Notre Shop is one of the few retailers with a grasp on content creation beyond the product they carry on their site. The Chicago based retailer utilizes an elegantly simple layout to present the brands they sell. Interspersed into the visual e-merchandising is their news and information section where they highlight brands. Some of those brands they don’t even sell which makes their decision to share content more compelling and at the core shows the need to be about community, which makes for thoughtful commerce; an oxymoron in the streetwear and sneaker culture Notre lives in.
Soho House Introduces: Let’s Do Better from Let’s Do Better on Vimeo.
Author, ESPN personality and overall dope individual, Scoop Jackson did an interview with a brand I never heard of before, Let’s Do Better. The brand makes apparel, but instead of simply claiming their space in “streetwear”, a space that tends to be overrun with brands claiming to be about the people, but only selling sweats and tees with catchy slogans, Let’s Do Better is bridging the gap of fashion, history and culture by doing something I’ve long aspired towards. The brand carries books on the site co-mingling the intellectual with the commercial. The important non-fiction texts share space with clothing drops aligned with important, much needed topics of discussion. Scoop interviews the team behind the brand. You can use this link to read that interview: Know Better, Do Better with Let’s Do Better
I want to share a few of the collections they’ve released to highlight the importance of each collection in breaking down walls and educating not just Black people, but also any person who reads and sees the apparel.
I’ve long discussed the decline in sports participation in the Black community. I’ve also explained how the professionalization of sports contributes to the erasing of lower income people from the equation, unless they are ridiculously and evidently talented. You can click the picture to read the stats shared by LDB
The stereotype of Black people not being able to swim, as harsh as it is, is often true. I was raised in the South and I matured on the West Coast. Living in two distinctly different geographies granted me the opportunity to see Black life in a place where racial divisions played a major factor in something so common as learning to swim. In Memphis we had Black pools. In Cali, where I played college basketball and coached, where there was an entire ocean, I had players who never left Southeast San Diego (the Black part of town). Over a lifetime, I understood that we had Black pools in Memphis, and I recognized that Black folks in Cali don’t see the beach as theirs. I can write an entire dissertation on this, but Let’s Do Better built a collection around this topic and that is a major differentiation from what this brand activism is vs a brand just making shit.
I can share more projects and go on and on, but I want you to please use the links throughout the post to learn more. Shout out Scoop for bringing this to light.