"I think of what we do at Gallery Dept. as more than just a clothing brand," Josué Thomas, Gallery Dept. founder, told Complex. "We just happen to make clothes."
That line says a lot about how the Gallery Dept. founder sees himself and the world he has built in Los Angeles and beyond. Ask him whether he is a designer or an artist and there is no hesitation. "Artist-first. 100% artist-first," he says. It is a distinction that has defined Gallery Dept. since the beginning, long before the brand became a fixture in closets and on red carpets around the world.
We caught up with Thomas at Le Bar, his private café and creative space located just a few blocks from the Gallery Dept. store on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. The room doubles as a gathering spot for artists and creatives to make music, host listening parties, and trade ideas, and it is lined with posters, artwork, and pieces pulled from Thomas's personal archive. On the day of our shoot, the team was setting up for a private listening party later that evening, the space being used exactly as it was meant to be.
ComplexCon 2026 tickets on sale now
Gallery Dept. started through Thomas’ desire for the vintage pieces in his parents' closet and digging through thrift stores before it was a widespread phenomenon with a full resell economy. He began altering what he found, most famously deconstructing Carhartt workwear pants into his now-signature Flair jeans, adding panels cut from scraps of other pairs and exposing the faded contrast under a double knee. "I've always made clothes for myself, even now," he says. "I do collections of just literally stuff I want to wear." The items have become a piece of the modern hip-hip uniform. Major artists and athletes like Drake, Migos, and LeBron James have all supported the brand.
Los Angeles is stitched into all of it. Thomas points to the city's mix of skate, BMX, music, and art as the thing that shaped his eye. "LA has this magic to it," he says. "It's the weather mixed with the street element and Hollywood, and it's all crazy." That range is exactly what he tries to represent with Gallery Dept.
Thomas worked at Ralph Lauren before launching his own label in 2017, and he still calls it his real education. "That was definitely school," he says, pointing to how much the brand invested in marketing and the total store experience. "Everything mattered." He took that blueprint and flipped it. Where Ralph built an empire on aspiration, Thomas wanted proximity: everything made in-house, customers able to walk in and watch the people making the product, get pieces tailored, and pick what they want. "We pulled the curtain back a bit," he says. "Just feed the streets, just make shit."
Gallery Dept. has technically been to ComplexCon before. The brand debuted an Asics collaboration at the 2023 show that was one of the hottest drops of the weekend, but Thomas himself was in Paris working at the time and never made it to the floor. This year is different. For the first time, he will be there in person, bringing it back to a city that means everything to him.
"For me it's super important, because I'm putting energy back," he says of ComplexCon's return to LA. "I think LA is ready for it. It's been tough, and I feel like it's getting more vibrant." The timing lines up with a bigger moment for both parties. ComplexCon marks its 10th anniversary in 2026, while Gallery Dept. approaches its own decade in 2027.
As for the booth, Thomas is keeping the specifics close, but the concept is already circling one idea: ownership. "Culture, who owns culture, is a thing that's been on my mind," he says. "Counterfeiting has been very interesting to me. Is everything counterfeit? Could it be authenticated?" He points to fans who buy bootleg Gallery Dept. rather than the real thing, and he refuses to write them off. "I see them as part of the community still." That is the through line of everything Thomas is building toward, at ComplexCon and beyond.
