Whether he’s designing his FuMan Skeeto clothing line or working with *NSYNC to aid the needy, Chris proves he’s the man in charge.

In the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, in an effort to try to get back to normal (relatively speaking, of course), Chris Kirkpatrick held an event at New York’s Planet Hollywood to discuss a number of subjects with the press. If you’re curious about his approach to the FuMan Skeeto clothing line or what *NSYNC’s immediate and futures plans are, you’ll find the answer below.

QUESTION: Who’s your style icon?
CHRIS: I don’t have a style icon. I never really looked up at someone and said, “Boy, I’d like to be that person.” I just thought it was a neat transition from the music business. We’ve been at this for three-and-a-half years, and everybody is starting a clothing line now – Puffy, Jennifer. Because we’re in the music business and we’re always doing awards shows, we have all the fans that come to us dressed in all different outfits. It kid of gives us an idea of where to go with the designs.

QUESTION: What made you want to come out with your own line?
CHRIS: Like I said, I just saw so many styles on so many different people. When we first got together, we traveled overseas a lot and saw a lot of stuff that was popular overseas. When we’d wear it over here, people would say, “Oh, that’s a really cool idea,” and we’d be like, “Well, it’s really old in Germany and the U.K.” So the idea was to bring all the cultures together and make one clothing line so that kids who don’t get a chance to go overseas can be stylish.

QUESTION: Do you design most of the line?
CHRIS: I help with a lot of the men’s stuff. The women’s stuff, I don’t know what women feel comfortable in. I do know what they look good in. So they’ll design a lot of stuff and I’ll say, “That looks good on a girl, that looks good, this doesn’t look as good, that’s not as flattering.” We all sort of sit down and have a brainstorming meetings about it.

QUESTION: If you walk down the street and you see a guy wearing something that could serve as an inspiration?
CHRIS: That’s the way the whole company works. We get ideas from everywhere. Sometimes, a building will make you say, “Oh the would be a cool dress.”

QUESTION: Is *NSYNC going back overseas?
CHRIS: We had it scheduled before everything that’s been going on [in terms of the terrorist attacks]. We had actually started the process before we said, “We think we’ll stay here for a while.”

QUESTION: What kind of feedback have you gotten from designers?
CHRIS: We’ve gotten really good feedback. With the first line, we got a lot of considerate people who said, “Oh, it’s nice; it’s cool.” But with this line, everybody has taken it to the forefront. Everyone who sees the outfits loves them. No we’re just waiting to see how people react when these clothes hit stores.

QUESTION: What makes you clothing da bomb?
CHRIS: I think terms like that are politically incorrect right now. What makes it cool? I don’t really know. It’s just stylish, it’s just something different. It’s not your average alligator on a colored shirt-type clothes. It’s got a lot of punk references from the early ‘80s in the U.K. in the styles, so you see a lot of patches, a lot of buttons, a lot of graffiti-type are. It’s just something that kids look at and say, “I haven’t seen that anywhere else.” Lots of people like to express themselves with their clothing, and this is one way that they can go to the local store and find a piece of clothing that can express them.

QUESTION: Is there anything that you wish you had known before you started the company that you know now?
CHRIS: There are a lot of things. I think it’s like anything, including the group. You learn from your mistakes. If we wouldn’t have been able to make the mistakes, we wouldn’t have learned from them. If you take a chance on something and it’s wrong, you make a mistake and you won’t do it again. If you think you know, but you’re not sure, and you thought you had an idea you might try later on – I think we’re happy we made the mistakes that we’ve made, and we’re ready to move on to new mistakes. It’s really taught us all a lot about the business. But above everything else, this is the clothing business and it’s a really harsh business.

QUESTION: Even with all of the success that you guys have had, is there anything that still makes you nervous?
CHRIS: You know what? Everything still makes me a bit nervous. We’ve all grown to support each other so much, where, for instance, two of the guys [Lance and Joey] have been promoting a movie they were doing, and they kind of called us and said, “It’s kind of weird and uncomfortable being here and promoting the movie without everybody else.” And I’m doing clothing promotions and things like that, and it’s not comfortable to be here without the other guys. We’re a group above everything else, and we all lean on each other and rely on each other. When we’re not all here, it just feels a little awkward. But for the most part, I think we’re doing ok.

QUESTION: Are the clothes designed for artists or regular people?
CHRIS: I think over someone famous wearing the line is a fan wearing the line. We give a lot of our clothes to celebrities, so they’ve been on TV and things like that, and it’s really cool to be able to say, “Oh, I designed that” or “That’s really cool that that person is wearing the outfit that we just did,” but mostly, when somebody just went to the store and bought that shirt, or somebody down the street just went and got the shirt, that’s really kind of cool.

QUESTION: Chris, in your life, have you ever had to deal with a bully or someone who pushed you around?
CHRIS: I don’t think I ever dealt with a bull, because I was really, really small for my age and I felt like I always had to prove myself. So, if a bully was to trying something, rather than let him shove me around, I’d fight back. I think I got a little bit of respect that way.

QUESTION: Do you have any immediate plans with *NSYNC?
CHRIS: We’re going to go back into the studio. We’ve got a lot of time off, and anything we get time off, we’ll try and vacation, but that never happens. When I went to the Keys to relax, I just kept thinking about getting back up and getting to work on a new album. The reason we seem to have a new album every year is because when we get a break or are on the road and in our hotel rooms, we just start writing. We’ve got a lot to say and a lot in our minds, so a lot will come out.

QUESTION: Justin has often been the focus of the group. Has that created any tension from within?
CHRIS: No. With everything that we do, there are things that we all have good points to and bad points to. When we do the songs where Justin sings leads, he wrote the track, and for the video it was natural, because it was kind of his thing and we were backing him up on that. When we do a show, there are different parts of the show where some of us stand out and some of us have our places where we shine. When we do a lot of interviews and a lot of public speaking, I’ll step out. If we’re doing a lot of writing, JC, Justin or something I will step out. We’ve all got our strong points. People would just see Justin a little more because he’s been more in the forefront. But I think for the most part, we’re a group and we’ll always be a group.

QUESTION: Do you have any advice for people in terms of getting on with their lives and putting September 11 behind them?
CHRIS: There’s really no advice you can give, other than just try and move on. The hardest thing is that you can’t put it behind you. You can’t not know what’s going on. You can’t act like nothing happened. Of course, the country is different. I’ve seen it just flying up here. We had our bags randomly searched, so I had to wait in line just like these hundreds of other people just to get my bags searched. I think there’s a lot of good that’s comes out of this, too. There’s al of of national pride now, people are pulling together, people are realizing that the true heroes are in the fire department – people who are risking their lives every day, but never to this scale. Terrorism happens, and now it has happened to us, and now that we’re aware of it, I think we have to move on with ourselves and try to keep going with a new type of day-to-day. Everybody’s going to have to change what they do a little bit; it’s affected everybody. In a few months, I think things will be back to normality. Not back to normal, but back to a normality of some kind where people will be comfortable. I know for a week or so afterward, it was tough ever for people to laugh or any fun. If you saw someone laughing, you’d say, “What’s wrong with that person? Why is that person happy?” People really need to pick themselves back up again and push on with their goals.