The Business of Being Evan Mock Is Booming
I caught Mock on a rare day off from filming, which meant his day was already stuffed with plans; thanks to his relentlessly social nature, Mock is rarely alone. “And honestly, even then, I don’t like it,” he says. True to form, as soon as we order coffee, Mock starts texting some friends in town from L.A. The plan is to assemble the troops for a skate mission in the neighborhood, and by the time our eggs arrive a few bleary-eyed Supreme affiliates have answered the call, rolling up to order mimosas.
But Mock didn’t get where he is by sticking rigidly to plans. As another round lands on our table, Evan’s phone pings: “Justin and Haley just got to the Hamptons and they say to pull up,” he says, reacting to the impromptu invite from Justin Bieber like one of his buddies was telling him to skate to Tompkins. With his unassuming demeanor, Mock seems constitutionally averse to fanboy behavior, which makes it all the more striking that Bieber seems to be fanboying over him. For every kid who quit college to become an Instagram or TikTok star, a text from Justin Bieber would seem like a sure sign that they made it. But then again, a lot of them probably dream of social stardom because Mock has proven just how far a personal brand can go.
Who wouldn’t want to invite Mock to their beach house, the Biebers included? His entire life is conducted with a special kind of effortlessness. He greets everyone he meets like a childhood friend, and if he’s ever felt even one iota of awkwardness at a party, or in front of a camera, or on the street when heads snap to take another look at this guy whose magnetism could register on a compass, he doesn’t show it. His friends happily fall in behind him. “With Evan, I want to follow his lead,” says the fashion stylist Donté McGuine. “I don’t follow anybody, but Evan has this aura. He knows everybody. He knows how to do anything and everything.” He skateboards with the grace and poise of a Bolshoi dancer. Most impressively, perhaps, is that unlike most other downtown influencers, Mock dresses with the ease and confidence of a man who knows himself.
Today, he’s wearing a plaid button down, carpenter jorts, a trucker hat and beat up Converse skate shoes, and carrying a big fat Dior saddle bag. He infrequently posts fit pics to Instagram, but his luxurious-skater vibe is still the leading menswear paradigm of 2022. (According to Mock, approximately half of his 1.1 million Instagram followers are men; a few years ago, his following was 80% women.) But the piece Mock’s most excited about is his graphic T-shirt, an original design from his new fashion line, Wahine, which he launched in early June. (Wahine is slang in Mock’s home state, Hawaii, for girls who surf or skate.)
“I wanted to make something I would want to wear,” says Mock, who also has a hoodies-and-phone-cases merch brand called Sorry In Advance. Wahine, which he runs with McGuine, represents a more personal and ambitious project. He approached launching the brand with a level of intensity that surprised his partner, who says he’s used to Mock tossing out a dozen ideas for potential projects a day. “When he keeps saying something, I know he’s serious,” McGuine says. Wahine started as something of a lark: last spring, the duo got back to Mock’s apartment after a night out clubbing, and decided to start designing the collection right then and there. “I pulled out his favorite pieces from his closet and threw them on the ground and I said, ‘Ok, here’s your collection,’” says McGuine.