After students endure a week of classes, assignments, and various practices, they look forward to meeting up to wind down at Langston’s weekly social event: Thirsty Thursday. A staple of student engagement here, the casual meet up at the Paw Walk or the parking lot area at the rear of the gym is booming with good vibes. An assortment of disc jockeys come out to play a variety of music for students to get loose out to. One of the popular DJs, DJ Rico, utilized his other talents in fashion design to make an artful piece of apparel to commemorate Thirsty Thursday.
“Thirsty Thursday means culture, because one thing about Langston, it is an HBCU. When you hear the acronym, it’s of course schoolwork,.” Rico said. “When Thursday comes, the reality sets in for everyone to come together from a stressful work week to go outside, to chill with no type of drama.”
While at Langston, Rico has been designing apparel to highlight the homecoming season. Each unique creation has been challenging him to think more outside the box. Looking through his gallery of pictures, a certain image from a Thirsty Thursday event was chosen as the premiere blueprint for this homecoming collection.
The Thirsty Thursday shirt made its debut on his clothing line “The Brain Brand” Instagram page on September 19. It features a comic inspired drawing of an engaging crowd on campus with cloudy font reading “I Love My HBCU.” Additional decoration of speech bubbles and heart emotes are also seen on the front design.
“The inspiration of this creation comes from me being a part of the culture. The front design is a picture I snapped on my phone at Thirsty Thursday. Being a creative individual, I didn’t just see it as a chance to sell clothes,” Rico said. “Thirsty Thursday is a popular culture expression at Langston, and I wanted people here to have a genuine symbol of pride representing that, rather than forcing them to just buy a shirt.”
The rear of the shirt has a list of the neighboring and distant cities representing the cultural exchange within Langston’s student population. Over it is a graffiti styled font reading “We are the LU” with a red stencil heart.
“When it comes to the back of the shirt, the cities I listed were according to the genuine people I personally know at Langston. They have put their inspiration onto me, so I took a lot of my time figuring out where the people come from that support the school most with pride and academics. It only makes sense to have them involved as well.”
The shirt comes in blue and tan hues. Slightly moving away from formality, DJ Rico purposely didn’t want to use the traditional opulent blue due to his mission of bringing a more versatile style to the product.
Rico got involved with fashion design during his first year at Langston. Unaware of the legal aspects of his first creation, the brand was unable to be made official. However, this didn’t deter him from creating stylish pieces. He became more motivated to study the background of designing clothes legitimately; like what appropriate text and images can be used on apparel. This birthed his own clothing line The Brain Brand.
“Being a DJ, I needed to have some type of merchandise to go along with everything I’m doing. Once I learned the copyrights of what to put on a shirt or a hoodie, it all became inclusive. Now, The Brain Brand is the thing I acknowledge daily as a company providing geniuses, comfortable and stylish school-oriented apparel.”
DJ Rico recently graduated in May with a bachelors in agricultural science. He will continue to create more designs dedicated to Langston, while focusing on schoolwork. The goal is to eventually branch out to different HBCUs to market the same success as it is doing here. “Coming to Langston has been life changing. First arriving, I didn’t know anyone, and I was timid. Later, I grew out my comfort zone and I became more comfortable being a black man living in America. I met my realest friends here along with my business partners. I am proud product of making out and now I’m good.”
The Thirsty Thursday shirt and clothing from past collections are available to order online at TheBrainBrand.com.
Uri Butler
Staff Writer
Uri Butler is a Sophomore broadcast journalism major
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The Gazette serves as the student voice of Langston University. It is produced within the Department of Communication as a teaching tool and local news source for the campus community. The views and opinions expressed within are those of the writers whose names appear with the articles and do not necessarily represent the views of Langston University.
