Earlier this month, one of New York’s most vivid and most successful brands celebrated five years. Despite entering the industry to avoid getting caught up in logos, the Lemar and Dauley trademark has become something synonymous with care, quality and a unique and bold style.

With legions of Rock The Bells attendees donning the gear across the continent this long, hot summer, plus everybody from Soulja Boy to Lupe Fiasco supporting the brand, Hip Hop’s many generations and styles come together under one thorough brand.

Kareem Blair, a founder and Creative Director of L&D took time to discuss the history, the future and the overall greater artistic sensibility of the brand. While so many others are trying to figure out a way to be original and successful, these true artists and culture purveyors are in the museum, the record store and photo album, thinkin’ of a master plan.
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Whether it’s that Celtics or Lakers jersey, Filas or Adidas, white tees or polo tops, the way one dresses says a lot about where they are from. From “block babies” to college students expanding their geographical horizons, home is where the fashion is to many. WearYourCity.com [click to visit], a collaborative effort between Greg Berry and Daniel Taylor transcended coasts, race and attitudes, and so does their company.

Whether you are from Imperial Gardens projects in California or Imperial, Pennsylvania, WearYourCity allows you to fashionably represent your street, your neighborhood or your city in a variety of tasteful designs on high-quality shirts. Moreover, the company’s two founders have implemented a blueprint for the future that may allow you in on their culturally-minded, global hustle.

Just as music says so much about new regions, new styles and new conversation pieces, so can fashion. WearYourCity.com proves to be an innovative, affordable and unique ice-breaker.

The Evil Collector: How did WearYourCity come to be? Of the two of you, who initiated the collaboration?

Greg Berry: Wear Your City came to be three or four years ago. I’m from Waterbury, Connecticut, which is a fairly small city of about 100,000 people. Everybody’s middle-class, and people love the city to death. It’s almost embedded in you that if you’re from Waterbury, you’re kind of an underdog. My buddy ended up going into the service, and was stationed out in California. This guy loved his city more then anything in the world. Anyway, the story is, I went to get him a shirt that said Waterbury on it so he can represent his hometown out there.. I go to the mall, and I can’t find one. I go to the Internet, CafePress.com and other similar sites, and I can’t find one. I’m thinking, “Damn, there’s got to be somebody else looking for a shirt like this.” So I went on eBay and bought a used heat-press, got it fixed up, made my buddy a shirt, and the idea just spread through the whole neighborhood.

The next thing you know, it was more of a neighborhood thing within my city. We’ve got Overlook, Town Plot, and other neighborhoods and everybody wants to represent their own neighborhoods within the city. I then took it another step. I made an Internet site called IRepMyCity.com. We were going to sell custom t-shirts with your city on it. We started with one design, a “Welcome To,” with your city’s name and bullet holes through it. The idea really didn’t catch on; I was in college at the time, and just started another business and didn’t give the site the attention it deserved. I really never gave it much thought. I was heat-pressing the shirts, which does not make for a very high quality shirt like the ones we produce today. It was a good idea though, and the people that did see them, bought them. If you wear it one time, two times, it’s just cool to come through with in your city.

Long story short, two years ago, I’m reading this blog called OnlineHustlers.com. The guy behind this blog was giving tips, making movies, showing how he markets, everything. I read that blog faithfully for about a year, and the guy behind it really got down. I reached out to see if this guy wanted to market for me on a percentage basis. I reached out, introduced myself, and whatnot. He said, “You’ve got a million dollar idea; I want to help be a part of this.” I realized that together we would make a winning team. My strengths are operations and business; this guy is a marketing expert. We started to get along very well. I then offered him a split partnership in the company. We outsourced the printing to a professional print shop, found different suppliers, and really started to run everything like a business He is from L.A., and I’m from C.T. We communicate daily; I’ve got the east coast, he’s got the west. It’s a very good thing.

TEC: How do you capture the market? For instance, in Philadelphia, on South Street, there are a lot of these shirts for sale, or on 125th Street in Harlem. How do you try to make sure those shirts come through you, as opposed to some homemade guy that might be doing what you were three years ago?

Daniel Taylor: Actually, that has been an issue. Local stores sell local clothing. What you find though is, while they do sell well, it’s not always what the people are looking for. It just happens to be the only thing available in terms of quality or design. How we market is, you can take unique and stylish designs instead of settling for something that’s just there and customize it to your city, town or neighborhood wherever that may be. Whether you’re from Idaho or Philadelphia. We make it feasible for your to represent your city, neighborhood or whatever!

G: That was one of my major selling points. Being from Waterbury, I could get an “I Love New York” shirt all day long, but I’m from Waterbury, not New York. You can’t get a Waterbury shirt, you know what I mean? And then in Philadelphia, if you live on let’s say 52nd Street, you can’t get a 52nd Street shirt, but if you come to our site, we make it to where you can get a shirt down to your intersection. 52nd and Chestnut or whatever it may be.

TEC: In urban trends altogether, do you see a major shift in just about local communities as opposed to the next nearest city or whatnot? Musically, I do…

D: I see a huge trend. The reason you see that shift, is because those are the people that are gonna support you first. You know, as well as I know, in the music industry, an artist just can’t go from being “Joe on the block” to getting signed and blowing up. There’s a process, and that process begins with local people supporting you. People on your street know about you, and those are the people that buy out of your trunk and support the community. It’s important. People are putting places on the map. A lot of these places, we never heard of them till a Hip Hop song came out. A lot of the guys in L.A., we knew about riding around in Cadillacs and lowriders, but we didn’t know what was going on in Texas and neighboring states – or even the Bay. This gave us that connection. We live way different than other people out here in L.A.; this is about letting it be known what your community is and what your culture is, and expressing that.

