Interview with Clockwise Clothing: The Quest for a “Bamma-Free” Existence

In the never-ending quest to understand bammas and their bamma-ass tendencies, I caught up with Collin O’Brien at Clockwise Clothing. Being that the Clockwise folks are from the DMV and support a “bamma free” lifestyle, I thought they might be able to shed some more light on the phenomenon of bammadom. Peep the interview after the jump.

What is your definition of a bamma?
I feel like you basically covered most of the more general definitions.  A bamma is simply someone who tries too hard to fit in.  Someone who is out of touch with their culture and has no style or fashion sense.  Bammas are usually fake and phony, and tend to boast about their selves to everyone they meet.  By calling someone a Bamma, you are basically just calling them “wack”.  A Bamma will never support another person’s hustle. Let’s see…ummm… Long jean shorts, baby-blue Southpole clothes, Fubu, over-sized dress shirts, white socks with dress shoes, big fake diamond watches, dirty scuffed white air forces just because they are air forces, but air forces were 2001, wearing jerseys in 2009, buying Jordan’s from Footaction but telling everyone they are “Exclusive”, constantly using the word “Swag”, compulsively lying to everyone they meet about their hookups, ETC. lol.

Who, in your opinion, is the posterchild of bammadom (aka the biggest bamma in the world)?
I can sit here and call a lot of people out, but you could consider me a Bamma if I did that, so i’m going to refrain from pointing any fingers.  The sad part is that Bammas don’t even know that they are Bammas.  Just know that we are bamma-free over here!

Streetwear, with its emphasis on hype and preponderance of trend-chasers, is no stranger to huge bammas. What are some ways you avoid the trap that so many labels fall into?
If you follow the time-line of different brands over the years, there are a few re-occuring trends that leave labels at bamma-status.  We avoid becoming one of them by making sure that we are keeping our distribution extremely selective.  I want to only be selling through the top boutiques in the industry.  Where you sell your clothes tells a lot about your brand.  If we wanted to just hit a mass print and sell all around town, we would have done so already.  We have yet to commit to one boutique yet and I think that says a lot about our brand.  We also want to make sure that we never sell out to huge department stores or even large chains.  I feel like this reduces the exclusivity, originality & attractiveness of your brand.  Other ways that we stay bamma-free is by designing for ourselves and our market, and not necessarily for mainstream or for what’s hot at the moment.  I would have to be a Bamma to do that.  Everyone at Clockwise is definitely up on their blogging.  We stay ahead of the curve when it comes to freshness.  I recently saw a great quote that we can relate to..”It’s better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”  We make sure that we affiliate ourselves with trendsetters and notoriously cool people.  A wise man once told me that you can’t fly with the eagles if you hang with the Turkeys.

What’s the most bamma product in the Clockwise lineup? (If you don’t provide one I’ll be forced to pick myself!)
We don’t think that any of our product is on that bamma shit.  We honestly take great pride in our hard work and design process.  Everyone that is designing with us is similar, in that we are all artists that are close to perfectionists.  Everything we ever thought was bamma, was thrown straight in the trash at the end of the day.  Everyone has an opinion though, right?

Tell me about the genesis of the “Bamma Free” tee.
Bamma free is pretty self explanatory.  By us saying we are bamma free is simply stating that we are living a lifestyle without the prescence of bammas.  In other words, we are not associating with anyone that will jeapordize our vision, motivation, cool, and work ethic.

What’s the biggest misconception about the DMV?
When you are living on the inside of a culture, you don’t really see or hear what people think of it from the outside.  I rarely hear bad things about the DMV though.  I’d say one of the biggest misconceptions about the DMV is that we don’t have much talent coming from here.  There are a lot of undiscovered gems out here.  It’s almost like a lost culture that hasn’t revealed itself to the world yet.  The DMV is like a big bottle of champagne that has been shaken up for years, but never been open.  You will soon see more emergence from musicians, artists, models, writers, actors and even athletes.  Also, don’t sleep on the women out here, the carry-out food, or the nightlife!  We are more than a bunch of monuments and politicians