1 June 2022
The weathered, peeling basketball rests among a rainbow associated with colorful bucket hats on the table in the lifestyle clothes store SWIFF on Solidify Street. It fit with additional nostalgic pieces in the store, just like a silver record player plus a cassette tape player. These types of a reminder of the affects of childhood in the proprietor Ashanti Thomas’ work. “You look back and just skip certain things from once you were a kid, ” mentioned Thomas, the store’s proprietor. “Everybody seemed like you had the basketball like that, just another basketball. “The basketball plus surrounding articles are adornments for the store that opened up in late February, but they furthermore show the nostalgic, multi-colored style and intentions Jones has to create something that Sc, and particularly Columbia, noesn’t need — an iconic style lifestyle brand. Thomas’s shop SWIFF sells original clothes that he mainly designs themselves and features a coffee, wines and beer bar. The particular 24-year-old business owner and designer is striving for a specific user profile for his business that will tends to be prevalent in bigger cities. In the modern entire world of fashion, social media tendencies and virality combine to generate brands that go beyond an item. It’s something to wear, yet it’s also a brand with sufficient pull in other elements of way of life — decoration, clothing, on-line presence — that it can be a cultural, and often economic, phenomenon. With that goal in your mind, Thomas also uses your local store as an opportunity to build a subsequent for the brand through web hosting events, like a mimosa brunch or an upcoming rap cipher event, in hopes to at some point foster that. SWIFF’s items are typically sweatshirts and tee shirts and feature swirling fonts plus color hues reminiscent of classic clothing, with most items being in $50 to $90 range, similar to brands such as Calvin Klein or KITH. For the clothes, he styles all the styles and art work himself, with the occasional freelancing. While SWIFF’s clothes may appear to be most accurately chosen as “street-wear, ” Jones avoids that classification — and a high fashion descriptor too. He sees the particular brand somewhere between companies such as Ralph Lauren or Anxiety about God, he said, together with his clothes being a cross among trendy and stylish, combined with quality and functionality. Among his biggest inspirations, this individual said, is Aim? Leon Dore, a popular lifestyle brand name from New York that performs with nostalgic, vintage designs and can’t be “pigeonholed” in to a category or product, based on a description from Grailed. com. “I just make items that I would wear, ” stated Thomas. “If it comes to myself, I’ll design it. After which, everything in life is getting motivated by something else. So I may see another article of clothes and be like ‘hmm, I love those colors’ or ‘I like something about that clothing. ‘”This store is a initial step in starting a “South Carolina brand, ” however it is also Thomas’s first despoliation with SWIFF in Columbia. The SWIFF store opened up in February of this 12 months in the previously empty storefront that housed a Super Slashes, but Thomas has been developing it since his basic at Clemson in 2017. Before the store, Thomas marketed exclusively through a SWIFF pop-up stand that made normal appearances at Soda Town and other locations. His pop-up — a large, customized vehicle with noticeably white colour and full windows pertaining to walls — has a comparable look to the white plus golds of the store.
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As SWIFF has graduated from a pop-up to storefront with workers, Thomas said that, while this individual views it in its childhood, it has managed to make great impressions and sales along with customers. They’ve been particularly productive with customers wandering in to the store from curiosity. Upon May 18, one person strolled into the store with 2 friends after recognizing the particular brand from Soda Town. The trio described the particular clothes as quality searching with a very clean really feel — even expensive. Someone said this sort of store is a “rare find” and agreed Columbia doesn’t have a similar fashion brand name. “This is something you should see in Charlotte or even Atlanta, ” said Dante Joyner, a Columbia citizen who perused the racks. A few blocks away upon Harden Street is essentially the only real other locally-owned streetwear style store in Columbia, ColaKicks. It’s a streetwear retailer that will began with two USC students in their apartment and it has become popular among the city’s trainer community, with the store mainly buying and reselling well-known sneakers. ColaKicks also markets clothes from other brands, nearby and national, in the store. Whenever SWIFF was still merely a pop-up, Thomas would market his products at ColaKicks and occasionally hold the pop-up outside the store. Proprietors of ColaKicks and SWIFF both said that there isn’t a style scene in Columbia, conserve for corporate shops or even local women’s fashion shops. There’s stores like City Outfitters, a large corporate dealer, or a store on Gervais called ABP, which markets designer streetwear fashion through brands like Comme Des Garcons or Billionaires Boys Membership, said Joseph Scarlett, the ColaKicks business partner. Yet that’s a far cry in the type of brand and subsequent Thomas is hoping for. “It’s cool because before (SWIFF) we didn’t really have something like that, ” Scarlett mentioned. To Scarlett, SWIFF’s number of locally made fashion necessities — t-shirts, sweatpants, hooded sweatshirts, crewnecks, bucket hats, tank-tops, shorts — make it ready for success. He said it could offer a style of clothes that will ColaKicks and other Columbia stores don’t. Not that SWIFF isn’t getting a helping hands as well, though. Scarlett stated he regularly sends clients to the store when most are seeking clothing other than the particular high-end streetwear fashion that will ColaKicks can’t offer. “We’ve always looked out for your pet. He’s always looked to us. Yeah, he’s certainly come a long way. And I think people actually kind of are starting to notice that will, he’s definitely getting the limelight he’s always kind of earned, ” Scarlett said.