This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
A$AP Rocky, Chanel ambassador, has rarely been seen in public wearing anything but Matthieu Blazy-designed blazers for the past few months. But on Thursday evening, the rapper, actor, and fashion impresario was comparatively dressed down in a zip-up hoodie he designed for AWGE, the clothing line that sprung out of his record label and creative agency in 2024.
Rocky was in a warehouse-like basement a stone’s throw from New York’s City Hall, prepping for his third AWGE runway show, set to be held upstairs the following night. The 37-year-old paced back and forth along rails heaving with AWGE-branded clothes, and stroked his chin as he reviewed models’ outfits. At one point, he disappeared into a changing room and emerged wearing khaki trousers covered in cargo pockets; he had decided to lend his own AWGE sweatpants for one of the looks.
“It’s like putting out an album,” he said of his eleventh-hour tinkering. “It’s not done until it’s out.”
Until he finally dropped the long-awaited Don’t Be Dumb last month, Rocky spent years batting away “Where is the album?” questions and fighting leaks of unreleased music. So you can see why he’s been thinking a lot about process. “People don't appreciate process anymore,” Rocky said. “They don't trust the process, and I just want to expose it.” Rocky was planning to recreate the fine-tuning I was witnessing here during the show, with styling assistants and glam teams doing their finishing touches on the cast in the middle of the catwalk. “We want the viewers to see all of the revisions we’re making up until the very last second.”
Rocky has been making even bigger changes to the AWGE formula in the lead-up to the brand’s New York Fashion Week debut. The first two shows, held in Paris, were extensions of the punk-ish and politically-charged aesthetic Rocky was exploring at the time; the most recent collection, titled “Obligatory Fashion,” riffed on the uniforms of courtrooms and the criminal justice system, a reference to the legal drama he overcame in early 2025. Though there was plenty to like about the clothes, which reflected Rocky’s immense influence in crashing conceptual European fashion with fine tailoring and streetwear, so far AWGE has yet to hit stores.
“They say the third time’s the charm, right?” Rocky said with a smile. From what I could see backstage, this go-round was less about narrative and more about teasing out a real wardrobe from his current style proclivities. He cited the contemporary obsession with quiet luxury and wellness, and his own curious interest in “aquaticwear.” “That’s untapped territory,” he declared. “I wanted to challenge us.” It struck me as a remix that only a style oracle as confident as Rocky could pull off.
“I had a bunch of trials and tribulations that I needed to get out of the way before I could really soar” with the brand, he said. “Now I can express myself freely and creatively. Emphasis on the word free.”
But still—aquaticwear? The racks of made-in-Italy tailoring looked promising (Rocky is as responsible as anyone for the resurgence of ’80s power suiting), but I wasn’t sure what to make of the liquidy latex shirts and piles of aqua sock Puma slides and swim-goggle-like Ray-Bans in the mix.
Luckily, the tinkering seems to have continued long after I departed. On Friday night, with Rihanna watching from behind dark sunglasses in the front row, Rocky unveiled what looked to me like AWGE 2.0, a surprisingly concise vision of tailoring and sportswear that for the first time I could actually see young New Yorkers clamoring to wear.
There was a beautiful wool officer’s coat and long, languid tailored trousers; a zip-up plaid shirt worn under a mustardy tailored vest and bright red overshirt; slip-on square-toe leather slippers embossed with the AWGE logo; and, most interestingly, a split-hem, shin-length layered skirt that Rocky—no stranger to the power of a tailored kilt—could easily turn into a street-style grail. In a nod to Rocky and Rihanna’s growing brood, a couple of models wore mink baby carriers, while one guy pushed a retro-futuristic stroller that Rocky said he designed himself. (The aquatic vibes had seemingly been edited out.)
But with three kids, a world tour on the horizon, a burgeoning career as a movie star, and a primo Chanel contract, what is Rocky really trying to say with AWGE? Where do his ambitions lie?
When I asked him backstage, Rocky suggested that the fashion line is “my heart.”
“I want to be that brand that actually fills that void of streetwear-meets-high-end-fashion-meets-goth-meets-everything that I stood for growing up. There was never just a brand that just really represented all of those at once,” he said. According to a member of Rocky’s creative team, feedback from buyers about AWGE’s new direction has been strong. But the rapper seems driven by more than commercial success.
“I want to continue to use this as a freedom vessel to express myself,” Rocky said. “I don't want to make collections. I just want to make art every time. I want to continue to make art through clothes. And regardless of how you view it, I just want to push that.”