WOKE URBAN APPAREL / OUR ORIGIN
WE DIDN'T SET OUT
TO START A BRAND.
We were just making clothes we actually wanted to wear.
01 / THE BEGINNING
IT STARTED
AT A BAR.
Venice Beach, California. Two friends talking clothes, music, work and life. One from El Segundo. One from Houston. Both raised in a generation where what you wore said something about who you were before you ever opened your mouth.
We loved clothes. We loved hip hop. We loved history. What we didn't love was walking into stores and seeing the same ideas over and over again.
So we started making our own.
Not because we had a business plan. Because we wanted to wear something that meant something to us.
02 / THE RESPONSE
THEN PEOPLE
STARTED ASKING.
Friends wanted one. Family wanted one. Then people we didn't know wanted one. Somewhere along the way, what we were doing for ourselves became bigger than us.
That's when we realized the idea wasn't just the clothes. It was what the clothes could carry.
THE IDEA
A SNAPSHOT
OF HISTORY
YOU CAN WEAR.
03 / THE PURPOSE
THE CLOTHES
SHOULD SAY
SOMETHING.
We grew up on hip hop. At its best, hip hop made you listen, made you think and made you go find out for yourself. It could teach history in four minutes and make you spend the next four hours trying to understand what you just heard.
That spirit is in Woke.
Our collections look at people, movements and moments that helped shape the world we're living in now. We don't expect a shirt to tell the whole story. We want it to make somebody ask the first question.
Then go read. Go dig. Go argue about it. Go learn something.
That's the point.
04 / WHAT WE BELIEVE
INFORMATION
IS POWER.
We aren't interested in telling people what to think. We're interested in giving people something worth thinking about.
Read the history. Question the version you were handed. Look at the evidence. Find the context. Then make up your own mind.
We come from a generation that remembers life before the algorithm told everybody what to believe. Curiosity still matters. Context still matters. Knowing where we came from still matters.
That has always been Woke.
05 / THE MISSION
MAKE IT MEAN
SOMETHING.
We want to make great clothes. Period. But if all we ever make is another good-looking shirt, we missed the opportunity.
Woke is about creating something exclusive, comfortable and built to last, then giving it a reason to exist. Every release should connect you to a story. Every story should leave you knowing more than you did before.
GIVING BACK
That responsibility goes beyond what we print on fabric. From the beginning, Woke has committed to supporting organizations doing meaningful work in civil rights, justice, housing and community advocacy.
The King Center • Black Liberation / Black Lives Matter • Black Lives Matter Houston • Equal Justice Initiative • Habitat for Humanity • United We Dream
06 / THE PAUSE
WE WENT QUIET.
WE DIDN'T QUIT.
Then the world changed.
The pandemic changed businesses, families, communities and priorities. We had to deal with real life just like everybody else.
And something else happened while we were away. The word on the front of our shirts became one of the most argued-over words in America.
Woke.
A word we understood as being aware, paying attention and refusing to sleep through what was happening around you became a political label, a punchline and, for some, an insult.
When that's the name of your company, you notice.
So we regrouped. We watched. We listened. We lived our lives. And eventually we had to ask ourselves a serious question:
DOES WOKE STILL
NEED TO EXIST?
ABSOLUTELY.
Maybe now more than ever.
There is too much history still being debated. Too much context being lost. Too many stories worth telling. Too many conversations worth having.
We took some time off.
We didn't surrender the name. We didn't surrender the idea. And we damn sure didn't quit.
07 / THE RETURN
WOKE
IS BACK.
Older. Wiser. Still paying attention.
THERE'S STILL
WORK TO DO.
WOKE URBAN APPAREL
HISTORY HAPPENED.
WE PUT IT ON A SHIRT.
THIS IS WOKE.