Profound Aesthetic: Not Your Ordinary Tees

by Aditi Mehta

Recently, BG sat down with Iram Zaidi, the Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer of Profound Aesthetic. The hip young t-shirt company had recently caught our eye not only for its fashionable tees, but for do-good attitude.

According to Zaidi, Profound Aesthetic is a clothing brand designed to inspire and spark innovation as a creative outlet of expression delivered through the universal language of art on a “t-shirt”. Each piece is carefully designed by the staff to be visually appealing and also present a positive message.

“[The brand] renders a positive message, pushing the limits of intellectual creativity and at the same time fitting an eclectic taste in fashion, suitable for every citizen of humanity,” said Zaidi of Profound Aesthetic’s goals as a business and design company.

The Company began as a collaborative effort between Zaidi, her brother Faraz Zaidi, and her cousin Nabil Zaidi while driving back from a road trip from Chicago in 2007.

“With seventeen hours to kill, a lot of topics  came up and we somehow stumbled upon a general consensus: there is a serious lack of substance in the t-shirt market and we were going to make that change,” said Zaidi.

Profound Aesthetic was officially founded in August of 2008 after the team found a name they all loved.  After that, the pieces seemed to fall into place. Zaidi purchased the domain name, developed the website, and began marketing the brand through Myspace and Facebook. Their first tee, “Peace By Piece” started it all.

“When Ferdinand Porsche, founder of Porsche couldn’t find a car that fit what he was seeking in an automobile, he built his very own. That was our precise motive behind Profound Aesthetic. The three of us are a team of artists, graphic designers, musicians, philosophers, photographers,  and thinkers who are driven by the idea of every individual regardless of race or creed, status or disposition, to be able to pick up a shirt and wear it with pride and appreciate it for its message,” said Zaidi.

Profound Aesthetic is a three person team in which every person contributes their own talents. The respective roles have been distributed to ensure that every aspect of the company’s goals is covered even though. Even then, their roles overlap.

“Essentially, Faraz is the President and designer, turning our vision and concept into a reality by developing a design that is then printed onto a t-shirt. Nabil is the Marketing Director and mainly keeps us informed of any sort of events that will be beneficial to us. In addition to that, he has a “street team” of students from all over the country that help in distribution of flyers and marketing pieces. Lastly, I take care of every aspect of the business from booking events, to taking care of e-commerce orders through our online store, to customer relations, to sales and expanding Profound Aesthetic into retailers all across the globe.”

Faraz, a graduate from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and a top notch graphic designer that has worked with fortune 500 companies develops all the graphics from scratch. However, many new design concepts are a collaborative effort. Each design has its own story from where the idea come from and how it came to fruition.

“The “Create the Sound” tee was a concept developed after  watching a Spike Lee movie from the early 90′s. We discussed the transitioning of how the creation of music has evolved over the years. It was certainly an epiphany; a keyboard on Nabil’s shoulders as a visual to this magnificent concept. Nabil was the model, I did the photography and Faraz turned it into a graphic. It was magical and a true example of our collaborative efforts,” said Zaidi.

Other design concepts have even been developed by their fans. The “Universal Tee” was developed when Profound Aesthetics did a show in Washington D.C. and a fan handed the team over a piece of paper with the quote “you can bomb the world to pieces, but you can’t bring peace with bombs”.

“We loved the quote! Not to mention it used Peace and Piece like our very  first shirt. We went home, brainstormed and designed a shirt with the universal symbol of peace resting on the bottom corner of the t-shirt. The next day, our email was full of orders!” said Zaidi.

The young company has grown tremendously in the past year and sells its designs throughout the world. Even, Zaidi finds it hard to believe the Company only sold its first shirt November 2008. For the 2010 collection, Profound Aesthetic is looking into even more designs, introducing a premium denim line, winter attire such as cardigans, sweatshirts, jackets and accessories as well as an expanded women’s line.

“At times I am astonished at the progression we have made and I strongly feel that it is due to our tremendous passion and  love for what we do, along with the beauty of present day technology and a solid plan for success. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we will achieve our aspired goals and it certainly feels amazing when I am reminded of that at every point in my day as I get notifications of purchases on my blackberry from all over the world,” said Zaidi.

Just a short visit to the Profound Aesthetic’s website and you can see why they have had their success. Their shirts are unique and stylish and present a design that’s beautiful and thought provoking. Their best selling shirt, the “Peace by Piece” tee, presents a fun play on words and simplicity of design. The shirt appeals to all, men and women, regardless or race, gender, and ethnicity.

” A great deal of thought is put into each and every design to ensure that it is purely unique and unlike anything. We take an enormous amount of pride in creating the most creative and penetrating designs that exceed anything else that is out in today’s market. We were simply sick and  tired of designs with absolutely no substance or meaning and a t-shirt  in recent years has become a great method of expression and art. It was our perfect opportunity to make a difference.”

To learn more about Profound Aesthetic visit them at http://profoundaesthetic.com/.  Keep up with all their events and networking initiatives through their “I AM PROFOUND” Magazine Blog, facebook, and twitter.

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