Half a year in and six states visited, our next collection Welcome to was designed. The two new pieces commemorate lessons learned from traveling that I can’t wait to share. But, as Ted Mosby would say, more on that later.

In the meantime, what I can do is give a glimpse of our photo-shoot. Christopher asked me what I envisioned for the collection and I replied, “nature and elevation.” Luckily for us, living in the Bay Area, an array of landscapes are within a short radius. Our last collection brought us to the sunny Little Yosemite in Sunol for She is King. Welcome to, on the other hand, had the Empire Team trek up Mount Davidson to touch San Francisco’s clouds and earth.

It took a while for Christopher and our model Giann to comfortably get on “that San Francisco tree,” as the kids call it these days.

But, after a few tries and taking shoes off, they finally got it.

After taking photographs at the top’s lookout, we went deeper into the mountain’s greenery.

I can’t get over how vivid nature still thrives in such a metropolitan city. Look at how beautifully earth’s tones contrast from the fog! The city must have looked amazing before concrete took over.

Speaking of concrete…

The second half of our photo-shoot was spent on the streets of Oakland. This collection, as I said earlier, commemorates lessons learned from traveling. Despite not being indulged in a woodsy area or the beach when “returning to the real world,” these new pieces illustrate what you take away from those journeys.

(We had no intensions of the Empire Team being so Team Nike lol.)

Shout-out to Ray, Giann, Ella, Sam, and Christopher for putting together a successful photo-shoot!

To all our supporters– stay tuned, homies! We will release the lookbook on Friday.

– ChiChai@Empire

P.s. More behind-the-scenes photos coming soon by Ray!