Black Light 19: Brandon Blackwood

June 19, 2023

When an environment is placed under black light, you can see things invisible to the human eye. Last June 2022 I created the first Black Light 19 list to champion the voices and stories of Black people across the creative industry. The result: a veneration of 19 NYC-based intersectional voices who shared work and experiences that inform the purpose of “innovation oriented activism,” the understanding that there is a need for Black infiltration in every occupation. This Juneteenth, office takes that further with the start of our Blacklight column – a bimonthly series pushing for representation and giving flowers to the trailblazers that continue to positively impact our community.

Creative Direction and Production by Livia Rose Johnson
Art Direction by Livia Rose Johnson
Production Coordination by Yinka Bishi
Photography by Andre Uncut
Lighting Design by Sean Shields
Gaffing by James Lewis
Hair/Makeup by Jeannette Williams
Text and Interview by Livia Rose Johnson
Graphic Design by Ryan Scullin
Video Direction Herzen Clerge
Production by Multimedia
Assistant Production by Em

As an activist and culture curator for the last five years, I have seen the peaks and troughs of movements such as BLM, and how the power of visibility can propel movements like this forward. In my pursuit of autonomy and equity, I have moved beyond the exclusive label of “activist” as the factor that enables participation in the Black liberation movement and created this series to set a precedent for the future. From the medical industry to the creative realms of entertainment, fashion and otherwise, the importance of visibility goes beyond legislation and is emulated by those who are doing the work not only in politics but also influencing diversity within their fields. Those in creative spaces are just as crucial as medical personnel who understand the Black body, Black educators who can not only relate but empathize with the youth they are guiding, Black business owners and entrepreneurs that push Black financial equity, and historians that can document and preserve our unaltered truths.

This Juneteenth we sat down to speak with Brandon Blackwood, the international fashion powerhouse and CEO of eponymous label Brandon Blackwood New York. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Brandon is first-generation America born to Jamaican and Chinese parents, which continues to be a large inspiration in his designs. While studying neuroscience at Bard College, he secretly pursued a career in fashion, interning at magazines such as Elle and Nylon. Following his graduation, he started working at a consignment shop where he decided to create something people would be excited to wear. He created a backpack for himself that garnered ample attention and in 2015, started Brandon Blackwood NYC to give people a chance to own their own backpack.

After his first collection was featured in Essence magazine he has expanded within the fashion industry with features in the NY Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Instyle, WWD, and Marie Claire. He was also recently nominated for a CFDA Award for Best Accessory Designer and has since expanded his company into eyewear, outerwear, and footwear. In addition to this, the Brandon Blackwood Foundation also launches today as a force with which to further uplift and fund the communities he is a part of.

We are in a time where people are celebrated by being their true selves vs. following “trends” and it’s a really cool place to be.

Can you share with us a bit about yourself, your journey, and how you found your passion for the fashion industry?

I majored in neuroscience at Bard College and during my summers I would intern at places like NYLON without my parents knowing. When I graduated, and I didn’t know they would do this, they read aloud our senior thesis and I did mine on Diane Von Furstenberg’s iconic “Wrap Dress” and let’s just say – it was a quiet ride home. After I graduated, I ended up working at a Buy Sell Trade store and made myself a backpack just because. Some of the stylists and editors that visited the store, noticed it, and so in 2015, I decided to launch my company with three styles, one being that backpack I made for myself – The Portmore.

Your personal story and background are incredibly inspiring. What inspired you to pursue a career in design, and how did your intersectional identity shape your creative path? How do you navigate and reconcile the different aspects of your identity to create meaningful and authentic designs?

Growing up my mom always dressed up for work, I saw how much effort she put into how she looked and it influenced me in my own fashion journey. My designs are inspired by my family and friends. I always design with them in mind because I want to make sure I have something for everybody – a style my grandma would love or something for my 18 yr old cousin.

Representation is so important for marginalized communities. How do you approach the challenge of creating fashion that is not only inclusive but also authentically represents the diverse identities within the Black queer community?

