I-sty-ly

Our story doesn’t begin in a board room or business school. Instead, it all traces back to a couple hundred bucks, a broken down screen printing machine, and the shocking idea that having fun should be more important than working your life away. That philosophy was ingrained in the founder, California native Dale Leite, from the time he was a boy. Spending most of his teen years skating, surfing, and cruz'n the streets of the Bay Area and the Central Coast, he moved from one place to another for years. Traveling around California, Baja, Hawaii, Peru, and New Zealand. This was no luxury cruise; he spent many nights crashing on couches, trading clothes for nights stay, living in a VW van, and even under the pier in Capitola.

While this might sound like the kind of situation most entrepreneurs would try to avoid, he grew to appreciate the morning sun and the freedom to enjoy every day. With a name thought up late one night in 1996 and a single sketch screened onto a handful of shirts, the company was born.

The shirts became a hit with family and friends who loved its simplicity and attitude of fun. From there, istyly stayed underground for over ten years – to get one the T-shirts meant buying it out of a backpack or out of Dale’s garage. After a while, store owners started asking if they could sell his products. With that, Dale invested the small profits from previous shirts and made more. The shirts in the stores sold too and the company got a bit bigger. More graphics and more items were added into the mix, and now more than a dozen shops are carrying istyly clothes and accessories. 

What makes us different? As much as we love creating T-shirts, that’s not it. While we might be selling a little more than we were in the days when Dale was living out of his van, we still believe that having a good time is the most important aspect of life and work. We believe in comfortable, functional clothes with clean and simple designs… and we want you to have as much fun wearing them as we do creating them.

Keep that in mind as you look through this site. Our clothing and accessories have a little bit for anyone who’s ever dreamed that their working life could be a bit more like a day off. You can skate, or snowboard, or ride a dirt bike, or none of those. All that matters is that you get out and enjoy life.