Oyster Season
The world is Sam Novack's Oyster, and he wants to share it with you.
Spend enough time with Montreal’s homegrown Anglo community, and you’re very likely to see a tote or tee with “Oyster” printed on it in a felt-tip marker font. In a textbook display of how tiny the Anglo community in Montreal is, if you were to ask about an Oyster bag, you’re likely to be given an answer like “Oh, my friend Sam makes these”.
If you’re curious about Oyster Club and have yet to meet Sam Novack, you can accomplish both goals at once this Friday, July 30th at 6 pm in NDG’s parc Girouard. Sam will be running Oyster Club’s Summer popsicle pop-up, which will feature homemade popsicles in fun flavors like mango chile, with Oyster totes and tees to accompany.
It’s tempting to say that Oyster Club is just Sam Novack’s brand. After all, he is sewing everything, taking product photography, and, in this case, making a variety of different popsicle flavors. He does get some design help from club members, but it seems fair to think that Oyster is the Sam show. But that’s not how he would put it. “Oyster is my creative outlet to do whatever I want,” Sam tells me one day in Parc Little Italy. While Sam made his first bags before Oyster properly started, he learned how to sew for Oyster. Novack is also interested in photography, screen printing, and food. Oyster has translated these interests into a photography gallery, a lemonade stand, and now, popsicles.
Aside from a summer spent working at the Letter Bet, Sam is self-taught. For him, Oyster has been his motivation to learn and develop his skills to make and share his wares. Novack is very intentional, he knows what he wants to do and wants to achieve exactly that: “I always make my totes wider than they are all tall” He tells me that same afternoon.
“Yeah,” I respond, “It’s annoying to have to fish in the bottom of your bag.”
“Honestly it’s not even that. It’s just how I think tote bags should look. Like when I close my eyes and picture a tote, that’s what I see.”
Since Oyster is Sam’s outlet, his “hobby to explore other hobbies”, the connection between the goods produced and Sam is necessarily personal. Yet Sam maintains a distance between Oyster and himself. “I’m at the center of it, but it’s not about me,” he clarifies later, “Oyster is stuff that I want to share.”
Case in point: The graphic Sam got printed for this Friday’s event recreates the graphic on one of Sam’s favorite shirts, an old tee of his dad’s. The tee isn’t being sold as “look at my childhood nostalgia”, but as merch to commemorate the event. Oyster has no online store. For you to get your hands on Oyster Club gear you have to attend a pop-up or ‘club meeting’. Each Oyster piece then becomes a memento of the experience you had at the event, pushing the meaning of the item past Sam’s own intentions when he made the item.
However, if you do want to hear the full story behind the graphic, Sam will be happy to tell you on Friday. He loves a good brand story, and it’s a driving force behind why Oyster operates in pop-ups. “I think it’s important to put stuff out with some sort of event. If you just post shirts to Instagram, it’s like, ‘ok, why am I supposed to buy these?’ But I might be interested if I got to talk to you and learn where you were coming from”.
Everything Oyster-related leads back to Novack, which has been true since Oyster launched at Fleek Market in 2018: “I would be really surprised if anyone was able to get my stuff without interacting with me.”
Sam’s community-focused approach to Oyster Club has brought in people far and wide, myself included. I met Sam through mutual friends, which prompted me to attend his August 2020 photography pop-up. It was the first event I had attended in months, and getting to talk to Sam about his photography made me a fan and a proud member of the club.
Oyster Club has no membership fees, but buying a tote, tee, or popsicle this Friday will keep the Oyster ball rolling and fund future events. This is because Sam keeps his finances and those of Oyster separate, a move that “has just always made sense to me. I’ve never thought of it as my money. Oyster is a hobby. I’m not doing this for profit.” Any event profit gets reinvested into the next pop-up, so buying a tote this time around keeps the wheels spinning and enables Sam to continue doing events. “Having funds dedicated to Oyster also keeps the pressure on me to use the money well. I don’t want to let the club down.”
The club is always looking for new members, and joining is as simple as showing up. Show up on Friday.
I am very grateful to Sam Novack for sitting down to chat with me on two separate occasions, answering my random clarifying DMs, and for providing the photographs in this piece.