That’s why I started my line with handbags because they’re sizeless in that sense and everyone can wear a bag. When I decided to move into shoes I made sure I created for everyone by having a wide size range (35-44). It was also important to me to make something that my friends and family could afford. When you start a business they are your biggest supporters, and sometimes brands make the mistake of making items way too pricey – it was always important to me to keep everything at an accessible price.

Maintaining authenticity and a real voice is crucial in today's world. How do you ensure that your brand stays true to your vision while navigating the pressures and expectations of the fashion industry?

It can be hard to not look at others and think “Oh I could’ve done that.” But I just stay focused by sticking to my vision and what I want to accomplish. I think one thing that has always helped me was looking to my followers or “cousins” as I refer them for advice, this brand is theirs as it is mine. I started this brand having no idea what I was doing and I have just learned along the way.

Fashion is often seen as a reflection of society. What role does fashion play in challenging norms, breaking stereotypes, and reshaping narratives? How can it be a catalyst for change and empower individuals to embrace their authentic selves?

Style right now is all about individuality, if you like what you wear and feel powerful you look great. We are in a time where people are celebrated by being their true selves vs. following “trends” and it’s a really cool place to be.

Collaboration and community are essential for growth and progress. Can you share any experiences where collaboration with other black creatives or organizations has elevated your work or allowed for new opportunities?

The collaboration with Black in Fashion Fair x Basquiat Estate was definitely one of my favorites! It allowed us to work with different mediums. It was an honor to be included!

As a successful entrepreneur and trailblazer in the fashion industry, and a source of inspiration for many aspiring creatives, what advice would you give to those who are just starting their journey? Are there any key lessons or principles you've learned that you believe are crucial for success in the industry?

I would say don’t take the word “no” personally. There were so many times I was told no. I just stayed true to my vision and continued to work on my brand. Looking back on it I realized if I had landed these opportunities I wouldn't have been ready to accept it. Sometimes the word no is a good thing - you have to be ready to accept the challenges.

Looking ahead, what are your future aspirations and goals for your brand? How do you envision your work contributing to the continued growth and empowerment of the black queer community and beyond? Looking to the future, what are your aspirations for yourself and your brand?

I am definitely looking forward to expanding my brand. We have so many things in store, I can’t wait to show everyone! In the near future, I’d like to be more of a household name and continue to help out the community with my foundation (The Brandon Blackwood Foundation) which I am officially launching on June 19th.

I also would love to do more fun customs and hopefully be ready to wear soon, it was so incredible making the gown recently for Beyonce and I want to do more moments like that. I want to continue to do the unexpected.

Every success story has its ups and downs. Can you tell us about a specific challenge or setback you faced along the way, and how you overcame it? What valuable lessons did you learn from that experience?

Building my brand was tough because I started out with no fashion training, no mentors, and no investors. I really had to build my brand from the ground up. There were times I thought I couldn’t do it but I persevered. I learned success isn’t a straight line, just when you think it’s over that’s when it really begins.

In addition to your achievements, you have also made an impact on the broader fashion industry and the community. Can you discuss any initiatives or collaborations or wins you have undertaken that have uplifted yourself and others to create positive change?

I created my foundation to uplift our community. We are donating to several organizations such as The Door, The Lawyer’s Committee, and many more.

Fashion

From Prince Street to East 4th, a Ride With Rapha

April 29, 2024

To celebrate the coolest (and finest) cycle-centric brand Rapha's latest drop, we kept the party going after its New York Clubhouse launch with dinner and drinks at Ella Funt.

With a first campaign shot in New York, capturing riders through the lens of street photographers Sarah van Rij and David van der Leeuw, Rapha Performance Sportswear strikes the perfect balance between style and functionality, tailored for life in motion. Just in time for prime sunny weather here in New York, the collection is a perfect choice, both on and off the bike. "For someone like myself who lives in Amsterdam and commutes by bike daily," says Fayrouz Salem, Rapha Head of Lifestyle, "this is a dream come true. We've created pieces that work on the bike without having to compromise on style."

Shop the collection at rapha.cc and in select Clubhouses.

