbs in Australia and I’m proud of my climbing in Britain. My thing was to do the climbs without any falls. That was the real accomplishment for me, to flash it. It was just the way I did it, I didn’t like top roping things, and I didn’t like practising things. I wanted to come up with the stuff on the scene, to able to look at it, figure it out, and just do it.
DID YOU TAKE THAT APPROACH IN OTHER AREAS IN LIFE AS WELL?
Yeah, I probably climbed in a vacuum, and I was told that I designed clothing in a vacuum as well. I didn’t really care too much about what other people were making or doing. I always had my take on it, and if it made me climb better, or if it satisfied my criteria on what I think a product should be, then it worked, didn’t it? In terms of the clothing design, I used to say every style line had a purpose. If there’s going to be a seam that cuts across the front of a pant, it’s going to be a pocket opening: you’re going to have a dual purpose out of it.
AND IN THOSE EARLY FORMATIVE STONEMASTER YEARS, WHAT WERE THE MORE LOCAL CLIMBS THAT HAD AN IMPACT ON YOU AND THE OTHERS … YOU’VE MENTIONED EL CAP AND SUICIDE ROCK?
Yeah, Suicide Rock was our local stomping ground, and that’s where the Stonemasters coalesced. It was all about the Valhalla climb, and it wasn’t that the climb was super hard – in today’s standards it’s not hard at all – yet it does stop a lot of people because it’s been graded in an old school way.
SO, IT WAS A KIND OF LIKE A TEST FOR JOINING THE STONEMASTERS?
I don’t want to say it was an official initiation but when you did the climb, suddenly you had instant recognition from your peers because they too had done it. After that, nothing else had to be said about your abilities or your character. There was maybe half a dozen Stonemasters in the beginning, and then there was like 12, and it just kept on growing. Actually, the way it snowballed is pretty incredible and it’s all because of this one climb. We were like, ‘Hey, you did Valhalla, that’s fucking great – let’s go to Paris’!
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE CLIMB VALHALLA?
It’s right in the centre of a beautiful face called the Sunshine Wall, and it’s got this smooth granite orange-ish shimmering colour with neat variations and undulations of things we call chicken heads that would pop up out of the rock, tiny edges in the granite that you could grab and stand on. To this day it’s still an amazing face, I mean there’s climbs on it that people still have a hard time doing.
WHAT WAS THE MUSICAL SOUNDTRACK TO THOSE EARLY STONEMASTER YEARS?
We named so many climbs after songs by Jimmy Hendrix, Bowie and Pink Floyd.
WHAT WAS THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LANDSCAPE LIKE AT THE TIME OF THE STONEMASTERS? WHAT WAS GOING ON IN THE WORLD THAT INFLUENCED YOU? IF NOTHING ELSE, THE VIETNAM WAR WAS RAGING – WERE YOU REACTING AGAINST ALL THIS?
There certainly was reactionary stuff going on, I mean this was in the 70s and there was a war going, as you say. We were all coming of age and there was still a draft at that time. But, you know, we were outdoors people, and we had joked about it: ‘Oh fuck, we’ll just go to Canada or whatever, there’s a lot of good climbing up there’! I don’t know if we were afraid to go to war but we just wanted to go climbing.
DID YOU SEE YOURSELF AS HIPPIES?
Yeah, we were hippies in a way. People might have had the impression we lived a hippie lifestyle because we just sort of got by. We were poor, we didn’t have a lot of funding behind us. Sometimes people would work during the winter, and they’d go climbing the rest of the year, living off their savings. I had a landscaping job here or there, and I worked at a Ski Mart store selling climbing equipment. And we had the same mannerisms in our dress sense and our long hair as hippies. The Park Rangers thought we were lowlife. But all we wanted to do was go climbing, and we wanted to be in the place that the climbing was happening. We were going to be in Yosemite no matter what the Rangers said, and we were going to figure out a way to hoodwink them and figure out how to stay there longer then you’re supposed to. We all had VW buses with curtains, and we’d all park in the same spot, and the middle of the night the Rangers would come to shake the vans, trying to see if anybody was in there so they could haul them off, or give them a ticket. We’d just laid there in the vans, dead quiet, let them shake them. Eventually they’d leave, because they weren’t allowed to open the doors.
