Angelo Baque Talks Tommy Hilfiger Collab, Awake NY and the Last Piece of Advice He Got From Virgil Abloh
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission.
In auto racing, just as in life, getting to the finish line isn’t always a one-way street. No one knows that better than Angelo Baque, the New York-based designer who parlayed decades of experience in the retail industry and a 10-year stint at Supreme into his own alternative streetwear brand, Awake NY.
More from Rolling Stone
Sleep Easy: The Best Memorial Day Deals on Mattresses And Bedding Are Already Live
Haney vs. Lomachenko Livestream: How to Watch the Championship Boxing Fight Online
Born in Queens and raised in the New York menswear scene, Baque has always had his pulse on the intersection of culture and fashion, with Awake launching collaborations with everyone from UPS to Crocs.
Tommy x Mercedes F1 x Awake
Baque’s latest project finds the designer teaming up with Tommy Hilfiger, on a new apparel collaboration inspired by the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 racing team. Officially dubbed the “Tommy x Mercedes AMG F1 x Awake NY Collection,” the capsule launched during the recent Miami Grand Prix with a star-studded event that brought out the likes of Lukas Gage, Chris Appleton, Outer Banks stars Madelyn Cline and Madison Bailey, Scream star Mason Gooding, and Baque himself. The collection, meantime, features logo-driven tees, polos and baseball shirts that blend the preppy aesthetic of Tommy Hilfiger with racing-inspired motifs and Awake’s urban sensibilities.
For Baque, who partied with Mercedes F1 star (and campaign model) Lewis Hamilton in Miami, the partnership with Tommy Hilfiger is just another way to extend his creativity and reach.
“My desire was to authentically interpret streetwear and Americana,” he says, “[but] never in a million years did I think this Ecuadorian kid from Queens, New York would be designing pieces proudly worn by Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Mercedes-AMG F1. Seeing Tommy, Lewis and myself working together on this project is important for the younger versions of ourselves to understand representation matters.”
Baque is one of the most in-demand designers in America right now, and the list of parties interested in collaborating with Awake NY is seemingly unending. But the longtime Hilfiger fan says partnering with the brand was a no-brainer.
“Tommy was one of the brands in my high school experience that could make or break your whole high school career,” Baque tells Rolling Stone. “If you had a certain piece, suddenly your trajectory and popularity in high school would skyrocket.”
Baque recalls his freshman year in 1992, when a Tommy Hilfiger rugby shirt was “the ultimate” status symbol. “One of my favorite rappers, Grand Puba, always wore Tommy, and he was my style icon,” Baque explains. “I remember I couldn’t afford the Hilfiger rugby and I got a knock-off, but this girl at school grabbed me one day and was like, ‘Is this a Hilfiger rugby?’ I said ‘Yes,’ and she started being nice to me for a full year after that.”
The high school story is a superficial anecdote of course, but Baque has seemingly always carried the experiences of his youth with him, even as he just turned 44. The friends he had, the music he listened to and the stores he shopped at, have all influenced his design aesthetic, sure, but they have also instilled in him a personal mission to build something for the youth of today.
“It’s less about me today and more about the young kids that come into my door,” he says. “Awake has always been about a platform for young creatives that look like us. Point blank, you have to be able to see me in order to believe that you can do this and that you can exist.”
Baque’s desire to create community is reflected in the new F1 collection, which includes not only gender-inclusive styles, but accessible styles too, re-inventing archival Tommy staples with inspirations from racing, New York City and cross-cultural references.
“When I started designing the collection, I took into consideration that this was going to be the second time that F1 was in Miami, but then I noticed that this weekend is also not for the poor,” he says. “It’s not really that accessible. And that was a driver of the pieces. I made sure there were introductory price points for people to be able to afford it, and even if they’re a novice F1 fan, that they’re able to pick up a piece from the collection too.”
A striped baseball jersey sported by Mercedes driver George Russell was inspired by Miami and the city’s “love affair” with baseball, Baque explains, but there was also a hip-hop angle: “When I think of the baseball jersey, I think of Wu-Tang Clan, Nas and Jay-Z,” he says. The unisex T-shirts, meantime, feature big, bold graphics and a relaxed, oversized fit. The tees display the Mercedes drivers’ racing numbers on the back, with Hamilton’s 44 and Russell’s 63, while a special Awake NY tribute references ’85, the year the Tommy Hilfiger brand was born.
Buy Tommy x Mercedes F1 x Awake NY $159+
Baque is a new Formula 1 fan, having discovered the sport through the popular Netflix series, Drive to Survive and says he wanted to design a collection that could function as teamwear during the Miami F1 race, but also stand alone as a stylish piece the rest of the year. Most importantly though, Baque pushed for a “give back” component to the partnership. Tommy Hilfiger agreed.
Reflecting the values of the “People’s Place” program, a Tommy Hilfiger initiative that seeks to provide opportunities to underrepresented communities in the creative industry, the collaboration worked with Creatives Want Change (CWC), inviting BIPOC participants to attend the race in Miami and meet with Baque for advice and mentorship.
“I have a lot of compassion and empathy for this generation,” Baque says, about the advice he gave the participants. “They have pressures that we didn’t have growing up, and it mainly connects back to social media where it just sets this unrealistic expectation of career and benchmarks and PR,” Baque continues. “We had a 20-year incubating period before [we got here] and I always tell them like, ‘This isn’t the first and last chance you’ll have; you’re supposed to learn and then move on to do bigger and better.’ The most valuable asset you can possess,” he declares, “is knowledge and experience.”
One of the people who Baque says possessed a wealth of knowledge, was his late friend Virgil Abloh, who encouraged Baque to get into the retail space, during one of the last conversations they had together.
“He told me I had to open up a store, and I begrudgingly was like, ‘V, I don’t want to, man,'” Baque recalls. “He was like, ‘Dude, you have to.'”
“Virgil was a little judging of the retail landscape of downtown, and he was like, ‘This is not the New York that I remember; this is not the New York that I used to come to as a kid in 2003,'” Baque explains. He was like, ‘Awake needs to have a store. The kids need a home. You open a store and they will come.'”
Baque took Abloh’s advice, and the first-ever Awake NY store is slated to open this summer on the Lower East Side. You better believe the kids will come.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Tommy Hilfiger calls Baque a “streetwear legend [who] brought incredible creativity to the partnership. It’s exciting to see the blending of our aesthetics through his lens,” the designer says. “But this collaboration wasn’t just about the clothes. Similarly, to our brand, Angelo sees the importance of mentorship and giving back so we worked with Creatives Want Change to provide exclusive insight to three individuals around the capsule development process.”
From Tommy Hilfiger to Virgil Abloh, Baque has leaned on his friends and idols to make it to where he is today. But his true success, Baque says, will be creating a legacy of his own.
“I have a great staff and we all know how special this place is to work at,” Baque says. “But my real legacy is someone who comes here, and then they become the creative director somewhere else, or the art director of that place. And I get to be part of their narrative.”
“A lot of celebs wear our stuff and obviously that’s cool,” Baque continues, “but what’s cooler to me is seeing a kid randomly on Jamaica Ave. wearing an Awake hoodie. And then the cherry on top is if they recognize me and say like, ‘Angelo, I love what you’re doing. Thank you.'”
Best of Rolling Stone
Click here to see more up-to-date holiday deals!
