A Testimonial by Christian Harley
2016
When Givenchy under Tisci’s guidance still dared, still moved, and the aesthetic wasn’t scared of itself.
2016
Just a year after A$AP Yams’ untimely departure, but his vision and movement stayed front and center—the blueprint guiding the youth of the time
2016
Where if you didn’t have a Balmain, Saint Laurent, or a Gosha Rubchinskiy piece in your collection, you were already a few years late and didn’t even know it.
2016
When you spent more time in SoHo than your own house, drifting store to store, idea to idea, and ending the day with steak frites at Lucien over on 1st Ave. It was like clockwork
2016
When rap’s gatekeepers finally lost their stranglehold and a new vanguard stepped in. A fresh energy, taste, and momentum reshaping the sound of the time.
Ten years later
And we’re still trying to chase that feeling.
Not just because everything current feels stuck, but because that feeling was authentic.
Ten years later
And we're still waiting on another rap messiah to pull us out of the Dark Age, another cultural organizer to step in and fill the void that the late great Virgil Abloh left, another figure bold enough to rearrange the temperature of everything at once.
Ten years later
We still wake up to Pyrex Visions
For those of us that’s Been Trill..
We’re still trying to rebuild SoHo brick by brick, from Houston to Canal Street, trying to return it to its prior glory.
This isn’t nostalgia.
This is restoration.
We’re not trying to relive 2016—we’re trying to reconnect to the conditions that made it what it was. The looseness. The confidence. Eliminate the gatekeepers. If you have no knowledge of the forefathers or movements who paved the way, your opinion will become irrelevant again.
2016 was the foundation. And we’re building on it with sharper taste, better memory, and moving without fear again.
I leave you with this thought and promise
We will recapture that essence
That’s the mission.
Amen.
