Kim Dylla, most of you may know her as Vulvatron, former member of GWAR, has launched her own clothing company Kylla Custom Rock Wear, a li
Kim Dylla, most of you may know her as Vulvatron, former member of GWAR, has launched her own clothing company Kylla Custom Rock Wear, a line specifically designed for heavy metal and rock and roll bands.
She makes all of the clothes out of her house in Charlottesville.
Dylla’s line is for men and women, but mostly consists of men’s leather jackets and pants, denim vests, and other gear made for performing on stage. Her prices range from $150 to $400 and are mostly custom pieces.
“The concept of the line is very much inspired by post-apocalyptic style, like Mad Max, and classic rock and roll style, like early Motley Crue, early Judas Priest, but as if that stuff went through a war,” Dylla said.” “I want everything to look and feel real worn, but I also want to use strong materials so they hold up on stage.”
After playing in bands for years and seeing the wear and tear of musicians’ clothes on stage, a lightbulb went off in Dylla’s head for a line targeted for metal musicians.
“I wanted to be able to fill a niche in that market where I’m creating high quality clothes or people who play heavy metal music for a living that they can actually afford it,” she said. “They need to have very breathable, very durable materials because I’ve seen people go through Levis Jeans in a tour.”
Besides GWAR, which she left this year, Dylla was also a member of Kungfu Dykes and Thismeansyou.
Dylla has long since been making clothes for herself, but her line really took off about four years ago when she made a jacket for Joey Jordison, former drummer of Skipknot.
“He would borrow my jacket and wore it to some award shows and he really never gave the jacket back, but he kept giving people my number to get jackets,” she said.
From there, bands and musicians started calling her asking her to make clothes for them and thus, Kylla Custom Rockwear was born. The 32-year-old went full time with the gig about three years ago when she had so many orders she had to quit her job at UVA in academic research for digital archeology, which she had for nearly a decade.
And it’s been growing ever since.
She has clients in 37 countries and has designed clothes for Machine Head, GWAR, Death Angel, Dragonforce, Asking Alexandria, Arch Enemy, Metal Church, Rob Zombie and Journey.
Machine Head was Dylla’s first paying client.
“Our biggest supporters are Machine Head, they wear 100 percent Kylla Custom Rock Wear on stage live,” she said.
Dylla has designed foutfits for GWAR and quite a few other Richmond bands including Cannabis Corpse and for Chad Painter of local tribute band Zombie XXX.
She also dressed Bray Wyatt for Wrestlemania this year.
“They’re getting turned into action figures by Mattel,” she said.
Her clients tend to be men obviously, but she also has skirts, dresses, shorts, corsets, purses, and pants for women in her line.
“I did a really cool outfit for Alissa of Arch Enemy and I dressed Doro, a German heavy metal singer that’s been going since the ‘80s,” she said.
Most of the business comes from word of mouth and online sales accord to Dylla, but she said she also hits of music festivals, events and swaps in Richmond as well. She said she also wants to hit up motorcycle and tattoo events as well to sell her line.
Dylla has big plans for Kylla Custom Rock Wear within the next year to get it into stores.
“My goal with the next year is to get a manufacturer line off the ground so we can do a retail distribution,” she said.
