If I could get a kid to look at a T-shirt that says American Holocaust and be like, ‘Yo, that’s fire! But what does that mean?’, that’s so powerful.” “A kid might not be able to spend 50 to 100 dollars to go to a Broadway play – or even know what that is – but every kid right now loves clothes. “It was just about wanting to portray this story and idea of Indigeneity through clothing,” Vegas says. While Primer Rebelde is now a steadily growing independent brand, selling the clothes he created wasn’t originally part of the plan. “When I see my people in pain, suffering, dying – having their history and knowledge stolen, retold, and then regurgitated as misinformation, I look at it and I’m like, “‘What can I do? What can I offer?’” Victor Vegas It’s a conscious inversion of the racist iconography so prevalent in the Roman Catholic canon that often depicts a white ‘saint’ trampling a Black or Brown ‘devil’. In recent drops, pieces constructed by Vegas from scratch have been given a similar treatment, like a collared white vegan leather jacket adorned with a cinematic depiction of Rumiñawi, an Indigenous Ecuadorian warrior triumphantly standing atop a Spanish conquistador. Slogans like “IN MEMORY / 1492 / 100,000,000 BROTHERS AND SISTERS LOST IN THE AMERICAN HOLOCAUST” and “INDIGENOUS NOT LATINO” were screen printed onto T-shirts, and jeans were appliquéd with swatches of woven fabric and depictions of Native leaders. It was originally founded as a statement-making art project: a way of using the direct communicative capacity of garments – in the tradition of Katherine Hamnett’s “58% Don’t Want Pershing” T-shirts – to highlight the ongoing persecution of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Despite his lack of formal education in making clothes, and at his wits’ end with drama school, Vegas bowed out of his theatrical studies and enrolled in “Awake University”, guided by “a voice inside me that needed to be heard.”Īlongside his ‘studies’ at the streetwear label, he’d also been simultaneously working on his own fashion project – Primer Rebelde De America. Both Queens natives of Indigenous Ecuadorian heritage (Vegas is also of Indigenous Colombian heritage on his father’s side), an instant connection was forged, with Angelo offering Vegas an internship at Awake. Not really.A chance encounter with Angelo Baque – the former brand director at Supreme and founder of Awake NY – set him on the path to exactly that, albeit told through fashion. I finished my current book (J a novel which was so-so), started another and then knitted and listened to Imperium as my audiobook. The train journey was perfect alone time.
Well worth a visit and walkable from the train station. They’ve re-done their building and it’s wonderful. Yale has a rather extensive art collection. Long solo train journey to an art exhibit ( Yale Museum of Art had an exhibit on Roman Art in the Provinces) and this time with the added bonus of meeting a friend. It was nice to do something that I’d have done pre-kids. Here’s hoping to a kick-ass admin at the peds office.
All the tireds and then emotionally spent as I’ve a medical bill mess to untangle but potentially it is fixable but it’s a problem for Monday. I basically passed out on the sofa last night. I took today off and spent most of it on a train to travel two states away for an art exhibit and to meet a friend.
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