After stepping away from fashion, Jacques Agbobly, has elevated Black Boy Knits to new heights. They connected their ancestral spirits of entrepreneurship into every fashion item they knit with bare hands. Agbobly’s use of bright colors not only speaks to the joy they feel from customers, but also to the loud voice they have created for individuals who have not embraced their unfamiliar beauty features.

How has Black Boy Knits become a love letter to your Togolese ancestors as well as your family in Chicago, Illinois?

When I started ideating Black Boy Knits, it was at a time where I fell out of love with fashion and I really was contemplating my positioning in the fashion world. There were Black students within my immediate community at the school, but there were not a lot of black folks that were in the classes that I was taking. I felt that I had to continually overcompensate for it in a lot of ways in order for my ideas and the vision I wanted to do to be validated

By the end of my education career, I felt very beat down. I did not feel like I belonged in the industry. During the beginning of Covid, I had a chance to step back and think about all the parts of fashion that I really loved. And that was the emotion that I saw when people would wear things; fashion is about connecting people. When you put on something that you feel confident in, that totally changes up who you are. I know that that really brought me back to my first time imagining or seeing fashion happen.

I grew up in Togo, West Africa, where my grandmother rented part of her home to seamstresses and tailors. And while growing up, I would often just sneak under their work tables and just watch in awe as they were creating. What was really interesting about that was not just the pieces but it was the emotions that I would witness when clients would come in and try on pieces that were made custom for them. And that joy was really what I wanted to capture in my work

I am making BBK with my bare hands. I am making all the knits, everything that is on the body, everything that the customers are buying, it is all coming from my hands. And it is my way of connecting to an audience that maybe have been forgotten or have been alienated by the industry just like I was in in many ways. It is really about creating space for the forgotten voices and bringing that joyous aspect back into my work with creating colorful and bright garments.

How have you been able to include photographs and stories from your family into Black Boy Knits?

It always starts with the photos; I started in fine arts. While growing up, I never got to know my mother when she was in Togo because she left when I was very young. When I was three or four, my mother came to move to America and started laying down the seed-work to bring us here.

When I first moved to Chicago, I felt like I was going into a stranger’s home, almost. I had to build a relationship with my mother at nine years old, because I never knew her. In our apartment on the West Side, I used to flip through images; it was the age of photo albums. I came across images of my mom back home in Togo with her sister. I saw the joy that she exuded in those photos. Being able to live in Togo vicariously through her is a huge important part of my work. And my mom is a huge inspiration.

I am always staring at a box of my family images. I am always referencing images whether it is through the specific dress in those photos or the poses, I capture those emotions within my work.

How has your grandmother’s sacrifice to rent half of her living space to tailors and seamstress played a dynamic role in Black Boy Knit development?

I think it is funny, because, I mean, I would not call it a sacrifice. Because my grandmother was an entrepreneur, she was going to get the money. She figured out a way to support her family. I think a sacrifice is different culturally. In Togo, the women stay at home to work. A lot of the women in my family left school early because they had to help raise their brothers and sisters. They never really fully got an education in that realm.

They learned how to do house work so my grandmother was the woman of the house. The house structures in Togo are like compounds. It is the matriarch who’s in the main house with all her children and she rents it out to different people. I would not call it a sacrifice because I feel like culturally, you do for your family what you can in order to live comfortably. For me, when I hear the word sacrifice, it is a little bit more like, ‘oh, we struggle so we need to let go of some things in order to survive.’

I have always felt a strong connection to my lineage and I felt as if I should reference that as a point to create work. Everyone in my family is the same. I would say we all have that entrepreneurial mindset. I was raised by the women in my family and seeing the way that they worked as well as their strength and resilience was very inspirational – as was seeing how human they were as I had to learn that side of myself as well.

What childhood experiences and memories that exemplify joy will bring ease to the fashion industry during these uncertain times?

I had a very colorful childhood, I would say. I had a childhood where most people who come from very similar backgrounds would not be encouraged to really step into their full selves. Although I have a lot of trauma and I had a lot of bad experiences, I was always, always, always encouraged to make art. So, I bring the idea of joy into fashion conversation. Fashion, at the end of the day, brings joy to people and you can elevate that joy through the use of colors and materials that you use in your work.

I was encouraged to play with all the colors in the box. I do not discriminate. I use a lot of greens, yellows, and red colors because I grew up seeing those colors constantly as they are the colors of the Togolese flag. Within Black culture, we have a lot of different architects of what we think different Blackness is. Even outside folks or non-Black folks have these ideas of what black culture is.

There are certain identities or archetypes of Blackness that respond to colors differently. I was surrounded by a lot of hood and queer people who were dressing ‘gangster’ but were still very colorful whether it was the boxers or the brand Coogi they were wearing. I have always found color is not a determination of gender or cultural expression. But color is more a visual indicator of time. When I think of green and red, I am thinking of my experiences in Togolese. When I see the Coogi logo, I think of masculinity but I see a lot of fluidity to it.

Is your brand a reflection of your independence that may look like the “self made” mental complex? Or does your brand thrive in community and kinship?

My brand thrives in community and kinship. When I tapped out of fashion after graduating for a bit, I was not interested in it anymore. But when I was ready to go back, I reached out to an old teacher, and was like ‘I am looking for a space.’ And she really rallied behind me, spoke to the landlord in her studio, and got me a space. Then she went above and beyond and started a Gofundme campaign to raise money to pay for that studio space.

This really showed me the potential of what your community is able to do. We all go through challenges that push us to fall off track but your community is always going to be there for you. And I do not take it lightly. I cannot sit here and say ‘I am self made’ because my community is the reason why I am here today.

What has driven you to celebrate your African roots and queer identity that empowers your customers to embrace self joy, awareness, and authenticity?

When you meet a lot of African folks, Black Americans as well because we are all under that same umbrella, you learn that we are all very proud of our cultures. I know that cultural identities are important because the history of how we got here shames us and always prevents us from being appreciative of our culture. We have been through so much; we have no choice but to represent our culture wherever we go and show up wherever we are 100 percent.

My brand pays back to the country that has given so much to me, whether that is using the colors of the Togolese flag in my work or printing the flag totally on my work. It is a part of me. I have no choice but to represent my identities in every single way that I can. I am showing up authentically through my work. I hope that the people who are engaging with my work are inspired to show up authentically themselves as well.

In what ways have your sketchbook allowed you to create a life you never imagined for Black Boy Knits and yourself?

I think my ‘sketches’ are aspirational and that is what they are meant to do. I draw characters with archetypes because when I am building looks. I am not necessarily just building pieces, I am building a full look. I am already imagining how I want the photo to look. And so I create these sorts of archetypes with unrealistic features, I accentuate features such as dark skin or full lip that I was told was ugly or not conventional attraction.

For so long, I was ashamed of my features. But in my sketches, I accentuate characters with those features because nobody can tell me that my sketches are not beautiful. Nobody can tell that the characters that I am building, the architects that I am making are not Gods in a way. I built these characters because I envisioned a powerful person wearing them.

Then vs Now is a series that reminds of how far we have come from our very beginnings to appreciate our present. The stories highlight each of the 2022 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalists’ beginnings in design. The designers speak to how they have developed and conceptualized their purposes in fashion.