Chopping It Up with GCLO's Gam

A few weeks ago, popular London streetwear brand GCLO hosted their second pop-up to date, this time taking over the Dijonss space in East London for what was a real community affair.

Gam, the mastermind behind the brand, used the pop-up to finally drop the much-awaited ‘[clo] Bag’, which had been teased for a while now. However, the pop-up was far beyond a transactional experience. Walking into the space was like walking into a room filled with activity. On one side, people queuing up to get their hands on the [clo] bag, among other pieces. Meanwhile, DJs made use of the open decks session, while others waited in line to get some food courtesy of Wingstop.

Outside was a further manifestation of the GCLO community, filled with vibrancy. There was a mix of people from different backgrounds, all interacting and even forging new connections in some instances.

The GCLO pop-up also gave us a first look at the GCLO soundsystem with special guests kwes e, Ayrtn and Sainté, piquing our curiosity about what the future of this would be. We spoke to Gam after the pop-up to gain more insight on the curation of the experience.

Yus: This is Kids These Days Magazine at the GCLO pop up, chilling with the man himself, founder, creative director, perfector, Gam; how are you doing?

Gam: Good man, yeah. Pop-up just finished... It's a checklist. Just a good feeling like having the community come out, having my friends come out and support, like everyone coming together. It was a good night. Good day and good night.

Yus: So, you’re really happy with how it went?

Gam: Yeah. Nah, it was a good turnout man, like people enjoyed it, people bought the bag, people came out and just like yeah, it was good man.

Yus: I remember your last pop up. It was more of a mixture of a party and a pop-up, while this one was more of a curated pop up with programming from the beginning till the end of the day. You had open decks, then you had DJs (Nosa, WAAW, Y3kmish) performing after 5pm, you had an incentive as well for people to come here, with the bag being accessible for the first time here. What were the learnings from the last popup and the driving force on the ideation behind the execution for this one?

Gam: I think that for the last pop-up, because it was one of our first real life experiences and because of the venue, there was a limited capacity, you had to RSVP. It was a little bit... Well, there was a lot of people that wanted to come, but due to venue capacity it ended up being a lil closed off. So this time I just wanted to really make it a community event and make it so that everyone can come through and it was literally an open door policy. Anyone could come through, anyone could enjoy, take it in. So yeah, it was good.

Yus: Yeah, it was definitely good and through that you can see a well considered approach, so it's great to see the turnout and success of it. On that point though, I wanna ask you how important real life experiences are for GCLO as a brand and for your audience?

Gam: I think it's so important because like with online, of course it's amazing but a lot of the time you can get stuck in echo chambers and you can become part of, let’s say a network of other people doing similar things. Whereas in real life, it's kind of like; 'Wait, none of that matters, we're all here, we are enjoying this' and it's like you just take away from all the nonsense and noise online. We're here, it's us, you know, like, if you like it, cool, If you don't like it, you're not here, it's that simple. Whereas online sometimes it can feel like it's mad competitive and the echo chamber effect can make you think everyone is competing for the same pool of peoples attention. In real life experiences, you can just create your own lane, because that's attendance is something you can't fake.

Yus: Yeah, I feel like real life experiences also show you who your most loyal consumers are. Or not even consumers, just who your fans and audience are, if that makes sense?

Gam: Mmm mmm… Yeah definitely.

Yus: Because if people are following you and its many followers, that doesn't necessarily always mean that they're engaging with your content, you know what I mean? Through somebody seeing that there's gonna be a pop up and then, they come to the pop up, it means that they've invested their attention and time into the brand. So I guess that's an amazing reward of seeing what pop-ups yield. On that note, based on what you said, should we be expecting more popups from GCLO? Actually no, more real life experiences rather?

Gam: Yeah, definitely more real life experiences in different forms, not just pop ups, not just parties, but maybe like a movie night, maybe it'll be like a run club, a hike or whatever. Just really taking the essence of a community and building on that and just creating a network of like-minded people and friends and family coming together... Yeah.

Yus: Amazing. I actually got the running club tee under me right now, it's one of my favourite tees from the brand so far. But even the Caribbean Reef life t-shirt, so good man.

Yus: So now let's talk about the [clo] bag. Tell us about the ideation, inspiration, and then also the film. It was a really good film, where was it shot? and what was the journey with that?