DURING THOSE STONEMASTER YEARS, BEFORE YOU SET UP GRAMICCI, WHAT DID YOU GUYS WEAR? WHAT WAS THE YOSEMITE CLIMBING UNIFORM?
Well, yeah, there was certainly a uniform. The Stonemasters wore white sailor pants because they had a thermal function to them: in the summertime it was really warm and dark clothing made you even hotter when climbing. They were also baggy so that when the wind came up, they would bellow and cool you off. And you’d wear a swami belt, which was a webbing belt that you wrapped several times around your midsection, and you’d tie it with a knot, and that’s what you’d tie your rope to. That was your protection, harnesses came later – and they really messed up the whole look of the pant! But yeah, it was white pants that we got from navy surplus stores, and we’d wear them until the butts were completely worn thin and ripped open.
I GET WHY YOU’D WEAR WHITE TROUSERS, BUT YOU GUYS WERE OFTEN WEARING COLOURFUL TOPS AND JACKETS, EITHER IN LOUD COLOURS OR EYE-CATCHING PRINTS AND PATTERNS. WAS THERE A REASON FOR THAT OR MAYBE IT WAS JUST THE FASHION AT THE TIME?
They were definitely worn as a statement, and when our Southern California group migrated up to Yosemite, we combined with a group of climbers from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I think they brought that hippie sort of feel and look from Berkeley into the gang. Guys like Jim Bridwell, Ed Barry, Dale Bard and Werner Braun, they all had a Northern Californa look. And when we met up in Yosemite all our styles just melted together, and that was just the evolution of the Stonemaster look, I guess!
TELL ME ABOUT THE PATAGONIA CONNECTION, YOU SEEM TO HAVE BEEN QUITE CLOSE FRIEND WITH ITS FOUNDER, YVON CHOUINARD, AND EVEN WORKED TOGETHER?
Yeah, Chouinard certainly influenced me. When I first met him, Patagonia didn’t even exist – it was still called Chouinard Equipment. I’d run into him in these weird places, like the Alps, and we talked a little bit there, then I’d run into him in Yosemite, and we’d chat some there. He’d found out I was sewing and making cliff dwellings, which are like portaledges. There’s both some metalworking and sewing involved in making them, so it was a little engineered thing I was working on. And we were having a beer one night after climbing in the valley in Yosemite, and he said, ‘Hey, if you ever want to set up a sewing shop, come to Ventura and I’ll throw you all the business you want.’ I nonchalantly said, ‘Yeah, that sounds great,’ and brushed it off. But about six months later I was in Arkansas, where my parents had moved, and I was, like: ‘God, I don’t like doing construction work out here, it’s too hot – I’ve got to get out back to the valley.’ I had been picking up sewing machines and hauling them around with me in my VW van, setting them up where I went. And my girlfriend and I decided, ‘Hey, let’s go to Ventura and let’s see what we can do with Chouinard.’
AND YVON STAYED TRUE TO HIS WORD?
Yeah, I surprised the hell out of him, showing up just out of the blue. And that was the start of it, I set up a sewing shop there, and he came through on his word and threw me a bunch of business, making climbing harnesses and backpacks. And when his brand evolved, I started making clothing for Patagonia, as it became known.
LOOKING AHEAD FROM THERE, WHAT WAS THE CATALYST FOR YOU SETTING UP YOUR OWN BRAND?
Gramicci Products was the portaledges I was making, and so that was the starting point, but clothing just felt like the natural next step because, at this point, there still was no proper climber pant on the market. Chouinard made a pant for Patagonia, but it was heavy and restrictive, made from a thick canvas that would last a million years, but you couldn’t really climb in them. The way we climbed you needed lots of flexibility, and we weren’t into Lycra back then! So, my goal was to make a woven pant that you could move easily in.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE BIRTH OF THE G-PANT?
Yeah, we got the idea from a friend of mine, John Bachar, who was climbing in kung fu pants made by a brand called Golden Dragon. They had a baggy fit and a tie waist but a rudimentary gusset on them. John brought me the pants, and said, ‘Mike, maybe we could fix them up a little bit, and make them easier to work with?’ At this point we were well into making clothes for Patagonia but not pants, only jackets and underwear. But I had also been trying some sweatshirt ideas with underarm gussets so you could reach real high without pulling your hem up. All of this was part of my freedom of movement thinking. So, I took this Kung fu pant and I just really styled it up, and I modified the gusset, using a lot of concepts I’d learned in making tent panels and sails. I made the gusset more of diamond shaped, and I put these different lines in it that made it even more sturdy, but I think the biggest improvement I did, was adding this little backpack buckle on it. We also put cuffs on them, so you’d have good visibility of your feet while climbing.
