About Us

The name “[MILL.13]” has a variety of meanings, but in order to understand them better you will need to know about the meaning behind the brand itself. We both grew up being very used to and familiar with industrial/urban areas, living in Baltimore. Overtime we developed a deep connection to not only Baltimore, but also lot’s of other industrial/urban cities in the northeast. As we got older we really began to realize the beauty and rich culture in these places, and we became fascinated with everything about them. But the thing that really stood out to us though was the unique designs, architecture, and signage of these cities, it was something they all had in common.

 In 2023 we became good friends at school, back then we were really into sneakers which then quickly evolved into an interest in fashion. In the summer of 2024 we decided to begin our first clothing line “Printz”. Printz was an abbreviation of my two last names “Proctor” and “Mintz”, we thought it sounded cool, but to be completely honest we kind of forced the name. We went on to not really sell much of it, at the time we were confused why nobody wanted to buy anything from us, but after sometime we realized that we had lost our individuality. We were too busy wishing we could be like other brands like Supreme, Cortez, and stussy. Not that those brands are bad or anything, but our minds were so clouded by all these brands that had already made it, that we had no space left to let our own personal creativity shine through. We went into a long period of time where we just had a complete creative block and had no good ideas. It is always good to take inspiration from other brands, but to a certain extent, think about it as adding onto or giving new life to the type of garment. As a result of this ongoing creative deficit, we decided it would be best to isolate ourselves from these kinds of media and instead try and find something we could infinitely find inspiration from. This really helped us, and we found that all along it was the space around us that would inspire our work from then on out.

 We had always been familiar with industrial and urban environments, but we never thought it would be transferable to clothing. This was an absolute creative breakthrough, we were finally able to come up with better ideas and find more inspiration that wasn't from other brands. The only problem was the name of the brand, we felt like we had grown so much as designers since we came up with “Printz”. The other thing I realized was that it was just a riff on my last name, not encompassing my partner TJ Fiest. So we decided to change the name all together to “NO.13” or “number 13”. We honestly did not put all that much thought into the name, it just looked like something that would be painted on some factory, or warehouse. Due to this lack of thought and creativity to the name we ended up changing it again.

 I still think it was a very industrial name, but it was just so vague and didn’t say enough about us as a brand. So for the last time we changed the name once and for all to “[Mill No. 13]” or “[MILL.13]” for short. We called it MILL.13 because when we thought of industrialism, and urban cities like Baltimore the centerpiece of those places that always came to mind was a mill or big factory of some kind. And then the 13 part we just needed a number, so we chose 13 because it was the day of the month I was born on, and it is also just a cool number. So, it was a very simple concept, but also something we could stay true to. Most importantly [Mill No. 13] is a form of cultural expression similar to other art and signage found in urban areas. Our goal is to bridge the gap between street art/urban signage and clothes by incorporating ideas, graphics, and storytelling that represent the injustice and struggle we view around us while still making it wearable for people who purely care about the fashion aspect. The reason we wrote this so long is to highlight that when building a meaningful brand, you may not have a clear vision from the start, it’s all about the growth. We hope that this clarified the name and meaning of the brand!

                                                                      -[MILL.13] TEAM