We caught up with the brilliant and insightful World Apparel Co. a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

World, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Although, every project, or as we call them, “tours,” is a meaningful project we would have to say that our current tour on “Human/Sex Trafficking” has currently had the most impact on us, at World Apparel Co. We have been working on this tour for the past 3 years. First launching at our “A night of Giving” event where we collected toys for homeless children. We noticed a major trend while working with those individuals. A large majority of them ran away from home or so called guardians due to human/sex trafficking. This alarmed Ipi and Tariq greatly, and sparked the idea to bring more light on this situation. As we have been game-planning and working on this tour we have uncovered many dark areas within this space that has tugged away at our heart strings even more. The amount corruption within the “non profits” who are directly focused in on this topic and the lack of community collaboration really put a frown and left Ipi and Tariq very confused. They decided that since not only is it a hard conversation to have, but also a NEGLECTED conversation to have we wanted to push our voices and reach out to others to lift theirs in this space.

World, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Ipi curated the idea of wanting to combine art, culture, and giving back all in one. He also hated the stigma that younger generations have on them that, “we don’t care about our community.” or “we are selfish and only care about ourselves.” One day Ipi reached out to Tariq, who he knew had been heavily involved in the community already, and always had a good heart and genuine spirit. Tariq knew from that one conversation with Ipi that had to be apart of World Apparel Co., and they have been impacting the community and changing lives ever since. Our motto is, “The Youth IS the Solution.” and it remains true to this day. We also, want to show the community young or old, that you do not need a lot of money to make an impact in your community or the world. As Tariq would say, “There is no such thing as small impact in your community. You either impact the community in which you reside or do nothing at all.” As long as you have God, the drive, and the motivation you can make SOMEONE’S life better. Each individual you impact you spark the light that fuels the ripple effect of change.

World Apparel Co. is a non profit clothing brand, where we utilize fashion, culture, and art to help bring more awareness to the social issues that we may be focused on. We are a non profit’s, non profit, which means that we do not have a particular focus, but we partner with others who have already done the ground work within that topic of discussion and we assist them with bringing more attention to that particular social and issue and most importantly RESOURCES. That is what sets us apart from other non profits and clothing brands. There are many people who have already put in the work out here, so it is better if we start to pool our resources together and shed light on those who already making it happen!

We are proud of our ability to showcase to the community that you truly can make an impact in your community with just an idea, hard work and of course God. All that we have done has been strictly from the love and support of the community we serve. Creating dope clothes, selling them, shaking hands, and funneling that money right back into the community. We do not pocket a dime! We have donated roughly $2000 worth of toys to The Promise House, personally donated and installed 15-20 shower head filters for the residents of Flint, Michigan, loads of clothes donated to the survivors of Hurricane Harvey, 4 $500 scholarships awarded to individuals dealing with mental health or studying in a field that deals with mental health, and currently we are focused on “Operation Care Card” a fundraiser to provide necessities to the survivors of Human/Sex Trafficking. We continue to strive to be as “independent” as possible to continuously show the community that love for one another and unity will help to overcome the struggles of life.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Two major resources to know about earlier in our journey would be the skill of grant writing, although, we want to stay as independent as possible the ability to receive grants would most definitely help boost our physical resources in order to serve the community a little better, but we did not let that stop us. The other resource is to find a good supplier of quality clothing, and a variety of styles as well from shirts, pants, jackets etc. This would have allowed us to stay consistent in the type of quality and style that we put out for the consumers. The clothing business is definitely not just all peaches and roses it takes alot of networking and trial and error and money!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Interesting question, because we have been brainstorming on a NFT project to curate soon. We love the technology that a Non Fungible Token can bring to a busy with the ability to utilize smart contracts, and how the blockchain can be used as a way to keep authenticated merchandise authentic. This is huge for creators, as we know it is very easy to plagiarize a creators work and with the “Creators Renaissance” booming as it is, the ability to keep your intellectual property secure is very key.

Contact Info:

• Website: worldapparelco.com
• Instagram: worldapparelco
• Twitter: worldapparelco
• Other: worldmissions.work

Image Credits
Corey Bao Nguyen (@baoii) ; Soba Pictures (@sobapictures)