The origin of StayCustom can be traced back to one shirt. Way back in 2002 I started messing around with fashion design. I always had the urge to customize my clothes by couldn't afford to buy clothes just to "practice" on them. Close to the end of high school I decided to give customizing clothing a try. I started off with designs similar to the ones Diplomats were wearing at the time. From the positive response I started to generate I slowly started to convince myself that maybe this is for me but I still had alot of fears. What if people are just lying to me? What if they say my clothing looks good when they talk to me but hate behind my back?
All those fears vanished after I made this Kanye shirt and wore it to his College Dropout concert in 2003. The night before the concert I decided to make this tee just to be able to look cool at the concert. Close to the end of the concert Kanye started signing autographs, mainly cellphones and girls purses that were closest to the stage. Me and my homeboys played it cool the whole night by chilling by the bar. While signing autographs I decided to take the tee off and hold it up in the air (don't worry, I had another tee on underneath. LOL) I felt embarrassed just doing that, but it paid off. People around me started yelling Kanye until he seen my tee and told me to toss the tee up to him. I thought he was just going to sign it and toss it back, but NOOOOOOOOO, he put it on and showed if off for the crowd. Everybody went crazy. They may have been going crazy because of Kanye but I took it as them going crazy because of my shirt. At that very point I decided that fashion design was going to be part of my life one way or another..
During all of this I realized that this was the end of the show and Kanye still has my shirt and all I have is a memory of this event to go home with. As the curtains closed and people started to exit..I didn't.. My joy was slowly starting to turn into anger for my fellow Chicago native. I was thinking to myself : "Did he just take my shirt and leave? I stayed up all damn night making that shirt!" Before I gave up hope I seen one of his security guards come back on stage holding my shirt and tossed it back to me. I opened it up and searched for an autograph but didn't find one at first because it was so dark inside. Once I got back to the car and took a second look my heart dropped THEN skipped a beat. LOL....and the rest is StayCustom History...
From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank all the rappers who have shown me love and allowed me to express myself through my designs which is mostly directly influenced by Hip Hop music and the culture itself.
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