Black Boy Knits Grows Up, Relaunches as Agbobly

The New York City-based brand Black Boy Knits is in a period of evolution. Its founder Jacques Agbobly — who started the project in their apartment during the pandemic to generate income after graduating from college in May 2020 — is ready for more.

From here on, Black Boy Knits will be known as Agbobly — its designer’s last name and an ode to the familial, personal sentiments imbued in each of their collections.

These tropes, as well as Agbobly’s rich Togolese heritage, are the basis for a unisex, inclusive line that the designer — who identifies as non-binary — has purposely engineered to suit a variety of body types and gender identities.

Times have changed since Agbobly founded their brand out of necessity and they felt like it was important to honor that transformation with a new brand identity. “I didn’t imagine myself releasing a brand straight out of college but the pandemic forced me to do something to be able to survive. For me, a lot of my work is tied to my familial lineage and storytelling from my own perspective as an African immigrant migrating to the U.S. at a young age. I’m taking inspiration from both cultures. I thought because I put so much of myself in my work it made sense to lead with my name,” they said.

Agbobly and their family immigrated from Togo to the U.S. in 2007, and settled on the west side of Chicago. In 2016, Agbobly packed up again and moved to New York City to attend design school.

Even without any retailers to speak of, Black Boy Knits got off the ground and was rapidly recognized for its optimistic and colorful pieces. Agbobly’s warm personality, and ability — even at the age of 25 — to comfortably speak about their process and life experiences helped the project along.

But behind-the-scenes, their grassroots effort was a tedious one. Agbobly handmade all the one-off pieces in Black Boy Knits themself, spending hours generating happy-go-lucky sweaters and intricately beaded separates. But now three years in, the designer recognized that the interest around their work had outgrown what they could knit in their small studio in Brooklyn.

The Agbobly brand is an evolution toward wider commercial success. Agbobly will continue to make knits — in fact, they just hired the brand’s first-ever in-house knitter — but will balance these labor-intensive pieces with denim, tailored items and shirting that can be put into production for stores. “But I’m still keeping many of the foundational, special items of the brand,” they said.

For their rebrand, Agbobly worked closely with a small team of collaborators including Ojeras Studios for their look book production — which involved recreating their grandmother’s living room on set in New York City. The Agbobly brand concept was devised in concert with Abiké Studio.

In 2022, Agbobly was named a finalist of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which acted as a kind of seed investment. “It’s been a great progression, allowing myself to scale within my means without feeling the pressure to have to scale too fast,” they said.

The program also bestows each winner with a dedicated mentor, and Agbobly was assigned to Thom Browne. The two established a close working relationship, Agbobly said, helping Black Boy Knits through growing pains and helping its designer establish a working rhythm.

On Thursday, Agbobly was named a ready-to-wear finalist in the inaugural Fashion Trust U.S. If they win, the designer could take home up to $150,000 in prize money.

The handcraft aesthetic, popular across the wider industry at present, is elemental to the Agbobly look. Trend or not, however, this mentality is authentic to Agbobly’s roots.

In Togo, where it’s customary to order custom-tailored garments, the designer spent their childhood surrounded by colorful textile trade and afternoons in a sewing studio that their grandmother rented to seamstresses. The Togolese flag colors — red, green and yellow — are important markers throughout the collection, which Agbobly attributes to the “nationalism” that many Africans have for their countries in the wake of colonial rule.

In looking at Agbobly’s first look book, it’s palpable to sense the hours they spent playing on the floor at their grandmother’s sewing studio from a young age. Agbobly’s designs are covered with wispy colorful threads and beads in scattered patterns like how you’d find them on the floor of a tailoring shop. “I was always underneath the table,” they said.

These memories are matched with a sophistication Agbobly cultivated as a student at the Parsons School of Design, where they spent time working for Telfar and Christopher John Rogers.

The result is a blend of a colorful childhood in Togo, matched with downtown New York City slouch and a bit of early 2000s references Agbobly acquired as a teen consuming pop culture in Chicago.

The collection is based in candy stripe sweaters, cargo pants and cotton gingham motifs — with exaggerated proportions and a whiff of deconstruction that swipes away any fussiness from bright colors and soft materials. It’s a cool, happy look — emblematic of Agbobly themself.

“I am creating emotion. I think fashion is so serious and yes, it is a business at the end of the day, but what people forget is that we want to put something on that brings us joy. I want to capture that essence of joy with everything I make, the colors and playfulness and I think it allows people to feel something,” they said.

It will all come in handy as they look to wholesale their collection for the first time, with pieces priced on average from $1,000 to $1,500 retail. The Agbobly brand will also launch its first e-commerce site later this year, selling mostly exclusive one-off pieces.