Our Story
My name is Turi, I’m the founder of Matchbook Apparel and have always been fascinated by things of the past. Growing up in Los Angeles, I loved tagging along with my father who was a regular at the local antique shops and neighborhood thrift stores. He had such an eye for finding random treasures, but it was his general appreciation for the past, how things were built, and what they meant, that I took with me.
After my father passed away, one day I was alone in his basement looking through a lifetime of memories. Among them were jars and vases of old matchbooks. Not just of places he had visited, but the matchbooks from our Italian family restaurant that I had grown up in. The restaurant had been closed for almost 25 years by that point and it really hit me how my father’s place, which was so unique, authentic and vibrant and meant so much to my family, the staff, clients and the neighborhood was now reduced to matchbooks, newspaper articles and old menus.
You blink and everything’s changed, or everything’s gone.
This feeling is what led me down a matchbook rabbit hole. I felt a connection to these long-gone diners, bars, and brands. The matchbooks I was falling in love with could have easily been in a coat pocket, purse or in the glove box of a truck in 1955. There’s a physical connection to the past that I think is especially unique with matchbooks and I think you can feel that energy when you handle them.