Photography by Anderson Martinez

Fashion

Luis De Javier's PUTA Takeover

April 25, 2024

Last night with Luis De Javier, guests were overheard confirming this generation's most vital conundrum: “If I’m cunt, I can still be pussy.” “And if you’re pussy, you can still be cunt.” This sentiment echoed throughout the night as we celebrated De Javier’s first-ever streetwear collection, "PUTA". We spent seven hours at Ella Funt at a dinner turned party that only he could’ve thrown (co-hosted by emcee). It was too dark for even the most aspiring-to-look-mysterious of us to wear sunglasses inside. Under the semi-oppressive flash of party photographers, we danced as much as the space would allow, drank tequila out of teacups and kissed each other on the cheeks with a vaguely European intimacy. “I’m doing streetwear!” De Javier could be heard exclaiming — whether it be in disbelief or excitement, we couldn’t tell you.

Words and photos by Izzy Capulong

The Spanish-born London-based designer has been well-loved for his genderless tailoring, latex mastery, and overall message of empowerment. Dressing everyone from ravers to A-listers, De Javier’s latest drop pushes his design repertoire to a new level. “While designing for my celebrity clientele and showcasing my creations on the runway has always been my dream,” he notes, “It’s equally important to me that my brand resonates with a wider, more diverse audience.” While this collection’s medium has shifted from corsets to sweatshirts, the classic LDJ avant-garde sensibilities remain. Bikinis and booty shorts are shamelessly emblazoned with “PUTA,” blazers are constructed with ample shoulder padding, and I had my eye on the cheekily-named “Faguette Bag.”

The Puta collection will be available exclusively on emcee.

Fashion

Happy 424 Day

Simon Rasmussen — What's going on?

Guillermo Andrade — Right now we're just setting everything up.

So, what are you doing, is it a party?

Well, I kind of felt universally forced, right? Because 4/24/24, I was just like, I don’t really have a choice here. The stars also just kind of aligned, so to be honest, I got this settlement that came with a bunch of clothes so I had this idea to give back to the kids who fuck with us by allowing them to buy our shit first. Not handing stuff out for free, but to do it in a way where we could skip the middleman of the industry, so to speak, and not allow clothes to disappear into the abyss of Farfetch or whatever else. So what we’re going to do is a sort of warehouse sale, which we’ve never done before so that was really exciting for me. I didn’t want to do just another warehouse sale, so it’s like a sample sale turns rager. We teamed up with Adidas and a couple of other sponsors, then drinks, DJs, and a performance.

Sick, I love it.

Yeah. My dream sample sale. Also, it’s not just hoodies and t-shirts here in there, it’s proper collections from the past three seasons. I’m also not picking and choosing, trying to make it accessible, like this was the only way I could afford to buy shit when I was a kid, bro. Sample sales were the thing I looked forward to the most.

I feel you. In New York, there's the annual CDG sale, which is when I used to cop all my CDG.

The only time I could afford Rick. I flew to New York once for a Rick sample sale and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I got invited. And it was mental. I still have those pieces. I will never sell them. Not even because I got 'em cheap. It was also just really fun. Even on the flight to New York, I was like, I can't believe I'm going to New York for a sample sale, what a fucking loser I am. But it was like the adult version of when I was a kid and I was like, Wow, I can't believe I'm 20-something and I'm still doing the thing I was doing in high school. So I hope we can create moments like that for kids here in LA.

Yeah. I love that. It’s important to connect with them; they’re essentially creating the brand. If you don't have them, good luck.

I mean, yeah. Fuck, bro. It's cool that we've been around for this long. I mean, it got a little rocky there for a second I think, for all of us. So coming out of it, tomorrow is a celebration. And it’s like an odd day of the week. It's a Wednesday, super random. And now that we've set it up, the homies are all like, Yo, I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me jump on stage, let me do this, and that's really what it's always been about. It's not some other strategy to get likes on the internet.

That’s how the best things happen, you just couldn’t help yourself. It was intuitive.

Yeah, it all came together in a really nice way.

