DAILY PAPER’S CULTURAL NETWORK

It didn’t take long for the trio’s passions to gather momentum; in just two years, the Daily Paper brand had evolved into something far bigger, with the label launching its debut apparel collection in 2012. Every collection created by Daily Paper acts like a mirror to its founder’s interests, with everything from their love of hip-hop to their African heritage celebrated. With “Daily Paper’s Cultural Network”, UrlfreezeShops sits down with one of the label’s founders, Jefferson Osei, to discuss Daily Paper’s origins, the importance of culture and celebrating his heritage.

When we started out as a blog, it represented a creative collective from Amsterdam. We were inspired by other popular blogs, like The Madbury Club, Street Etiquette and Bobby Hundreds — all of which celebrated certain cities around the world: LA, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia. We felt this representation was something lacking in Amsterdam, so we decided to form a creative collective and change this with Daily Paper. It was all about telling our story: the places we travelled, the events we hosted and the fashion weeks we attended. This led to a huge following between 2008 and 2012, though during that time the blogosphere had become very saturated — the rise of Tumblr had meant anybody could essentially start a blog.

Back then, we started our platform through BlogSpot and it was far more difficult than Tumblr — you had to actually code. Tumblr, on the other hand, was far more accessible, with essentially two clicks being all it took to start your own blog. This led to a desire to differentiate ourselves, so we created our own merch — tees, sweaters, that sort of thing. The merchandise then started to move around our home city, Amsterdam, and things quickly became very serious. Our question was: “How do we turn this blog into a label, with no fashion background or education?”. We come from a DIY generation, with everything that went into the label — manufacturing, sales and designing — being learnt through trial and error and the help of Google. Between 2010 and 2012, we were basically orientating — we didn’t have any financial backing. We used our student loan to finance our first t-shirt range and our first trips to China to source the best manufacturers we could. The nitty gritty elements, the things that people typically don’t like to do, were the things we found interesting.  

Ever since we started the clothing line, we felt like our culture is not really represented in fashion — and what we mean by “our culture” is African culture. The brand was founded together with two of my best friends: Abderrahmane Trabsini, who is Moroccan, and Hussein Suleiman, who is Somali. We all came together through our mutual interests way before starting a blog — we all had respect for each other’s tastes and styles. Whenever the topic of fashion came up, we all held the same view that African fashion was not represented in the right way or it was very folklore — which is nice, but as culture kids, we felt we had to create a new generation. We knew that we needed to stay true to ourselves — to stay close to the things that really resonate with us, which translates into the brand and the platform as it is.

Whenever we are approached by brands, or we work with certain artists, it’s all about things being close to us. Like with our Casio collaboration from last year, for example: we've been wearing Casio our whole lives — it all made perfect sense in the long run. Also, when we worked with Wizkid, Burna Boy or Loco Dice — these are all authentic connections, nothing is forced.

We always look to the trends in terms of colours, things like that, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing new under the sun. For us, it’s all about the story we attach to a certain collection, or a certain artistic and creative direction which makes it our own path. We are not here to rediscover the wheel, we are here to tell a story and represent the culture kids around the world — those who have a certain sense of belonging to a collective or a community. So, in that sense, following trends is a very important thing for fashion, but the way we identify ourselves is through authentic storytelling.

Ever since we started down the contemporary-African route, we realised it was larger than just people of African descent or origins: we represent all culture kids — people who have been in search of their identity based on a sense of a belonging. For example, when I’m in Ghana — the place where my parents are from — they say “Here’s this Dutch boy”, or they tease me for my accent. But when I’m in the Netherlands, they say “Ah, here’s the boy from Ghana.”. There’s always this grey area where you have to find your own zone or space, something which a lot of second-generation people who have migrated into society have to deal with, not just in Western society. Our offline activations are all about bringing people together. Different communities — they are all our extended family.

It isn't a part of our outlook; it’s part of our upbringing. Coming from a Somali, Moroccan and Ghanaian household, you are brought up a certain way — and that is to be happy and cherish what you have but never forget where you come from. Being African inspired, it was only logical for us to give back wherever possible. The thing is, though, we don’t like to scream or brag about it — it’s just part of who we are as people. We feel it’s necessary to build a bridge with that grey area mentioned earlier, so people feel connected with their identity.

We would interview loads of artists through our offline activities, so music always played a big part in our blog from day one. Music is also something that keeps us going, it’s always playing in our office — at a respectable level — so everyone always knows the latest tracks from around the world. It gives us new energy — it’s a tool for us to connect with different audiences and communities around the world, based on an artist or a producer. By connecting with artists who portray or represent our energy, we can forge solid relationships and share them with the world, either in combination of music and fashion, or bringing people together through offline activations.

Obviously, we are living in the age of transparency right now: people want to see who is behind certain platforms, brands or entities, to validate their connection with them. You can portray a certain image or artistic direction, but does that really flow through or represent your organisation? We have been doing this since day one; for example, 65% of our colleagues are women, with five of them being in the six managerial positions in our company. We have a very diverse workforce, but not because of marketing buzzwords such as diversity and inclusion, rather because we grew up around many people from different cultures: speaking their language, doing Ramadan together and celebrating their national holidays — all of these things are part of growing up here in Amsterdam. Transparency is what we are all about — being true to what we say we are and true to what we portray.

A lot of brands are trying to be on the good side of history right now, so they tend to move into performative marketing — to showcase to the outside world that they have a diverse cast, they have included certain models, but that doesn’t mean it's a part of a brand/company’s DNA or ethos. If that doesn’t match, then you will lose the connection with the external customer.

We started Daily Paper as a vehicle to learn more about our culture. When you are brought up by your parents, they teach you based on what their parents taught them, or their tribe or the area they come from. In Africa, there are 54 different countries, so many different things we can learn, but there’s often a certain image that gets portrayed: more or less, it’s poverty, it’s scarcity. But we have discovered there’s so much more that Western culture aren’t aware of — there’s a surf culture, a graffiti culture, an art culture. There are so many niches that haven’t been exposed to the rest of the world, so people in Western society have this one perception of Africa. So, when we are creating a collection and getting inspired by documentaries and books, we always look to represent something new — something that people won’t know about a certain country or culture within Africa.

For example, for SS22, our collection was inspired by hip-hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s. We found through research that LL Cool J visited Côte d'Ivoire in 1989 to get inspiration; there are so many artists who have followed that same path, those that feel the essence of hip-hop comes from the motherland. Hip-hop is something accessible for the Western world as it is accepted already, but not a lot of people know its origins; people will say it comes from New York, and while that may be the base for it, those people were inspired by what was going on in the African continent in terms of music and rhythm. Whatever story we are inspired by, we look to use an abstract form to make it accessible for both worlds — so people can easily translate that into their own lifestyle, allowing us to integrate the African narrative into our audience’s everyday life.