Daömey Clothing (@DaomeyBrand) — New store in Shoreditch

By Timothée Chataux • On Shop , ,

image3For once I won’t speak about music, but more about cloth­ing. And this one is worth the jour­ney. What is the link between your 90’s hob­bies (like Dragon Ball, The Prince of Bel Air) and the Streetwear cloth­ing? Abso­lutely none you would tell me. Daömey Cloth­ing has the answer for you.

The “Loufoque” brand (mean­ing zany) mixes your child­hood idols with streetwear clothes. Even if it sounds improb­able, the res­ult is amaz­ing. Like Vegeta with the Bulls kit, crazy.

In France the brand knows a great suc­cess, well sup­por­ted by the French Hip Hop scene. Cre­ated in 2006 its expan­sion is increas­ing, to the extent that Daömey Cloth­ing is open­ing its new store this Sat­urday (1st July) in Shored­itch.

It is the right occa­sion to talk about it with its cre­at­or, Ser­gio.

My inspir­a­tions mainly come from the 90’s cul­ture like man­gas, bas­ket­ball, TV series, movies

  • Can you please speak about your brand’s debuts in 2006 ? How did you get involved in this adven­ture ?image5

So first why Daömey ? In fact, it refers to the former Benin’s name, Dahomey. I deleted the H to get Dao, which is a Chinese weapon because ori­gin­ally I’m a fan of the Manga and Asi­an cul­ture. So the name is refer­ring to both of these uni­verses : Manga on one hand and the Afric­an King­dom on the oth­er hand. So the brand has been cre­ated in 2006 as you said. Ori­gin­ally it was only on the Inter­net and also on some dis­trib­ut­ors in Par­is. Then, quite a few celebrit­ies, mostly com­ing from real­ity TV shows begun to wear my products, which helped the brand to get known. And then, some rap­pers use it in their clips, which gave a vis­ib­il­ity to the brand. Last year, we opened our first store in Par­is, Bastille. It goes off very well. It’s a concept store with a tat­too par­lour in it. I have dif­fer­ent brands in it as well. Thanks to this we have really mul­ti­cul­tur­al place.

  • What are your inspir­a­tions to cre­ate your products ?

My inspir­a­tions mainly come from the 90’s cul­ture like man­gas, bas­ket­ball, TV series, movies… I am a graph­ic design­er, so I mak­ing my own products with these influ­ences, the 90’s cloth­ing trends. I’m mak­ing a lot of diver­sions as well. You can see on one of my visu­als a Vegeta char­ac­ter wear­ing a Chica­go Bulls kit for instance. I really love doing this kind of stuff.

  • You are the only one to cre­ate them ?

I’m usu­ally alone to cre­ate my products but it hap­pens some­times I col­lab­or­ate with oth­er graph­ic design­ers. Like some artists I appre­ci­ate giv­en their graph­ic iden­tit­ies, their visu­als. If I’m taken with an artist, we have a go. The most import­ant is to have fun, it’s all about that.

  • How did make the link between your inspir­a­tions and the streetwear ? It’s def­in­itely two oppos­ite worlds !

Yes exactly ! My goal with Daömey is to gath­er two entit­ies which have noth­ing in com­mon, it’s inter­est­ing to oppose them. The idea is to make the cloth liv­ing. Nobody would think to put a Bulls kit on Vegeta. So def­in­itely it’s the brand spear­head, to cre­ate an unex­pec­ted effect, that nobody has done before.

  • Your brand knows a great suc­cess in France and you are sup­por­ted by a huge part of the French Hip Hop scene, like Ol Kainry.

Yeah in fact I’m the Ol Kainry’s little cous­in. I have made all his visu­als, all his t‑shirts… I have designed all that at this time. So in fact we built the brand from him, his uni­verse. He is def­in­itely the brand ambas­sad­or. Everything has been done thanks him. He was the first to trust me in all aspects of the busi­ness : tex­tile, mer­chand­ising… and I could put my logo behind his albums. It’s really thanks to him that the brand star­ted to be known.

NB: guys, I’m aware that you don’t really know Ol Kainry. I will present you this amaz­ing rap­per. So many things to say about him.

  • To the extent you opened last year your first store in Par­is. What’s your vis­ion about that ?

image7Before open­ing the store, I pre­ferred to sell my products on the Inter­net because it helped the busi­ness to get new cus­tom­ers any­where, above all abroad. But then I clicked to open the store and that’s true that you give a cred­ib­il­ity to the brand. The cus­tom­er sees a phone num­ber for instance. He can eas­ily con­tact any­body in the shop. The brand is on the rise. People takes it much more ser­i­ously thanks to this. You really pass a mile­stone. Today hav­ing a store in Par­is, it’s really import­ant, espe­cially for your brand image.

  • And next Sat­urday Lon­don. Did you con­sider such an expan­sion when you begun ?

Yeah clearly, it’s what I wanted for Daömey, get­ting a store in each big city in the whole world. But I did not expect it could hap­pen so quickly. I know I knew a huge suc­cess with the store this year. So why los­ing time ? I had to open a new one in Lon­don as soon as pos­sible. And why Lon­don ? Because I really appre­ci­ate this city. For me, it’s the epi­cen­ter of all the streetwear and hype cul­ture in Europe, so it’s good for the brand. I have quite a few cus­tom­ers in Lon­don. The UK is my main mar­ket abroad. So it was nat­ur­al to open a store there.

  • Do you think that Eng­lish pub­lic is dif­fer­ent from the French one ?

Yes def­in­itely. It’s quite dif­fer­ent for the fash­ion trends. Some products are more suc­cess­ful in a coun­try and vice versa. That’s why I recon­sider all my col­lec­tion espe­cially for Lon­don. I have made a Lon­don col­lec­tion. I really wanted to sep­ar­ate both of these cit­ies. You will be able to find only some spe­cif­ic products in the Lon­don store, even not on the Inter­net. So if you want them, you have to go in the store. I tried to cre­ate this rar­ity between the products.

  • Did you plan to do some­thing spe­cial for the open­ing ?image8

Yes, we planned a nice pro­gram : DJs, food, drinks, col­lec­tions present­a­tion… and quite a few influ­en­tial guests like blog­gers and sports­men. I think it will go off well !

  • A last word ?

I invite every­body to come around and to have a good time the next 1st July for the first Daömey store open­ing in Lon­don.  I really hope people will like and take part to our inter­est­ing and adven­tur­ous jour­ney !

 

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Daömey Store Address : 93 Kings­land Rd, Lon­don E2

 

Web­site : http://www.daomeyclothing.com/

 

Face­book :  Daömey Brand — Home | Face­book

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Timothée Chataux

Com­ing from Par­is and inter­ested in French & US Hip Hop top­ics. I’m writ­ting about any rel­ev­ant sub­jects for I am Hip Hop magazine. You only know MC Sol­aar ? My mis­sion is to show you many more.

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About Timothée Chataux

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Coming from Paris and interested in French & US Hip Hop topics. I'm writting about any relevant subjects for I am Hip Hop magazine. You only know MC Solaar ? My mission is to show you many more.