With “wild leek” being a part of Chicago’s history and the brand being representative of my history coming up in Chicago, bada boom bada bing - you got W!ld Leek!

--Kamal “Kamalkiddo!!!” Williams - Founder/Creative Director of W!ld Leek, LLC.

W!ld Leek (www.wildleekworld.com)

The Essence

Everyone has memories of their childhood. The members of W!ld Leek, LLC remember these times while growing up in Chicago. Everything from contemporary art and music to television commercials and video games, W!ld Leek represents those things that inspired us while growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s. With clothing as the driving force, W!ld Leek seeks to create a community amongst their supporters through the universal appreciation of these memories.

W!ld Leek is a reflection of our history while growing up in Chicago. Not in the boastful sense, but quite literally in the etymological sense, W!ld Leek is Chicago.

Arize: WTF are these little characters all around your website? And what the hell does W!ld Leek mean!?

W!ld Leek (Kamal 'Kmalkiddo!'): Well, I will start with the meaning of W!ld Leek; I wanted to do a brand representative of the things I’ve seen coming up in Chicago. Whether it was movies and cartoons or Chicago landmarks. If you look up the etymology of the word “Chicago” you’ll find many different meanings: “stinky skunk”, “stinky onion”, etc. In all the sources I’ve looked, the one term that was in all of them was “wild leek”. With “wild leek” being a part of Chicago’s history and the brand being representative of my history coming up in Chicago, bada boom bada bing - you got W!ld Leek! As for the “Pointz”, which are the characters on the site, they are the exclamation point in “W!ld”. They haven’t really been introduced yet but we plan on introducing them on a tee in the Fall of 2009.

Arize: In five words define what fresh means to your brand?

Learning to live your loves.

Arize: Give us a brief bio of how W!ld Leek started.

I’ve wanted to do a clothing line since 2003. I finally got up the courage to do it in 2007. I brought on my cousin and a friend of mine to help me with the business and sales aspect of the company and that is when W!ld Leek became an LLC. I added two more people to the team, connected with a design firm and what you see today are the fruits of our labor thus far.

Arize: What do you want your consumers to think of when someone mentions W!ld Leek?

I want them to remember the things that we reference in our graphics, and I want them to look fly while remembering.

Arize: What influences W!ld Leek? Money, hoes, bitches etc etc?

Haha! We got that already! Mainly 80’s and early 90’s movies, cartoons and other things we remember from that time. My personal feeling is that they don’t make movies like they did in the 80’s. Movies in the 80’s, as a whole, were much more cooler than today’s computer generated movies. Though W!ld Leek pulls influences from more than just movies, I thought I would just add that as a sidebar.

Arize: What else is in store for W!ld Leek since you guys are a relatively young company?

We are currently working on our Spring/Summer line, which will consist of tee’s again. We will be expanding to crew necks, hats, socks and all that good stuff. We’ll be doing vinyl toys of the Pointz, we have been talking about collaborating with other Chicago brands on a few products and we have some other goodies cooking up. Hopefully, within five years we can open a store… I have big plans for that!

Arize: Before we get out of here, what direction can we expect W!ld Leek clothing to head towards for 09’?

Bolder graphic tees, we will be adding some crew necks and hoodies in our Fall/Winter release and we will be doing some interesting things to promote brand awareness, but I don’t want to give away all of our secrets! I promise they’ll be worth the wait!

www.wildleekworld.com
Answered by: Kamal “Kamalkiddo!!!” Williams - Founder/Creative Director of W!ld Leek, LLC.