Gam: So for the bags, it was shot in Mexico, it wasn't actually like an intended thing to go there and shoot the bag, but I was just there and really got submerged in the culture (there). I was intrigued by the way of life over there and just sort of started talking to people and having conversations. From there, it was kind of a thing of, well, you know, I've got a bag with me, why not shoot it? Why not try and make something happen from it? And even in the film, a lot of the shots weren't intentional. It was actually just me shooting and documenting what life is like out there and putting it together. Even the voiceover in the background is someone who's natively South American, it's sort of talking about the whole kind of experience of seeing things outside of your immediate surroundings to open your mind and realise there's more out there. I think it ties in again with the community/real-life aspect because I think the internet, that's your immediate surrounding, it’s an echo chamber.

Nowadays, if you search cars, cars and cars all day, you're going to see cars, you're going to see guys that promote cars. You're going to see guys that think about cars. You're going to think that like, you know, the whole world loves cars and all that kind of thing. I think when you take things away from that echo chamber of the Internet and start thinking; you know, certain people gravitate towards certain things and this is like pop culture, this is what's trending, this is what's fun. And you take away from that pressure that's put on everyone to sort of think in a certain way for algorithms and for the benefits of social media companies and you know, just come into real life and you see like, okay cool, actually this person has a completely different life and a completely different mindset. But, it's cool and it's not like a survival of the fittest with a crabs in a bucket kind of mentality. It's kind of like, Oh, you do your thing and that's cool and I do my thing and that's cool that we can still get on even though we're completely different, but maybe one thing brings us together. So I think that's like the important thing about community, and that's kind of why there's a heavy emphasis on it for the brand. You can bond with people you might’ve never even crossed paths with on the internet or somewhere else just because of this one thing. Its just about thinking outside of your immediate surroundings and living life without limits, you know?

Yus: Yeah, I think when you focus on community, you create a two-way dialogue, and that creates more of an inclusive space for the brand and people who are engaging.

Cho: I wanna ask yeah, with the film, you shot it, you edited it and you also created the scoring as well?

Gam: That's right, yeah.

Cho: In terms of the filming right, it was very minimalistic, like the cinematography you used. Was that something you intended or it just happened when you got there?

Gam: Like I said, honestly, the technique for it all was to just sort of film stuff out there that looked interesting, there wasn't a shotlist. That was the thought process behind the film, kind of really just shooting random things on super 8 and then bringing it together afterwards, looking through in post like, okay cool; 'this looks good', 'this is interesting' and putting it together to make a visualiser… Of course, there were some intentional shots of the bag and whatnot. It was actually designed to be a travel bag, to be dropped in summertime when most people are travelling, but just due to certain things, i.e. wanting it to drop it in real life, I was like, okay, cool, we're going to delay it until we can get the right space and the right day and all that kind of stuff.

Cho: How long have you been planning this drop for the bag?

Gam: Um, well, as soon as I knew I was going to Mexico. That's kind of when I started planning something around it. I'd say that was probably in May. The first time I spoke to these guys in here (Dijonss) about throwing an event was in May. Five months ago and I have had the bag since March, so yeah.

Yus: I think it was great that you finally dropped it through this physical experience because people can connect and meet each other and also, almost give back. And that's something I actually wanted to focus on, you had the open decks, which is amazing for a brand to include their experience cause it shows how we are a part of it together, its not just you hosting the experience, they can also contribute to It as the attendees. How was that experience for you? Did you get to meet any new DJs? learn about peoples' sound? What was that experience like?

Gam: Yeah. No, it was cool. It was amazing just to sort of communicate through that sort of way. People that love music and love sound, kind of connecting and thinking; 'Oh, this is cool like this brand is doing this, I want to come' And maybe that's their outlet to connect and that's something I defo don't want to build on more like that soundsystem side of things and like obviously we had our first sort of debut as a sound system, ‘soft launch!’ (grins), needs some work, but yeah, it was sort of an introduction to that side of things. So yeah.

Yus: Is that something you like to expand on more? the debut of the GCLO Soundsystem and what music means for the brand.

Gam: Yeah absolutely. I think just taking it from a sound system or a set to a proper development would be cool. I mean the way it started honestly, I randomly ended up djing b2b with my friend Denzino at my birthday and it was cool. Then with the pop up coming up it was like “bro let's do this again” and get a few more friends to go B2B then get some artist friends to suprise guest too. Like it was just a lil experiment for the pop up but who knows where it could go. It could be a night, it could be a radio show, who knows.

Yus: Come on man, Insha'Allah.

Yus: Thanks a lot for giving us your time and thanks for today, it was really fun so congrats on a huge success, can't wait to see more and more GCLO IRL experiences.

Gam: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaking with Gam, it’s quite apparent that storytelling and community building are essential ingredients for GCLO, with IRL experiences playing a crucial role in creating different points of entries for his audience. We’ll eagerly be waiting to see what GCLO has in store next when it comes to experiences and also how the GCLO soundsystem evolves