Team: Mandy Barton

Mandy Barton was one of Dirty Coast’s early multi-tool team members — a writer, shop manager, and creative spark rolled into one. Starting at the tiny Magazine Street “cave,” she helped shape the brand’s retail rhythm, social media voice, and even coined classics like West Bank Pho Life. Equal parts humor and hustle, Mandy brought structure, ideas, and the city’s irreverent wit to everything she touched.

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Blake

Alright, Mandy—how did we first meet?

Mandy

On Julia Street when you were running Humid Beings. I’d just graduated from journalism school, saw your Craigslist ad for writers, and did a piece. That led me to Zach Smith; I assisted him on Dirty Coast shoots. One night you and Patrick came into Lucy’s, where I was waiting tables, and I asked if you were hiring.

Blake

Was this before or after the Bloody Mary shoot for Fang Bangers for True Blood?

Mandy

Around the same time. I convinced Patrick to hire me at the old store—the cave. I worked there a month or two before we moved across the street.

Blake

We moved in the dead of night before Black Friday.

Mandy: Thanksgiving night. I showed up late; y’all had done most of it.

Blake

It was Patrick, me, my parents, my brother—maybe Susan and her brother—hauling everything across the street before Black Friday to confuse our customers.

Mandy

We did it. You had to go through the bathroom to reach the stairs—no big deal.

Blake

That’s why opening took forever. The city said the bathroom was too small, so we rebuilt a wall. To get upstairs to web and inventory storage you had to walk through the bathroom. How many times did you get trapped upstairs because someone was in there?

Mandy

I don’t really remember. I was often alone in that store—one person unless it was the holidays, and then it was bananas.

Blake

Bananas.

Mandy

Back then we pulled every shirt for every person. Whether you wanted to engage or not, you had to—grab it from the cubby, explain the design, and walk through sizing.

Blake

When we were doing the big shirt-wrap approach.

Mandy

Right. It was good for me. I was in my early twenties and pretty shy, so talking to everyone helped. It was the American Apparel era—wonky fits, very slim, and everything shrank—so lots of shrinkage conversations.

Blake

Beyond the holiday insanity, you came with product ideas. I remember you came up with West Bank Pho Life.

Mandy

Get credit for that one?

Blake

Totally. You pitched a West Bank/Vietnamese-food shirt; we landed on “West Bank Pho Life” with a West Side Story visual.

Mandy

Thanks for the credit. I remember a tweet I’m still proud of.

Blake

Do tell.

Mandy

We were there at the start of brand social media. We still had a Facebook profile before “pages,” and we used Twitter for jokes and commentary, not sales. Then customers started using DMs for returns, sizing, and availability. Overnight, social became customer service.

Around then, the New York Times ran a piece about indie musicians moving to the Bywater—folks from bands like Fleet Foxes, Arcade Fire, Edward Sharpe. The article quoted a musician’s wife saying, “There’s no kale here.” I jumped on the Dirty Coast Twitter and wrote: “the city that kale forgot.” Still proud of that one.

Blake

That is very good.

Mandy

Back then, you could experiment with social media and be irreverent. Mess around with other locals. Not sure if its the same now.

Blake

A creative outlet for sure still.

In those early days, Twitter was mostly for fun shitposting, while Facebook was pure marketing—another outlet beyond the e-letter.

Mandy

Right. The newsletter was powerful then.

Blake

It was our only marketing: free stickers in the e-letter. It worked.

Mandy

It probably still works a bit today. You’d send an email and we’d see a sales spike.

Blake

till does, but it’s more complicated now—email, SMS, social. Everyone gets our signal through different channels. Sometimes I see a VIP unsubscribe and I’ll reach out to make sure it wasn’t a service issue. Ninety-nine percent of the time they’re just following us somewhere else. It’s fractured, which is annoying.

Mandy

You’ve sustained the levity and the critical perspective on New Orleans. Y’all still do that.

Blake

It was much looser back then. We’d throw anything out there.

Mandy

Talking about the crazy times—the top seller we couldn’t keep on the shelves was Free Sean Payton. Remember the craze?

Blake

Insanity. The story broke and within an hour I had the design mocked up and at the printer. They had black shirts in stock, started printing, and we pushed it on social and the e-letter.

Mandy

So simple—yellow text on black. We couldn’t keep up; we were filling orders for days.

Blake

Thousands and thousands. Wild volume.

Mandy

I have a story. It ties to Free Sean Payton and Bountygate. The Super Bowl was in New Orleans—February 2013—right in Mardi Gras. Saints fans were already aggravated at the NFL, and the parade schedule got bumped, especially Krewe du Vieux. Their theme became “Krewe du Vieux Comes Early.”