Would you say that’s how 424 started as well? I remember we met in like 2010 on Fairfax and I was visiting with Rasmus…

Oh bro, it’s probably the time when I started the branch… do you remember Cecilia from Black Dakini? She’s the one that introduced me to CIFF and honestly, I didn’t even care what she was doing, I was just like, I’m coming, I’ll go with you. She said she’d give me half of her booth and I said, Awesome count me in. At the time, I had just gotten my green card and I wasn't allowed to ever leave America, so Copenhagen was one of the first cities I went to when I could finally travel. I mean, you see what we did at CIFF bro? It became our fucking hub for half a decade.

That was a moment for sure.

I remember the first account I got was Antonioli, and he came super gangster, being like, You're going to sell me these clothes. And I was like, bro, I didn't come to sell clothes. I'm just kind of catching a vibe with my homie and I made these things. And he's like, No, you're going to sell it to me. And then I was like, Oh my god that’s Claudio Antonioli. So then I went home, I googled wholesale, and figured that shit out. [laughs]

[Laughs]

Like you said, I couldn't help myself, but I didn't just make t-shirts and hoodies either. I was really on my Rick wave, so I made my version of the Rick things. It was that meets like The Boondock Saints, because I'm still a little bit of a Cali bro, sort of rock kid, but not really. I like hip-hop, but I like the way the rock stars look. I like the contrast. I thought it was cool. After that, I just never stopped.

It was clear to me when I first met you that you were onto your own thing in LA. It made a lot of sense, and it was so cool. It was before 424 was its own brand; you just had the store and this really cool curation.

It was all my shit, bro. I was very, very invested in sharing all of these things that I was finding from all over the world, like Astrid Anderson. She was one of those designers at the time, so important to 424. The connection to Copenhagen specifically for me was huge. I had a big fan base there. It was incredible. And then here in LA, we were sharing the things that we were a part of and finding; it was still the early days of Fear of God, Rhude, Martine Rose. A lot of these brands, we were the first store to ever sell it — we were selling Hood By Air on the West Coast.

You had Rick as well, I remember.

Oh yeah. It took me a long time. But I got Rick, bro. By the time I had to close the store on Fairfax, I already had a Raf Simons account. I had reached my ultimate dream. It was really all the stuff I wanted to wear at the time. It was dope. The best of the best.

We had an office magazine newsstand in there as well.

Oh yeah, we did! I came to visit the one you had, and I was like, Yo, I got to bring this whole fucking thing over here. But yeah, in LA, after two days people forget you exist, but everyone’s been super supportive. We’re all 10 years older now. We've been around forever at this point.

It can be dangerous to take those breaks when you’re figuring shit out, but there’s something very genuine to this comeback you’re having.

Thank you, thank you. We’ve been in and out of those fucking showrooms in Paris for long enough. I've been in and out of these factories for the past 10 years of my life. We had to figure something out. And I think now really diving in, being in Italy full time and being there to develop these products over time, I think that the whole thing just really shows the suppliers respect you more. The people who are making your goods understand why you're making them. And I think now I finally got to the place where I'm not making Italian things, I’m making my clothes, I'm making Cali-centric shit, but with that European technicality and execution. With this Fall / Winter collection, it clicked.

So what’s the vision for the next year? What are you manifesting?

I'm just fucking relentless, bro. This is the way I want to live my life. Now that we are more aligned, more prepared, and have more experience, moving forward it is just more of becoming a fully functioning company that can provide and create opportunities for all of the people around me. We’ve been operating just on instinct for a long time.

Sustaining a business is scary, trust me I know.

Scary as fuck, dog. I just opened a store next to Bottega, bro, and it’s like what am I even doing? You have to just believe in the thing you're doing more than anybody else.

100%, and it seems like that’s what you’re doing.

And fashion’s kind of a competitive sport, as much as people don’t think it is. We can reach a certain level without losing ourselves. My biggest ambition at the moment is to create something that, when you leave one of our neighbors you come into our place you don’t feel that the level has been sacrificed at all. And it’s not easy.

Definitely. I wish I could be there tomorrow.

Thank you, bro. 10 years now. You’ve always shown me so much love. We have to do a booth or have the office part of the next 424 day. Shit let’s do a 424 day in New York.

That would be sick. Let's do it. I'm here. Let’s catch up soon.

Next season’s right around the corner so I’ll see you in Paris.

Yes, see you in Paris and Happy 424 day!