Awake NY’s Angelo Baque on Community, Collaboration and His Roots

If you’re Australian, Awake NY is an apparel brand that may or may not be on your radar, depending on where you shop and which online communities you interact with. Locally, Awake NY is stocked in a select few in-the-know boutiques, such as Supply Store and Highs & Lows, and enjoys a loyal customer base amongst those of us who’ve grown up drawing cultural reference from New York City and the subcultures birthed by it.

Angelo Baque personifies a distinctive era of New York street culture (for lack of a better term). In the late '90s and early 2000s, when subcultures were converging, many of today’s fashion icons—including Angelo—were cutting their teeth. Initially pursuing social studies with plans to become a teacher, a young Angelo interned at the legendary hip-hop magazine The Source before landing a role at The Fader, where Jeff Staple mentored him in design fundamentals. This experience paved the way for his 10-year tenure at Supreme, where he rose to Brand Director. Angelo surprised many when he left the prestigious role to focus on Awake NY, which he founded in 2012, and to launch his own creative agency, Baque Creative.

With his second collaboration with Champion just landing in our part of the world, Angelo Baque, founder of Awake New York, joined Andrew Montell, founder of Complex Australia, for a chat. With two guys of a similar age and range of influences, the conversation ventured into some deep rabbit holes of obscure 90s underground rap and brands of yesterday. We've done our best to edit it down appropriately!

As someone who came of age in the late '90s, during a particular era of New York that no longer exists, how do you feel about your city now compared to your formative years?

I always describe the community in New York City back then as being kind of split down the middle; either you were into skating, or you were into hip hop. I was never into the Supreme crew or any of that stuff; my people were more into Union, Bobbito’s Footwork, and Fat Beats—being at open mics at Lyricist Lounge and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Honestly, I got a free education.

Hanging out with my crew, everybody was into something different. It’s almost like everybody had their unique superpower… So one person might be racking, another person might be into hand styles, another one might be into literature, believe it or not, like Socialist and Communist literature.

It was just an important incubation period for me for creativity because I wasn’t really around that from 14 to 18. I probably had a handful of friends from the neighbourhood in high school who had similar interests, but I never met a dozen to twenty kids who were also into the same kind of things that I was into.

That said, I’m not stuck in nostalgia. I’m happy to be in the present. If you get caught up in what it used to be, you miss out on what’s happening now. Kids don’t know that much of my inspiration comes from that time, so they’re attracted to the energy we create at the store, which reflects Fat Beats and Bobbito’s Footwork. I could complain about how New York is now, but I’d rather focus on creating something interesting.

Given New York’s influence on Awake and you being in your mid-40s now, do you find your brand appeals to an age group similar to yours, or is it broader?

I hope so; that’s the goal. Nostalgia is key, but I’m not trying to make Awake a nostalgia brand. If you’re forty-plus and this is the brand for you, great! But at Supreme, I learned that my brand was aimed at 13 to 30-somethings. I want Awake to be for everyone—anyone of any race, creed, or background should feel comfortable in our designs.

Of course, I have preferences because of my background, so it’s important to have young voices around me. I always seek feedback to ensure my ideas resonate with younger audiences. For example, I have Hugo, our Brand Director, who’s out there on the streets. At 46, I’m not as immersed in that scene. I know what I like, but that doesn’t mean someone in their twenties will.

You have multiple ventures; how do you distribute your time between Awake, Baque Creative, and Something Special Studio?

Awake takes up 95 per cent of my time these days, but I’ve always worked on multiple things. At Supreme, I stayed busy on the side to maintain my identity and not be consumed by the brand. I wanted to ensure that despite being known as “Angelo from Supreme,” I was still Angelo Baque. I’m into photography, graffiti, and music, and I’ve always been involved with the young artist community in New York City.

Can you give some background on your relationship with the Champion brand and how you started collaborating?

Champion is one of those heritage brands I grew up with. It influenced me as a kid; many artists wore Champion hoodies in the early ’90s. The foundation of streetwear is a blank t-shirt and hoodie. Anyone starting a brand from our era trying to deny they were inspired by Champion is lying. The reverse weave hoodie feels like body armour. Collaborating with them was a no-brainer.

For my latest collaboration with Champion, I leaned into the design side to shed light on my heritage. Both my parents are from Ecuador. Growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s, only a handful of people knew where Ecuador was. The main Latino communities were Puerto Rican and Dominican. I had friends who were embarrassed to admit they were Ecuadorian.

I was born in New York City, but my soul is in Ecuador. I was raised Ecuadorian at home, so I wanted to reflect that in the clothing and campaign by casting Ecuadorian families as models.

How do you approach collaborating with other brands and individuals? Are there any criteria?

I do many collaborations with Awake. I love using it as a platform for younger brands. Often, when I approach them about it, they’re shocked. The biggest misconception about Awake is that we’re bigger than we are. We’re still a mom-and-pop operation. I’m grateful that we’re perceived as something bigger and thrown into the ring with bigger brands, but we’re only a staff of six. Compared to brands like Supreme and Kith, we’re small. If I collaborate with a bigger brand like Jordan, we’re the smaller brand, and I need to ensure our product elevates what they’re doing, and they need to push us to be better. Collaborations don’t carry the same weight they did 10 years ago; 40 collabs drop a day. So they need to really have a point of difference; if not, your customer just calls bullshit on you.

You’ve used the term streetwear a couple of times in this conversation. Is “streetwear” an appropriate label for your apparel?

No, it’s not. I think “streetwear” is a lazy term. I just want to make clothes I want to wear because I can’t find them at mainstream stores. Brands from the ’90s birthed us; I wanted a PnB shirt and a Polo stadium jacket. That soul is lost these days. It’s like underground hip hop—it was anti-pop, anti-mainstream. You wore these clothes to identify who you were.

It’s less common these days, but in Australia, the mainstream media often referred to hip-hop and R&B as “urban music.” I disliked that term, but I had to use it in corporate settings. It feels similar to the “streetwear” label.

That makes sense. If we’re labelling things, everything is “streetwear” until it stops working. Luxury brands failed at trying to recreate streetwear—that energy—so now they’ve gone back to their old way of doing business and design. I recently saw an article titled “Has luxury abandoned streetwear?” Luxury never really embraced streetwear! When did luxury embrace streetwear? When did they actually tap into the creatives behind this community to try to work with them besides Virgil? They just mimic trends instead of embracing the culture.

In that case, is appropriating a more fitting term than embracing?

Yeah, one thousand percent. I mean, whoever they had working in their fashion houses, I’m pretty sure had old 2006-2016 Supreme on the mood board and was like, “Okay, this is what we need to make. Let’s just plaster our logo over everything.” It worked for about a year or two. Then what? They didn’t have the people who came from the community in-house to really direct.

Is there a specific artist or type of music you turn to while designing?

This last season, I focused on Smif-N-Wessun’s The Shinin’. While I don’t do this every season, I often have an album or artist who inspires me. If I need a recharge, I turn to my go-to artists, like Morrissey, Sade, and Gil Scott-Heron.

You support various communities and spotlight emerging artists and designers. Are there any Latinx brands you’re excited about?

Yes! Victor Vegas has a brand called Primer Rebelde de America, Danny has Kids Of Immigrants, and Paisaboys is doing great work in LA. I just got back from Mexico City, I fucking love Mexico City! I met five amazing kids doing everything DIY. They’re not paying attention to trends—they’re creating their own. They sell their gear at flea markets, which is really cool.

You can cop the Angelo Baque x Champion collection here.