On my favorite project to date

​this project has been a long time coming. long before i started working for august, i approached the owner about selling my designs in the store. (i just looked it up in my dm's and it was jan. 25, 2018, so it was really in the first days of the fake clothing brand concept and just a few months after august opened its doors.) 5 days later, I got a polite no, along with an explanation that they were focusing on their in-house label and evolving their established-brands list. fast forward 3 years, and i am beyond proud to be the first designer to be featured under the newest august brand banner - august homegrown.

the most poetic part of this is how much has changed but yet how much has stayed the same. (shoutout bon jovi). upon looking up my brand pitch to rob, i found that my definition at the time was that fake clothing was "a play on what is real and what is fake, especially considering a connection between clothing [and] art." despite my ideas for the brand evolving considerably since 2018, eerily, my description was very much the same for the launch of homegrown : : 001: "the brand's mission is to bridge the gap between consumer fashion and fine art, and investigate the relationship between ‘real’ and ‘fake’." unsurprisingly, my verbiage is a bit more polished but is essentially saying the same thing.

a similar thing can also be said for august. so much has changed since 2018. in early 2021 we are in a way entering a third evolution of the store and the brand. so many successes have been had and august has made innumerable friends along the way, but we are still working on building out the august brand. 2021 is arguably the biggest year already for august merch. and homegrown is just one of at least 3 sub banners that have opened since i first pitched selling items in the store. yet with the launch of this banner, in very much the same way my 2021 description of 'fake' directly paralleled my 2018 one, august homegrown realizes a core original goal of august of "welcom[ing] all members of our community to share in the exchange of ideas, art and fashion."

in ways no one in 2018 could have conceived, august and myself have grown together to realize a mutually beneficial relationship. august is now in a place to support and promote local designers. i am now in a place of actually putting my ideas into production and really fleshing out what "fake clothing" looks like. i really believe that this joint effort will be the start of something truly great and meaningful for both of us.

i hope featuring myself as the first "homegrown" designer isn't a bad look. i didn't make this project such a priority for solely selfish the purpose of making myself a little extra money on the side. i wanted to spearhead this project to give people like myself the platform to grow their brand and audience. that is because i see every day what august means to people the people in the madison streetwear/fashion community. i have met so many young designers that look to august as a beacon of light just like i did back in 2018 (and still do). so many young designers that deserve to have their ideas amplified and legitimated by an established purveyor of streetwear.  i look forward to curating those designs from folks i am proud to call friends, and finding more people out there who share in my (and august's) vision.