On an overcast night last fall, people started lining up for The Assembly Htx. The Assembly Htx is a bohemian-chic event space located on the corner of Bury and St. Emmanuel in the 3rd Ward. It started with a few people loitering around the Hungry Hero’s food truck idling near the building’s entrance that quickly ballooned to at least his 60-person group. As her line continued to grow, Melissa Sanchez scurried out of her hurriedly parked car and grabbed her own line spot.
“I missed you last time, but this time I’m here,” she exclaimed when she spotted her friends already lined up.
What she didn’t want to miss was the latest drop from hyde park goods, a Houston-based clothing line that is making waves internationally with its distinctive style. The collection of headwear, shirts, hoodies and accessories emblazoned with smiley faces and the phrase “You Are Not Invited” has been used by actors, social his media and his influencers, rappers, comedians and more since the brand’s launch in 2018. is seen in People like Saucy Santana, Glorilla, DC Young Fly, and Sauce Walka, but the brand’s creator, Jacob Joseph, doesn’t focus on celebrities.
“I’ve helped a lot of brands,” he says, sitting in a chair in his Hyde Park office and moving a few items off the table in front of him. “I was the one listening to other people tell me what they wanted to do with their clothing brand, and I wanted them to be successful, giving advice they didn’t want to hear. With Hyde Park merchandise, I can do what I want, I don’t care what anyone thinks, I can just be creative.”
Starting out as a graffiti artist in the ’90s after seeing hip-hop influences emerge from New York and Chicago, Joseph has always put the need to be creative at the forefront. His creative output quickly hit a wall when his crew was classified as a gang by Harris County.
“It was early on that I was actually put on a gang task force list for doing graffiti. They could shoot you if you painted on a train, they couldn’t before, you get at least two years. Time, being stopped, harassed, locked up and eventually exhausted.”
That tired feeling led Joseph deep into graphic design, creating art for companies and people who helped design apparel. As ever-increasing technology digitized his art space, Joseph learned more about digital design and worked as a freelancer in commercial art spaces. People would come to him with ideas, and he would quickly hand-draw them, scan them, and enter them into the computer. This led to a chance encounter with a woman who sold shirt printing equipment.
“The equipment was expensive,” recalls Joseph. “But I made a deal with her. Only if you tell me
As he ventured deeper into designing clothes for others, his own ideas began to increasingly come to the forefront. worked and I was able to find out what went wrong. Seeing the rise of his apps on social media such as Instagram also gave him a marketing avenue.
“I may not have had 600,000 followers, but I have seen people with a lot of followers not sell two merch. And I’ve seen that I can sell items because I’ve been able to relate to them.
After creating some pieces and doing a photo shoot in front of a 1970s Volkswagen bus, Travis Scott’s team reached out to Joseph wanting to participate in the second annual Astroworld Festival. bottom. The event took place in his one week and Joseph didn’t have time to put everything together, but enough time for Hyde to create his park his goodies.
This move propelled Joseph in a creative direction. It was to launch his own brand and stop working for other people. He named it Hyde Park to make it people-friendly given that there are Hyde Park streets and neighborhoods found in many major cities. The clothing brand also gave Joseph the chance to be a kid again, returning to his hip-hop roots, but this time without the threat of lingering prison time. It gave him the opportunity to strategize by creating exactly what would happen and helped develop the brand’s mantra.
“I’ve decided I’m not going to do this for the likes. I’m not doing this for the attention. Put the product out there and sell it how you want it to be released. Release it when you want it to be released.” I’m going to do it, and I’ll only release it when I feel ready.
Experimenting with different colorways and releasing a surprise drop, the brand started to take off. As the brand grew, Joseph didn’t just focus on dressing the latest influencers, working with head of public relations Kevin Scott, better known as Happy His Boots. They moved in the opposite direction, making sure the products were available to people who truly supported the brand, rather than ending up in celebrity storeroom closets.
“At first, I ignored the DMs,” Scott recalls of the brand’s initial launch. “When it starts piling up, I reply that I am not invited, with or without a blue check mark. There is a way to do it, but if you want it, you have to figure it out.”
One way was to pop in on a cloudy October day. Private events will be announced from time to time, and brand supporters will show up to shop for exclusive items. When Hyde Park Goods had a cereal-themed release, Scott invited a select group of influencers to do a photo shoot called “Smiley Puffs” with products available only to them. In another drop, renamed “Drip-E-Mart,” he had a Simpson’s Kwik-E-Mar themed local, brand selling exclusive merchandise to those in the know.
Not just marketing. As Scott walks through the Hyde Park Goods warehouse and talks to the employees who make the products, the focus is on quality. In the corner behind every worker is a box of shirts marked for scrap that don’t meet the brand’s quality control standards, Scott examines them, puts them aside, and puts them in front of him Turn your attention to the beanie being sewn on a sewing machine.
One of the capsule drops is dropped by a cereal-themed brand.
Photo courtesy of Hyde Park Goods
“I know there will be imitations,” he laughs as one of the seamstresses finishes the beanie and hands it to him. “There’s always something authentic about every drop. A tag, a lining, a bit of embroidery. We’re always thinking about something that sets us apart from everyone else.”
This separation is working as Hyde Park Goods is starting to show up more in pop culture and fashion. Sauce Walka touts the brand as “the next big thing” and “Houston’s own Bape.” The brand’s capsule pop-ups are frequent in cities such as Houston, Dallas, Austin and Los Angeles. Tyler Lepley, Jeezy, Propain, OG3Three and more artists continue to build brand awareness and help expand to over 70 stores worldwide.
For Joseph, the most important thing is that the brand stays true to its foundations. There are still more plans for Hyde Park Goods, but he wants to do something creative with other brands, but for now he’s enjoying the freedom that creativity has brought him. Sitting in a swivel chair in a shared office in Hyde Park, he’s gone from thoughts in his head to a full-fledged business run by himself, his director of operations Angela Shen, and Happy His Boots. and grew up. Make it perfectly clear what the brand means to him.
“This brand was never about making money. It was about making a statement and advocating for something. It was about building a foundation and creating new business opportunities. , we will go our own way.”
If you don’t like it, you won’t be invited.