Awake NY has been founded by Angelo Baque, a fashion Icon in NYC. Born and raised in the Queens, in NYC, Angelo was always captivated by photography, street culture, arts and fashion. He was also heavily influenced by the skateboarding universe and their "swagger".
In 2006, he became Supreme's label director, this gave him the possibility to bring up his inspiration and the way he wanted to see fashion. Awake NY was at first a side project for Angelo to work on his artistic view independently. The brand was officialy introduced in 2012. NYC is one of the most culturally mixed state in the United States, the different views on clothing, music, values and culture helped Angelo to shape his inspiration. He wanted a mix between bright and youth energy, embroidered sweater and jackets, trendy graphic designs sampling the 90's retro hip hop culture. Awake holds on an important place in men and women's streetwear with their attiral of hoodies, , tee shirts, sneakers, cargo pants, sweatshirts, hats, beanies and caps.
In our article "The Soul Of New-York City With Awake" we explained how in addition to being one of the most notorious streetwear clothing label in the world, Awake is also a commited brand.
During an interview with GQ, Angelo Basque quoted " When you buy Awake products, you are at the same time buying socially conscious and socially active products." Awake has donated proceeds from it drops to Queens based New Immigrant Empowerement ( NICE), they also donated to Equality for Flatbush and to the Standing Roux Sioux Indian tribe for their lawsuit against the cons truction of an oil pipeline through their reserve. Angelo cares about the community, not just one but all the communities living in NYC.
For this summer 2022, Awake choosed to let the black and white color to some cotton made tee shirts. We can find brighter, vibrant colours and designs such as leopard pattern on sweater such as the Military logo embroidered with an orange edition. The Leopard hoodie has the brand logo embroidered in the center and on the left leg.
Awake also produces screen printed shirt like the model with the american poet Langston Hughes ou some other design that are more simple, for exemple a regular white tee shirt or a black one with Awake's logo with some originals typographies. The collection includes headwear for instance beanies available in different colorways like dark green, black, orange, brown and blue. For this season, the clothing brand produced a large amount of regular colored tee shirts with the logo Awake stylized on it or "Bendiciones" which means Blessings. The colortypes of these tee shirts are mostly bright ( green lime, light yellow ) but also a set of black tee shirts screen printed with diverses pattern for exemple NYC Skyscrapers which reminds a lot of Alicia Keys song "NYC State of Mind".
This collection was inspired by from the vintage hip-hop era. The time were rappers like Rakeem, Method Man and Jay-Z used to hold the world inside their palms. The collection includes classic Polo-inspired pastel and a very large set of tee shirts, lounge pants, cargo, balzers and bag from the "Nanamica" edition in colalaboration with Nanamica. Through his diverses collabs, Angelo Baque found a way to blent cultural diversities and social justice with hip-hop.
Awake NY secured its place in the top brands concerning men's streetwear in less than a decade. The main reason for this is their emblematic collabs with some of the biggest names in the industry such as Lacoste, Crocs, Reebook and of course skateboarders favorite brand , Vans.
For their collaboration with Lacoste, the two labels decided to go for a retro vintage style with both logos present on the clothes. The main colortypes for this collab is dark green, black, blue, white and red. The collection present a checkered cardigan, polos and pants, sweatshirts, campers baseball cap.
Awake also collaborated with Crocs. Their first collaboration was representing the idea of "Home Is Where The Heart Is". The collab came out during the pandemic and COVID-19 and was based on the feeling of being close to family during tough times. However their lastest collab was themed around everyday's hardworkers. Angelo said himself that this collaboration was dedicated to artisans, craftworkers and makers. The design of the kicks are an homage to a very close friend of him and pays respect to all the people working using their hands in today's world. The adult price for the shoes is 69.99$ USD. Kids and toddlers' price are around 44.99$ and 49.99$ USD
As for their collaboration with Reebok, they amplified two of Reebok's models : The Club-C and the CL Leather enhanced with Awake's magical touch. The main goal of this collab is to represent something that would feel like NYC's heritage and at the same time acknowledging London's youth culture rising. Angelo's design for both models were inspired by his late friend Gary Warnet. Each pair cost 120$ USD.
Awake NY X Vans latest collaboration present the Sk8-HI transformed by Angelo Baque. This collaboration focuses on improving Vans's iconic checkerboard pattern. They used a dyeing process that recquires wax to layer color and make designs associated with a digitally printed checkerboard with both labels logo. It really gives a strong 3D effect to the pair of shoes. The new edition comes in 3 different colorways : Pink/Black ; Blue/Red ; Green/Blue. The laces colors are in different colors to enhance the "flashy" effect of the shoe.
