Griot Apparel - Brooklyn NY

Our Mission Statement...

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates

Griots keep people's history alive through talking about it. Designers of Griot Apparel believe in mixing the oral element of the West African traditions with the skepticism of modern European traditions. Designs are intended to catalyze curiousity, stimulate conversations, instigate oral challenges and incite others to ask questions. If what we care to discover is the truth, then memorization alone isn't going to be how we find it. We will find it by examining and discussing the stories we are told to memorize. Through dialogue and collaboration, we create new ways of thinking. We learn as we go and share lessons we learn along the way. The goal is to implore others to ask questions, to pass on their insights and provoke cultural engagement.

Why "Griot" Apparel...

"When art becomes the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure." John Dewey

Because the word 'griot' is foreign to many, it is a good place to start in acquainting new arrivals to the collective consciousness of Griot Apparel, which is a collaborative venture in fashion and education. The word is French with Portuguese origins. It emerged after different European groups found the need to categorize different people they encountered as they sought to conquer West Africa. They had to expand their language as a result.

The originating Portuguese word "criado" translates as "servant" and found a new sense in Africa when it began to be used to describe members of the castes of poetic praise-singing musicians who memorize and maintain narratives which relay African histories. The griots serve the people of Africa as stewards of their mutual stories. Today, griots live in various countries across West Africa--including Guinea, Gambia, Mali, and Senegal. Different words exist for griots in Mande, Wolof, Pulaar, and Hassaniyya Arabic, but we use this specific word because the etymology of the word "griot" embodies a criticallity of itself and a history of cultural encounters.

About Our Business...

"Art creates communities of desire." Dave Hickey

Griot Apparel, LLC is the company through which Julia Cocuzza and Kevin Singh Selhi make clothing for, and with, other artists and philosophers. The story of Griot Apparel has been one of organic growth since the seeds were first sowed on 4'20'06. A house party at Kevin's A.P.T. on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn Heights marked the unofficial launch. Releasing the first generation of t-shirts -- Fela Kuti (painted/designed by Julia), Dick Cheney (a joint design by Kevin and Julia), and Pol Pot (a collaboration between Kevin and graphic artist Andres Jimenez of the Newark, NJ-based design trio Tritonic, LLC) -- the natural process was set in motion. The jam was a success, creating intelligent fresh gear as well as an amazingly diverse crowd.

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
James Baldwin

Griot Apparel, LLC is a partnership to which we license our work for the purposes of dissemination, but the primary purpose is never the sale. It is the process of creating a story with artists and philosophers which is worth being disseminated. The spirit is in the minds working together to examine what humanity is. There are business dimensions to it too, the necessity of which we acknowledge, but the company is not a being of its own. It is just a legal entity which exists on papers filed away in federal drawers and accounting ledgers somewhere. Legal entities are not persons. There is, however, something special in the name and intent of this legal entity.

The Spark...

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development." Aristotle

The founders first met in 1999 on Mt. Olympus Drive in Syracuse, NY, in the freshman dorms at Syracuse University. Julia came from Reading, PA to study fine art and illustration and Kevin from Passaic, NJ to read philosophy and international relations. Since then, we have both moved to the planet of Brooklyn. Outside of our involvement in Griot Apparel, we each maintain multiple independent projects and steadily develop our own crafts. We also hold down full-time day jobs in the higher education industrial complex. We share a passion to educate and acquaint others with art, history and the humanities. We collaborate with these ends in mind.

"I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all." James Baldwin

Art, History, and the Humanities...

"Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results." Machiavelli

Our original designs are about cultural and historical subjects and expanding awareness of them. The styles are heavy with intellectual, moral, and satirical references. Some of our designs are about artists or musicians who we have admired or who inspire ambition in us. Some incorporate figures from politics (which is the art and practice of power) with aesthetic sensibilities of various musical movements. Many are about persons whose memory we attempt to maintain to humble ourselves and to help remind of the horrors and inhumanity which misdirected ambitions make us capable of perpetuating. We are not just looking to the heights of humanity, we are looking to examine the depths as well. Investigation usually leaves us with wry grins on our faces and subtly pointing our middle fingers at the man.

Our Operation...

"Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense." Mark Twain

While pushing merch and plotting moves on the side, we continue to design more shirts for the new brand as well as for clients -- including a visiting visual artist previously in residence at the Hungarian Cultural Center in SoHo and a festival of Syracuse and Philadelphia-based philosophers, which took place in the woods of Upstate New York, known as Goatfest. We take on commissioned designs from organizations, artists, musicians, and friends to help them produce merchandise or chronicle memorable events in intelligent and creative ways. As our profile rises, we raise up others with us.

"Pursuit of truth requires more than imagination: it requires the generation and decisive elimination of alternative possiblities until, ideally, only one remains, and it requires a habitual readiness to attack one's own convictions. That is the only way real belief can be arrived at." Thomas Nagel

"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature." David Hume