I was fifteen, I didn't want to dress like everyone else, so I drew a sheep and put it on a t-shirt.
Xai means sheep in Catalan. It's pronounced like the English word shy.
I got into bikes around fourteen. Dirt jumping came shortly after. It was the cheap way into a sport that isn't cheap, and there was a scene growing right around me. XAI started right after, in high school, and it had nothing to do with bikes at first. I was a teenager working out who I was, and I didn't want to look like everybody else. So I made my own shirts.
The sheep was just a drawing I liked.
The first batch was awful. Bad blanks, bad print. I was so embarrassed by them I didn't want to sell them. The ones that did go out are still around: some being worn more than twenty years later, some kept as collector's pieces. Terrible craft, real connection. I've never quite got over that.
My grandma paid for that batch.
Over the next six years I did the illustration, the graphic design, the web and e-commerce, the garment manufacturing and screen printing, the shipping, and the events. I didn't know how to do any of it. I learned as I went.
A few of the shirts were made with other artists and designers, in short numbered runs rather than a permanent range. The labels in that pile are from one of them, a limited edition with elantidoto.
Drawing is the fun part. The rest of it is stock, sizes, bags, tags, stamps, envelopes and the post office.
I had a rubber stamp cut of the sheep and used it on the paper the orders were wrapped in. Every parcel went out stamped, and addressed by hand. If you bought a shirt, what arrived had been touched at every stage by the person who drew the thing on it.
Nobody taught me any of this. Each piece turned up as the next thing standing in the way.
XAI was never a sponsored team. It was friends, from all over Spain, from whatever they happened to ride: surfing, BMX, dirt jump, snowboarding, skate. Hector Saura, Marc Garriga, Carlos Langelaan, Alejandro Viña, Gemma Corbera. Along the way we met people like Anthony Villoni and Thomas Lemoine, who ended up in the photos too.
One of the shirts was just XCRW, for XAI Crew. That's what it actually felt like, so that's what it said.
Once the mark existed it went everywhere it could fit. Stickers on bikes and helmets and car windows, banners for events, the van, even the desktop wallpaper. None of it was a brand guideline. It was just the same sheep, applied by whoever had a sticker.
La Poma Bikepark was my local. I volunteered there from the day it opened, in exchange for riding, and designed its first logo, which, looking back, was very ugly.
Happy Ride Weekend was its event, with a proper photocall backdrop covered in sponsor logos. We sponsored it every year the brand was alive, though for some reason XAI isn't on this one.
Another dirt jump spot, in Sant Celoni, with some of the best vibes and the best crew of anywhere we went. We'd set up a stall, sell shirts, and stay for the riding.
The rest of it was a bit of everything: dirt jump events we sponsored and sometimes organised, jump exhibitions at night parties, concerts. Whatever gave people a reason to turn up.
In 2012 I opened a store in Barcelona, in the basement of a skate shop called Backside BCN. A sheep brand opening a farm was too good to pass up, so that's what it was called.
We built it ourselves down there, with a mini ramp inside to skate on, with some of the best friends you can get. Without them the brand would have died before it started.
There wasn't always a shop online. This was before social media really arrived, when the internet was still something you went to rather than somewhere you lived. For long stretches XAI existed on bodies, at events, and in whatever way people found to get hold of me. I was still wrapping parcels and posting them.
When the store did exist it was where I learned web design and e-commerce: product pages, sizes, stock, pre-sales that sold out. It lived at xaiclothing.es.
I stopped eating meat around 2009. A brand named after a sheep printing MEAT IS MURDER wasn't something I was going to pass up. It was a joke and it wasn't.
The last design I ever made for XAI was the one that finally explained it.
By then I was deep into punk and hardcore, and deep into the tattoo world, and the brand was nearly done. And it struck me that a sheep is the symbol of the herd, of doing exactly what everyone else does, and that mine had always been the one out of step. Fora del ramat.
So the friendly sheep got redrawn as a skull, set inside a collegiate arch, under the words OUT OF STEP, taken from the Minor Threat record. Hardcore could look aggressive from the outside, but it was a positive thing, and it made room for everyone. Seven years after I drew it, the mark finally said what I'd meant at fifteen and couldn't have explained.
Then I closed it.
The store had a short run, and the brand ended with it shortly after. I was already deep in the tattoo world and an apprenticeship came up. I chose that.
I still see the clothing in the wild. That's the part that stayed with me.
Most of XAI happened before social media. The years I can still show are the last ones, roughly 2010 to 2012, because that's when photos started living somewhere other than a hard drive.
The first five years are mostly gone. In people's drawers, in boxes, in memory. Which is a strange thing to say about work that reached as many people as it did.
