AWGE

AWGE: The Secret Society Behind A$AP Rocky’s Creative Empire

In the post-blog era of hip-hop, when SoundCloud was upending traditional gatekeepers and streetwear became the default language of youth expression, a new kind of creative agency was forming quietly behind the scenes. It didn’t announce itself with a press release. It wasn’t even clear if it was a company. But its fingerprints started showing up everywhere: on fashion drops, in music videos, across album rollouts, and in the visual language of the internet. It was called AWGE.

Founded in the mid-2010s by A$AP Rocky, AWGE never had a formal launch. It didn’t need one. The name started showing up subtly—buried in YouTube credits, stitched into merch, embedded in Instagram posts. There were no interviews. No definitions. And that was the point. AWGE was never just a production house or a content studio. It was a decentralized collective, built to give Rocky full control over his universe—music, fashion, visuals, and ideas. It quickly became one of the most influential creative ecosystems to come out of modern hip-hop.

While other artists were starting clothing lines or content companies, Rocky was quietly building a full-service art machine. Early on, he recruited a close-knit team of visual collaborators including Robert Gallardo, a designer and creative director, and Kimi Selfridge—aka Tan Camera—whose analog-style photography and collage aesthetic helped define AWGE’s early visual identity. Their first major statement came in 2015, when Rocky relaunched his Instagram feed as a 3×3 art grid. It wasn’t promotional. It wasn’t personal. It was visual storytelling—gallery-style posts featuring vintage cars, lo-fi scans, and surreal collages. Thousands of fans unfollowed him. But to Rocky, that was the point. It wasn’t about mass appeal. It was about intention.

At the same time, AWGE’s secrecy became part of its mythology. Its website—a glitchy, throwback design resembling a Y2K desktop—offered no clear answers. It posted one rule: “Never reveal what AWGE means.” A second: “If in doubt, refer to rule number one.” Whether it was a joke or a philosophy, the effect was clear. AWGE positioned itself as a kind of creative underground—an insiders-only collective that treated branding more like subculture than strategy. If you knew, you knew.

Running in parallel to AWGE’s rise was VLONE, a streetwear label launched by A$AP Bari in 2011. Where AWGE focused on creative direction and content, VLONE was product-driven. Bari, one of the founding members of A$AP Mob, started printing black T-shirts with an orange “V” on the back—low quantity, all worn by members of the Mob. The look became iconic almost immediately. By 2014, VLONE was gaining traction in the streetwear space, and in 2017, the brand hit its apex. That February, VLONE teamed with Nike to release a limited-edition Air Force 1. The black-and-orange pair dropped via a Harlem pop-up during New York Fashion Week and became a grail almost overnight. Later that year, VLONE staged its first Paris runway show. The collection, styled with support from Rocky and Virgil Abloh, was raw and aggressive—camouflage suits, distressed denim, hoodies bearing the words “FRIENDS-,” a nod to the brand’s “zero friends” mentality.

But momentum didn’t last. In mid-2017, a video surfaced online that showed Bari in a hotel room, confronting a nude woman in what appeared to be a sexual assault. The footage sparked outrage. Nike pulled the plug on VLONE’s partnership. Bari was hit with lawsuits. The brand’s name was damaged overnight. Though VLONE continued to release music collabs and merch capsules over the next few years, its high-fashion ambitions had stalled. In 2022, the company officially announced that Bari was no longer affiliated with the brand.

Meanwhile, AWGE remained untouched and continued to expand. Unlike VLONE, AWGE was never built around a single person’s identity. It didn’t sell anything. It didn’t make public statements. It just worked. When Rocky released his third studio album Testing in 2018, the AWGE team handled the full creative concept—from the crash-test dummy visuals to the “Lab Rat” performance piece where Rocky performed inside a plexiglass chamber under psychological observation. The album’s rollout had no precedent in hip-hop. It wasn’t promotional. It was installation.

The collective also carved out a distinct visual language across music videos. Dexter Navy, a London-based filmmaker and frequent AWGE collaborator, directed several of Rocky’s best-known visuals, including “LSD” and “Praise the Lord (Da Shine).” These videos became instantly recognizable for their handheld camera work, lo-fi textures, washed-out colors, and surrealist editing. The look was AWGE’s signature—equal parts Tumblr-core, skate video, and experimental cinema.

And then there were the collabs. Where other artists signed contracts and appeared in campaigns, Rocky and AWGE shaped the entire process. Their collaboration with Guess in 2016 brought vintage Americana aesthetics to a Harlem context—retro logos, pinstriped tees, and denim jackets that sold out instantly. In 2018, AWGE partnered with Under Armour to reissue Rocky’s childhood skate shoe, the Osiris D3, updated with performance soles and released as the SRLo. In 2020, they dropped a capsule with Marine Serre. In 2022, they even worked with Mercedes-Benz on a collection that included custom vehicles and apparel—proof that AWGE’s reach extended well beyond fashion.

Perhaps the most beloved AWGE content came in the form of DVDs. Released quietly on YouTube and passed around like bootlegs, the AWGE DVDs were lo-fi compilations of behind-the-scenes footage, tour diaries, freestyles, memes, and oddities. In one, Tyler, the Creator and Rocky freestyle “Potato Salad” while strolling through Paris. In another, Kanye West pops into an AWGE session in Harlem. Edited with absurd transitions, inside jokes, and a layer of digital grime, these videos felt like digital zines—part mixtape, part collage, part artifact. For fans, they weren’t just entertaining. They were a key to the AWGE world.

By 2024, the collective was ready to step fully into the fashion space. That summer, AWGE staged its first official runway show in Paris: American Sabotage. Off-calendar but widely attended, the show featured models in layered protest gear—bulletproof vests, military silhouettes, bandanas printed with political slogans. The venue was a gilded French mansion, a setting that clashed beautifully with the garments on display. Rocky described the aesthetic as “Ghetto Expressionism”—a blend of Tim Burton surrealism and Andre 3000 flamboyance, mixed with Harlem’s edge. The show was loud, conceptual, and disjointed by design. It didn’t just present clothing. It presented a worldview.

That moment confirmed what fans had suspected for years: AWGE had evolved from a shadowy creative team into a legitimate fashion house. It wasn’t chasing trends. It was building a language. And it had done so without ever releasing a seasonal calendar or an “about” page.

AWGE’s influence is now embedded in the DNA of youth culture. From the rise of artist-owned brands to the surge of multidisciplinary studios in music, AWGE set a precedent. It showed that creative control could be total. That mystery could be marketing. That aesthetic consistency was a form of authorship. And that a team of artists, designers, and thinkers could shape the cultural narrative without ever explaining themselves.

VLONE may have been a case study in how fast a brand can rise—and fall—in the hype economy. But AWGE has always played a different game. No drops. No logos. Just ideas, and intention.

If you still don’t get what AWGE is, don’t worry. You’re not supposed to. Rule number one still applies.