Today we’d like to introduce you to Drew Boddie.
Hi Drew, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
So I wanna start at the beginning. The beginning didn’t start with me but with my parents: A woman who was a seamstress and a man who was a menswear enthusiast to the core who met in a fabric store, and from them came a baby boy with fashion in his veins.
I remember feeling in my soul that I was destined to be doing something special around 6-7, and I specifically remember thinking it was destined for me to be a rockstar, but at the age of nine, after not making a push towards shifting that culture at age nine that I should’ve I gave up and with that burning feeling still lingering and heart heavy went to elementary school.
A lot of the things I reference in my work are from the time I spent in the backseat of my mama’s car reading Vogue magazines and thinking wow, someone took this cool picture, but it was someone’s job to make the clothes. I remember being in the thrift stores with my dad, shifting through the dress shirts and leather jackets, and thinking someone’s job was to make this wow. I had a lot of creative outlets in my upbringing. I played guitar in the national opera in DC, I took acting classes, I was an avid illustrator(my medium being the newspapers and bills my parents had laying around) and man I read every book that I could get my hands on. I remember going with my dad to Borders books and picking up comics and seeing the X-men and Spider-Man and falling in love with the concept of super powered beings. Going home, my dad put in a video of the pilot episode of X-Men, the animated series, seeing the colorful outfits and all the visual effects. As an adult I have a tendency to lean towards making clothes that you could see in a comic book, as a superhero outfit or as an incognito outfit and I think this is where it came from.
Going into middle school and high school, I went to the thrift store to get fitted. A lot of them times informed me about sustainability and how clothes are clothes and to not be a consumer just for the sake of consuming. Went through high school not having money but studying and learning about the brands I had heard from my father and mother or seen in vogue and trying to develop my own personal style while being broke. I wind up getting into modeling and working with photographers and developing my personal creative sense and skills. Learning what I would want to do and what I would rather not do. Fast forward to college. I got to Morehouse College and met the creatives that would wind up in my life and be my support system. I wind up in the AUC Agency as a model and gain even more experience working with older Black men and women who pushed me to do the things they knew I could do. Around this time of modeling, I had gotten really bored with the clothes I was seeing in Atlanta and on Instagram and went on to work on what would be my brand. I went by the name Black Angels and sketched out a logo, but with no design experience at first and little to no money to hire a graphic designer, I had to do it myself. Randomly on a spring break I went to the local library(the library is the most important asset to the learning creative.
As a creative person, if you are in the process of learning, then you MUST research. The creative who is always asking someone to give them the information is not a creative who is set like a stone on developing something that they can sustain themselves.) At the local library, I went to the comic section like I usually did and walked past. My eyes caught a sign that said computer lab(graphic design software). I walked up to the librarian and asked him how I could get in, and he said to figure it out.
Now at the moment, this felt like a slight to me, and I definitely called him a dickhead under my breath but looking back at it, that’s a moment I will not forget because the tools are there. And people may not be willing to give you the information but that does not mean you quit or stop or kneel. You push through and figure it out. Be hardheaded. So, I figure it out. I go in that lab, and for months, I’m in there every day teaching myself how to design. How to make a vectorized image. How to use 3D assets. How to create a visually appealing design. And then I dropped the Black Angels concept. The idea of 199nine came from ideating in personal time, and this name just stuck and did not move from the forefront of my brain. Originally, it didn’t have a logo, just the name and the meaning that came to me: 199nine is a mouthpiece for me to reinvent the ideas and concepts of my childhood that I drag into the present day and reinvent. I worked a whole summer at the DC zoo and, in the heat, found my logo: a 9 with a male and female sex symbol representing my mom and dad who made me. BIG NINE GRRRRR.
I made my first hats with 200 dollars and with a photoshoot from my friend Dede I made my first drop and sold out in a day. I’ve never felt that rush from anything. It felt like pride and work being payed off and creativity being rewarded. I got here by working my ass off and researching. And not taking a day off because I breathe this shit. I love this shit. I love this shit.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nah, it hasn’t. This shit is hard, and you’ll feel like you aren’t cut out for it some days. You’ll feel like you don’t have the money to support the thing you love and something others would boil down to being an expensive hobby. You’ll feel like you don’t have the support you need. You’ll feel like you’re moving in the wrong direction, but that’s only until you feel like you’re the one. It’s a cycle, and it’s hard, but working and creating isn’t meant to be easy, you feel me?
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a graphic designer turned designer who specializes in clothing, jewelry, and other accessories. I’m most proud of my ability to create solely from my own mind and my hard-headed nature. My ability to create when I have nothing is what sets me apart. My willingness to get low and just study and design and get right is what sets me apart. My addiction to the swaggg is what sets me apart. My understanding that this is just a talent I was given to help make way for the next generation is what sets me apart.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I’m here for the fun! I want people to know that there’s a level of fun in my brand that comes straight from me. I want to be in a space where I can make weird projects just for the sake of doing them. I think fashion is really into the whole system of presenting important to be taken seriously and I think presenting a level of fun while working in this industry is needed. Oh, also, I’m homeschooled, and I know CPR. Idk how that CPR part would come across in the clothes tho….imma working on it
Contact Info:
- Website: 199nine.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/199nines/?hl=en
