James Franco is sorry now that he didn’t listen to his father’s advice and study math and business in college rather than just literature and art.

The skills that Doug Franco developed as a Harvard MBA and Silicon Valley entrepreneur would have come in handy for his son’s latest project, Paly Hollywood, a streetwear-skewed fashion brand that he created with his longtime friend Kyle Lindgren.

Because his father died in 2011, the actor, who is best known for his roles in the “Spider-Man” trilogy and “The Disaster Artist,” has been leaning heavily on Lindgren’s father for a tutorial on how to create and run a business.

So far, so good.

Paly Hollywood launched quietly last year with a tight collection of distressed T-shirts, sweatshirts and hand-knit sweaters titled “Hollywood Is Hell,” the graphics of which explore some of the tragedies, conspiracies and niche heroes of Tinseltown. 

Subjects range from instantly recognizable figures such as James Dean and Jayne Mansfield to producer Don Simpson and Larry Fortensky, the construction worker who became the seventh and final husband of Elizabeth Taylor.

The graphics, attention to detail and the artistic bent of the inaugural collection quickly found a following — and retail customers including H.Lorenzo, The Webster and Patron of the New. What hasn’t been publicly revealed until now is that not only is Franco a cofounder of the brand, it’s his artwork that is used for the collection. 

Franco has long had a love for art and even attended the Rhode Island School of Design’s art graduate program. But it was the advice he gleaned from Jerry Saltz’s book “Art Is Life” that really stuck with him. The book is full of advice that includes simple suggestions such as: to become good at art “just draw something every day,” Franco said. “And I hadn’t been doing that.” 

He took that suggestion to heart and it resulted in “thousands and thousands of drawings,” Franco said, some of which lent themselves to being used on apparel.

“His assistant started scanning them, gave me the link and I started mocking things up,” Lindgren recalled. “I would get up early before work and just throw together different graphics, almost for fun because it was so interesting. Then one thing led to another and things kind of snowballed, and we started making actual shirts printed on old blanks we got at flea markets.”

Franco quickly embraced this new opportunity, drawing right onto denim jackets that he gave away to friends as birthday presents.

The germ of an idea for a business was born.

They came up with a name based on Franco’s love of his hometown of Palo Alto, California, and enlisted Lindgren’s dad for business advice. “Kyle knows so much about design and I know how to be creative, but neither of us had every started a business on our own,” Franco said.

Lindgren has a rich résumé that is rooted in merchandise product development, a skill he honed at the street/skatewear brand F–king Awesome as well as Madhappy. But as Franco is proud to relate, his partner also graduated magna cum laude from the Los Angeles-based Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. 

They met around six years ago through mutual friends and bonded through their mutual love of art, film, fashion and humor, Lindgren said.   

“James was actually the one who encouraged me to pursue fashion,” Lindgren said. “At F–king Awesome I was a designer at the end, but I got most of my skills through product development. And that has come in really handy for this — having an affinity for materials, knowing the way fibers react in different environments, and just being able to take a designer’s concept and follow it all the way through to completion.

“That definitely shines through in our products — you can tell that someone with a background in product development designed and created them,” he continued. “The screen prints for this first collection, we literally sanded every print by hand like crazy people and stretched them so they cracked.”

Each of the styles is produced in very limited quantities and almost every unit is hand-painted and personally worked on by Lindgren and Franco. The fabric used for the T-shirts is a textured jersey imported from Japan and the fleece is constructed from a custom-knit, 17-ounce terrycloth made in Los Angeles. Every item has been garment-dyed, washed, and sun-faded to create a vintage feel. All of the fleece pieces and the sweaters feature a hand-numbered label.

The sweaters were all hand-knit by Lois, a renowned 85-year-old artisan in Palos Verdes, California, who has been knitting sweaters out of her house for more than 60 years. 

Prices on T-shirts range from $225 to $285, crew and hooded sweatshirts from $440 to $495, hats are $110 to $145, and Lois’s hand-knit sweaters are $990.

For the graphics, the launch collection drew from Franco’s large archive of drawings and homed in on the Hollywood theme. 

“Hollywood history has always just been something I’m super interested in, you know, I even made movies about it,” Franco said.

Since the launch, the sweatshirts with Franco’s artwork on them have been the biggest sellers. Lindgren admits that creating these pieces was “an absolute nightmare” because of the work required to cut the side seams, remove the cuffs and flatten the piece on a digital printing machine. But he stuck with it and customers responded. “I personally just love all of James’ artwork, but most of it is not really public,” he said. “So I think it’s great that he can finally showcase his drawing abilities because they’re really good.”

Looking ahead, the partners have plans to further expand the offering into different classifications. Lindgren said next-up will be “fully merchandised pants, knits, outerwear and accessories.”

Now that Franco’s association with the brand is being made public, will Glamour magazine’s one-time “Sexiest Actor Alive” be the face of Paly Hollywood?

“I frankly kind of love this idea that nobody would know it’s me,” he said. “But I felt that could be seen as me trying to hide or something like that. I’m proud of it and I want my name associated with it. But I’m not going to be the model for it or anything like that. I’m the codesigner.”

During the height of his film career, Franco was the face of Gucci’s men’s fragrance and a friend of the brand. But the actor’s career stalled after he was accused of sexual misconduct. He later revealed he had been in treatment for both sex addiction and substance abuse issues.

With that behind him, Franco said he has a couple movies and a series in the can and he can focus on his career as well as Paly Hollywood. Although he and Lindgren have ambitions to grow, they’re also being cautious. 

“There’s no shortcuts in doing things the right way,” Lindgren said. “That’s really important because we want everything to look like it’s either been worn before or something’s just spilled on it like paint by an artist. We work with a lot of artisans and vendors, and as we grow we want to to ensure that they’re growing too. It’s almost like family supply chain where we’re all in this together.”

It’s these partnerships that truly connect with Franco. “Coming from the film industry, it’s just a collaborative medium,” he said. “Kyle and I work on every single piece together. What’s really fun for me is pitching an idea and then the other person builds on it. With that back and forth, you get to a place where you never would have gotten on your own.”

As the brand grows, it will continue to build on its storytelling prowess centered around both the famous and the unsung heroes of Hollywood. 

Most of the distribution will be direct-to-consumer so the brand is not hampered by the traditional fashion calendar and can introduce new collections at will. But Lindgren said Paly Hollywood will also continue to work with a handful of hand-selected retailers.