The Hideout Clothing: Styling Trinidad’s Dancehall Culture
The Hideout Clothing (THC) is a foundation of urban style in Trinidad dancehall culture. Take a closer look at your favorite artist’s music videos and you’ll probably see their clothing and/or signature logo making several cameos.
Sebastian ‘Bas’ Gibert & Rashad Rodriguez have been in the fashion business for the past nine years but their road was by no means easy. They first started as an ordinary clothing store. This moved into printing T-shirts that caught the eye of customers so they thought, why not start a clothing line?
THC is a ‘built from the ground up’ brand. There was a lot of trial and error at first since neither Bas nor Rashad had prior knowledge of fashion design. Their first trade show was a disaster but the guys however credit that experience with helping them decide how they would move forward.
“We were hustlers. We weren’t going to take that loss,” says Bas. “So we drove around the U.S going door to door trying to build a clientele.”
So how did they get into the Dancehall arena? The guys share a heavy love and respect for Dancehall. As a show of support they would often gift their favorite artists pieces from their collections. Over the years when the artists rose they did so in that THC drip and the rest is history.
“We liked the music to begin with so we reached out to show some love and give some THC on the house. Relationships built and grew from there. We’ve definitely drawn some inspiration from the Trinibad culture and I think vice verse.”
These days the THC brand has been moving past fashion and bringing out riddims to accompany their collections. They’ve worked in collaboration with top producers like Travis World and 1st Klase productions. Of course they’ve gotten love from the Trinibad community. Don’t be surprised to catch artists such as Boy Boy, Jahllano and Zerimar on their roster. According to Rashad;
“We’ve tried to help showcase the talent as well within our audience and our means, I’m happy we play our little part in pushing the movement forward.”
THC just launched their latest collection “Lush Energy” and it’s already basically sold out but there is always something happening with the team and at the rate they’re going you better get on board now if you plan to keep up.