TEC: Are you guys looking to get more personal with designs and styles as the company moves forward?

G: Yes. From where we started, and how we got so far in this little amount of time, it was just hitting the pavement and just going. I can see this growing into something much bigger than a clothing company. We approach this as a movement. We do want to get more technology and expand deeper into our niche. The more we grow, the more we put back into the company. The more resources we have, the more we will expand and start producing even more ground breaking ideas. Right now We barter a lot and do a lot of guerilla marketing. Once the technology and more resources come, yes, we are gonna get deeper into this culture. Learning more about our customers and what they want.

D: Once we get the people rolling, the movement, then we can implement those into designs. Once we learn the aspects of a new city, we learn how they get down, ‘cause we never knew that before. We can adapt to cultures and grow on our ideas.

TEC: WearYourCity is friendly to both wholesale or stores and retail buyers?

G: Yes. What better way to get into communities and individual cities then the stores that they already are familiar with and trust. We understand what people want, we are the people that wear our shirts, so it is easy for a store to see something they like on our site and something that they can turn around and sell to others in their cities. Some people just make the shirts and try to take advantage of a certain fad, but we’re a cultural movement set up to learn from each other and see what it is really like in other cities and cultures. We’re a movement where a white guy from Connecticut and a black guy from L.A. came together to run a company, from two different walks of life, getting together to learn about each other, our people, our customers, and our cultures. What we’re trying to do with the wholesale, is an affiliate program that allows other like-minded individuals to join the movement and make cash from getting the word out to store owners and other buyers. This program will allow others to join us as partners and make a commission not only off the first sale but all other residual sales also, therefore not getting cut out after the first sale like other affiliate programs are set up to do. You can’t say you’re not in it for the money, but we’re in it for the movement.

TEC: Has there been one area that’s gravitated to your company that has shocked you?

D: For me, I’ll say overseas. We get orders from people in places like New Zealand. It’s crazy for me to see, we’re affecting people worldwide. Literally.

Over a year ago, politically-minded Hip Hop fans were struck by a line of Barack Obama-endorsing shirts that incorporated the beloved 4^th & Broadway logo (Eric B & Rakim, Mobb Deep, X-Clan) and those ’85 Chicago Bulls into something socially-reactive. That was then, and everybody from Mos Def to Barack Obama himself have praised these efforts. Hoodman Clothing was the outfit behind the awakening. Started by Edwyn Huang, the New York based company has tackled many more issues, from Rupert Murdoch’s potential ownership of our minds, to the Sisters Spears both getting stylishly knocked up, to Hip Hop relationship with video games, it’s always thought-provoking, and graffiti for the mind in today’s colorful fashion world.

The Evil Collector spoke to Mr. Huang about some of the inspiration behind their new school line, the political consciousness and the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” adage of one clothier that’s not trying to do it, but rather admit its mistakes and keep on pushing product with integrity. Hoodman doesn’t make your average shirts, but it’s the brainchild of extraordinary people, see what we mean.

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There is something to be said about faith. Once you have a hold of it, you’re either a slave or a motivator. Arif Gursel, who serves as a technical evangelist at Microsoft, interestingly tip-toes the line between those two worlds. His name is associated with Microsoft platforms such as Windows Vista, Xbox360 and Zune. With his tech savvy mind aligned with the culture of hip hop, Gursel looks to push the impact of digital media technology via the entertainment industry.

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Sneakers and jewels have been a part of urban fashion since Hip Hop’s inception, but only recently have the two worlds collided. Alan Kashi, a 26 year-old jeweler, who went from New York to Pittsburgh to make custom jewels had a heavy-hand if not pioneering, in this movement of weaving iced out medallions and Cuban links through laces.

The movement led Kashi to his own manufacturing plant, Kashi Kicks. Approaching 300 styles, many of which sold out, this thriving designer sneaker company has caught attention of everybody from George Clinton to DJ Khaled. Get a sense of this fashion phenomenon and the visionary behind as The Evil Collector kicks it with Kashi.

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Fashion is a mode of self-expression. From Stash House to the Snowman phenomenon, it is with that expression that empowers its wearer to believe in one’s self. It is with that self-worth that fuels Cheriss May’s line – Unified Soul [http://www.lovewhoIam.com]. The Kansas City native and Howard University graduate has taken her love of the visual graphic arts and has applied it to this cutting edge fashion that line that has recently found itself under the spotlight. (more…)

From the cover of Food & Liquor, it was plain to see that Lupe Fiasco wasn’t plain to see. He had a neatly defined style, like his music, of past meets future. Black suits with colorful sneakers. Retro jackets with nouveau digital watches. Holy scarves with gold plated glasses. The list goes on, but it helped defined a Pop culture icon as visual as he was musical. As Lupe Fiasco will tell you, this vision was developed over years in the mind of a Chicago artist.

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Today’s urban fashion is driven by the pursuit of quality. The nuances of tailor-made, fitted clothes attract attention, and they reveal a carefully groomed image that men and women both aspire for.

Few lines feature the kind of quality seen with Onovo Royaluxe. Based in Los Angeles, the team of eight designs military-inspired garments that appeal to the urban youth with a tangible air of sophistication for people outside of the scope of mixtapes, blogs and Myspace. (more…)

For millions of people across the world, fashion is more than just clothes – it’s also about finding items that cause whiplash as people try to catch a second glimpse. Such neck-turning gear is hard to come by in most local malls, so many turn to Karmaloop.com. (more…)

If everybody in the world had a gift that they recognized, it would probably be a world full of Michael Jacksons, Tupacs and Kidz in the Halls. Regardless of how excited you are about the group, the album, School was my Hustle has been critically acclaimed and Double-O and Naledge are just two people in this universe who recognize who have natural talent and appeal. (more…)