Los Angeles tends to be a place that operates as a dog eat dog world. If you are promoting yourself you have little time to spare those impressions in service of another. This model hasn’t always proven to be to most effective or sustainable. At its onset VII Winners was comprised longtime friends Briggs, and Rome Castille but through chance encounters and a mutual respect for fashion it has grown to be a creative partnership where you don’t have to toot your own horn to be heard.
Let’s first realize who we are dealing with, Briggs is an eclectic taste maker that has been sculpting the Rome Castille brand for several years, Rome manages the product of his music and Briggs handles the packaging. Briggs has an eye for aesthetics that compliment sounds, and create an environment that is authentic to their Los Angeles roots but is also aspirational to the bespoke high fashion elements they both admire.
Rome is an athlete turned musician who brings his own brand of melodic emotive hip- hop that recalls LA days and the tribulations of life. It is an organic sound with a new West Coast flavor strays away from glorifying the gang culture like so much of rap before him.
The two formed VII Winners as a would be record label. The seven comes from the lucky seven from craps because “seven is always a hit”. As they group matured, so did their vision for their team. Enter Pocket Square Clothing.
Rodolfo Ramirez and Andrew Chueng are the dynamic duo behind PSC, fashion accessories for the urban gentleman. Pocket Square Clothing is not only focused on things that look good but they are also striving to maintain the artisanal heritage of the fashion industry. All their pieces are hand made in Los Angeles.
Finally, we arrive at Durimel, the double vision fashion team of brothers Jalan and Jibril Durimel. The Paris born twins have relocated to Los Angeles, and have quickly imbed themselves in the fashion scene. They are models and bloggers and can most notably seen in recent ads by American Apparel.
Vii Winners has come together to explore fashion notes, create music, and sculpt their city with a polished, youthful, eclectic look that is certainly noted. Their recent collaboration, Properly Pressed is a fashion short that resembles a West Cost take on the urban fashion aesthetic popularized by Street Etiquette.
VII Winners reminds of the importance of style and fashion and lets us know that there is another side of urban fashion that is growing in our city.
They bring us aspirational and accessible in the same hand and through collaboration and have garnered more attention as a collective than they did while divided.
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