I was working the shop when a guy came in asking careful questions about the shirt. I finally asked what he was after. He said he was a reporter from the New York Times trying to gauge local sentiment about the NFL and the Super Bowl. I told him, “You need to talk to Krewe du Vieux—half the floats are about Goodell, the schedule change, or Payton.”

My sub-krewe’s float was a 10×10-foot piece: a giant, uh, vagina swallowing Roger Goodell holding a Lombardi trophy. Title: “Super Bowl XLVAG.” I gave him my captain’s number.

Blake

Krewe du Vieux insider info.

My proudest tweet: after a New York Times piece quoted someone saying “there’s no kale here,” I tweeted from Dirty Coast: “the city that kale forgot.”

Mandy

We’re not supposed to reveal floats before parade day, but he called her. She was interviewed and quoted in the Times—they even ran a photo of our float with the phrase “man-eating vagina.” I got a lot of cred from the krewe for landing that. Just happened to be the one on duty that day.

Blake

What are some of your favorite shirts from the years you were working?

Mandy

The Gray Ghost.

Blake

Great insider shirt. Who else was working with you during your tenure?

Mandy

I overlapped with Michael and Ani, and Georgia; I brought on Ashlyn. Britta was around for a bit, too.

Blake

And Robin—before she and Britta started their own shop. You left at the end of 2014. So did Patrick and Ashlyn. Big changeover. Chris stepped in as manager to help with that.

Mandy

A lot needed to change. Back then, all our inventory was calculated and entered manually. We were also on a home-built site you and your partner Ben created, and those little inventory meters were often off—miscounts, overcounts, human error. We’d be out of a size without a clean way to reflect it. Technology was moving fast and we were early.

Blake

One of the first things I did in 2015 was move us to Shopify and dive in—learned everything I could. That was also the first year I ran ads and did real marketing. I joke about being an “absentee landlord,” but I wasn’t there day-to-day for the first ten years—and then I was.

Mandy

I remember building basic structure—opening and closing checklists. Those didn’t exist yet.

Blake

It was all very organic. When Chris started, we gave him a ten-minute walkthrough—“Here’s how it works. Good luck.”

Mandy

We started having staff meetings!

Blake

You pushed for structure—set up a retreat with Evie at Feet First to talk retail. Late 2013 or early 2014. You were driving us to be more organized.

Mandy

More formalized.

One of my favorite ideas that never stuck: the po-boy wrap. We bought a big roll of butcher paper, rolled a shirt, and wrapped it like a po-boy. I really wanted that to become a thing.

Blake

We just didn’t have the space. We do now—we’ll bring it back.

One of my favorite ideas that never stuck: the po-boy wrap. We bought a big roll of butcher paper, rolled a shirt, and wrapped it like a po-boy. I really wanted that to become a thing.

Blake

Any other shirts you remember from that time?

Mandy

The Tree Rings shirt—it was hilarious. Some dates were real, some totally made up, and people got so confused. Also, 12th Man was huge.

Blake

Until the cease-and-desist. We couldn’t use the phrase anymore.

Mandy

We took the line off and kept selling it.

Blake

Do you stay in touch with folks from back then?

Mandy

Ashlyn, and sometimes Georgia on Instagram. And remember when we mocked up designs on American Apparel model photos we pulled online—then had the “genius” idea to shoot real people in blanks of different colors to use as our new mockups? It didn’t work out.

Blake

We threw a party at the Rusty Nail—David and Ivan hosted. Great turnout, but the images didn’t work like I’d hoped.

Mandy

I remember the Sunday parade—Thoth—passing in front of the store. Watching from the porch was so much fun.

Blake

Taunting float riders to try to break our windows—good times. That store was great until we outgrew it.

Mandy

It was good for me—forced me out of my shell. I learned how to engage people and explain things.

Blake

And look at you now—media, PR, talking to everyone.

Mandy

Doing all kinds of things. In almost every job interview I mention Dirty Coast—being there at the start of social media marketing and how much I learned. So, thank you.

Blake

You’re welcome. These interviews are just me fishing for one good appreciation sound bite.

Mandy

You really did catapult my career.

Blake

Now stop.

Mandy

It was a lot of fun. A great job.

Blake

You had a role like Michael’s—then you took the baton, helping manage with Patrick, and later Chris Roy. Now we’re more structured—clearer roles and core skill sets—even though everyone still wears a lot of hats.

Mandy

There’s an HR policy now.

Blake

We even have workers’ comp. When you tell people you worked at Dirty Coast, what’s the reaction?

Mandy

“Oh really—you know Blake?”

Blake

Oh lord. People think they know me from my emails. For the record, you were an awesome teammate.

Mandy

Thanks.

Blake

You brought new ideas and energy—and you pushed us to get our retail act together. I was still treating it like a side project.