DID YOU EVOLVE THE PANT AFTER THE INITIAL DESIGN?
Yes, we started making a few variations: we trimmed them up, we took the cuff off, made the legs straight. And that kind of left us with a pant you could go bouldering in, just brush the chalk off on them once done – having some chalk marks on your legs was part of the look – and then you could walk into a pub afterwards. So, one minute you’re climbing and the next you are socialising – Gramicci was all of a sudden a lifestyle brand!
SPEAKING OF GRAMICCI, WHERE DID YOU GET THE NAME FROM?
It came about at a campfire session in Tuolumne Meadows. It was me and two other original Stonemasters: Rick Accomazzo who is Italian, or at least American Italian, and Gib Lewis who’s not Italian, and neither am I. And we were sort of just joking about what was happening in Yosemite, because the Europeans were coming over and claiming the first French ascent of the Nose or the first Japanese ascent of the Salathé Wall, and we were just joking how ridiculous it had become. I said, ‘Look, why don’t we do the first Italian ascent of the Half Dome’! We laughed about it, and I said that we already had the names to do it. ‘Yeah, I’ll be Michaelangelo Gramicci, and you Gib can be Antonio Gibbo, and Rick, you just be yourself!’ And so, we did the climb on Half Dome and word of mouth got around: ‘Oh, did you hear about the Italian guys who climbed the Half Dome’! It made the joke even better, the way it spread. And pretty soon, everyone was calling me Gramicci, and it became my name.
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THE DIFFERENT GRAMICCI LOGOS?
The first Gramicci Products logo used a font called Koloss that was bold and easy to read and it featured a triangle which was the silhouette of our first product, the portaledge. Dotting the i’s was two lightning bolts, an hommage to the surfer Gerry Lopez and his lightning bolt surfboards. As the brand evolved and grew, we started using Mistral which had a crazier and wilder look to it. I’d say it was an action-packed font with a bespoke G looking a bit like an arrow. We later created two new symbols that are still used to this day. The first one, rock man, was designed by Amy Sachs and is mimicking a picture in a book, ‘Master of Rock’, it featured a climber friend of ours, John Gill. The second one is the running man logo, which was a character with dreadlocks. In the beginning, the running man wore rollerblades which we later changed to a pair of Dr. Martens boots.
WHAT WAS YOUR EARLY PRODUCTION LIKE? YOU CAN’T HAVE DONE EVERYTHING YOURSELF EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE A GOOD SEWER?
No, I actually had a pretty decent sized contract shop, a group of sewers that I could count on. The girl who did my pattern work for the G-Pant pant drew the first pattern on hard paper, and we worked off that for a long time. But being a gear freak in climbing, I was the same in manufacturing, so I was all over anything new that could help the manufacturing, so we got into CAD really early, it was like in 1984 we were already using CAD systems to make our markers on computers.
TELL ME ABOUT LIKE THE EARLY GRAMICCI AESTHETIC: FUNCTIONAL AND BUILT TO LAST BUT WHAT WAS THE STYLISTIC EXPRESSION?
It was black and white in the beginning, again for summertime and wintertime climbing. Joshua Tree in the winter can be cold, so we had black climbing pants for that season. When we started adding colour we began with earth tones, like blues and greens, browns and khakis. When we grew internationally, into places like Japan, that’s when we started doing crazy colours. There was even a period of tie dye, fluorescent pink and lime. It looked pretty cool, and another advantage was that you could see climbers high up on a cliff if they were wearing bright yellow pants.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR AND GRAMICCI’S BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT?
I think that probably the biggest accomplishment was being able to offer that gusseted pant style in an attractive manner, and how it’s become the baseline of every outdoor pant that’s been made since then. I get a lot of gratification from seeing people wearing Gramicci today, and to this day have a lot of people come up to me when they find out who I am and thank me for their wardrobe and the pieces they are still sporting. In a way it surprises me, but I do feel very proud about it.
