For Agolde’s second collaboration with hip-hop artist A$AP Ferg, the two went unisex and looked beyond denim.
“It’s a true collaboration,” said Agolde creative director Karen Phelps. “In the modern-day approach to how people dress, it’s an eclectic, relevant collection which I feel not only resonates with the brand, but also resonates with the consumer.”
The 12-piece collection for fall includes jeans, graphic T-shirts, a tracksuit and outerwear ranging from military-inspired styles to sherpa jackets. The collection retails from $58 to $350 and launches exclusively at The Webster Miami and The Webster’s online shop on Thursday.
All of the pieces are made in Los Angeles and involved Ferg visiting the company’s design studio to talk backgrounds and influences with Phelps.
“He was a great partner from an aesthetic point of view and he’s interested in design,” Phelps said. “I’ve worked on a lot of collaborations, so for me it was unique in that Ferg has training in design, so there was definitely creative input, which I think is important.”
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Ferg’s father operated a clothing boutique in Harlem while Ferg was growing up. The artist later went on to art school where he studied fashion design and launched the line Devoni Clothing in 2005. He later interned at Agolde to study the company’s production processes ahead of the initial A$AP Ferg x Agolde collection for spring 2016.
That first collection between the two was a small, edited denim collection, Phelps said. It also came at a time when Agolde was still very early in the brand’s relaunch.
The premium denim label, founded by Citizens of Humanity’s Jerome Dahan, retooled itself in 2014 in a bid to refashion the brand and make it more relevant to Millennials.
“It was overwhelming actually,” said Phelps of the consumer reaction to the first collection with Ferg. “It had good reach in terms of customers and the stores that picked it up and I think for us as a team, the thinking was we could definitely maximize on that going into a second season with Ferg.”
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