STORY

“So l'm like 16-17 and I'm obsessed with the idea of love, and idek how but I stumble across the song "Angela" by DVSN and I stg it was the most beautiful thing my young ears have ever heard, my mind is fucking blown. To me at that time this song is literally my idealization of love condensed in music form. So l'm searching all over the internet for every live performance of it ever. (There's like 1 and the vid isn't even clear). I find out it's sampled from another song. So I search some more and I find out the song is called Angeles and it's by a guy called Elliott Smith... so I listen to the song and nothing is ever the same again. I fall into his whole discography, and I've never heard anything like this shit it's like opening a Pandora's box. I was like teetering on the edge of academics knowing I really didn't belong, I had one foot in a life of creativity and the other rooted in a path that would've made me a fucking investment banker and I knew I hated the idea of falling into a life of monotony, I knew the "professional" sector would never accept me, I knew it wasn't going to work but at the same time I know | love culture & fashion & music & art but I don't really know where in that world I fit in... So l hear Angeles and everything is so clear. I almost hear it both as it is and in reverse. I hear how toxic the entertainment industry sounds and how exploitative it is, but at the same time I hear the art being made within that sphere, Like even though that professional structure exists you can exist outside of it. I don't have to fit a criteria, or reign parts of myself in to be palatable to a specific demographic, or silence myself when I know I'm onto something ygm? It's orderly chaos. I have power over me. On top of that I can use that same structure to my benefit. My mind is the commodity... and even if nobody is buying I'm free to live off my thoughts. In the song he's fighting with Fame and just the idea of being in LA, he's fighting with the concept of selling himself but the idea that the expression of that internal conflict could literally be both his catharsis and his way of making a living was so incredible that I realized I could never live a life where I forced myself into misery for the sake of guaranteed comfort. Like the song legit changed the way I saw the rest of my life. So I named my brand Angeles. Coupled with the actual meaning of the song it made sense for what I wanted to do.” Bams to twitter at 6am on a Thursday in august 2021