Culture is the brief.
The product is the proof.

NOSTALGIA began in 2017 with screen-printed shirts sold out of a car trunk. The first drop got about ten orders. Humbert Lee joined as co-founder in 2019, and the operation became a Filipino-American apparel brand built around product, culture, campaign and direct customer relationships.

The brand has since passed $2M, reached a 130K audience across NOSTALGIA channels, been worn by YG, Blxst and Toosii, been featured by Vogue Philippines, and been selected by the NFL.

Plenty of brands borrow a culture for a graphic. I wanted ours to feel like something people already owned. It also had to work as a business, so every idea had to survive the whole trip from graphic to garment to drop to restock.

What I personally led: brand direction, apparel design and development, licensed collaborations, campaign creative, social growth and launch execution.

What was shared: co-founder-level business direction with Humbert Lee as the company grew.

I design for a Filipino-American kid in the Bay Area and what he actually wants to wear. The garment still has to fit, ship and sell, but that's where it starts.

Line planning, graphics, CADs, tech packs, BOMs, trims, fit review, factory emails, sampling, approvals. That is what it takes to get from an idea to boxes in a warehouse.

dev-1 · 4:5

dev-2 · 4:5

dev-3 · 4:5

"It would've been easy to just slap our logo on a shirt, but I wanted more."

A 30-hour journey and a three-hour trek to Buscalan to put a cream paisley lace barong tagalog on Apo Whang-Od, the 107-year-old mambabatok. Vogue Philippines covered it.

buscalan · 4:5

barong · 4:5

The machinery behind the product: Meta Ads, Klaviyo email and SMS, Pinterest, and a restock rhythm that turns a one-time drop buyer into someone who comes back.

• Brand direction
• Apparel graphics
• CADs & tech packs
• Materials & trims
• Sample revisions
• Campaign creative
• Social content
• Launch planning

NOSTALGIA's channels carry reach and drop hype on TikTok, product and campaign on Instagram. My personal TikTok (40K) does founder-voice storytelling that sells without reading as an ad. Pinterest works as the search and evergreen layer.

The content builds the audience, the audience tells me what to make next, and the product gives the content something real to be about. Most people running a brand's social only touch the first part. I own all of it because I also make the thing being posted.

Packing orders, factory footage, drop countdowns, wear-tests, the Buscalan trip.

• Channel strategy
• Content direction
• Founder storytelling
• Drop campaigns
• Pinterest layer
• Email & SMS support
• Community management
• Audience feedback loop

NFL Origins brought together three brands for Super Bowl LX: NOSTALGIA, Blvck Scvle and Aaron De La Cruz. The collection had to speak to Bay Area football memory while meeting the standards of licensed product distributed through NFL Shop.

Most NFL merch looks the same in every city. The job was making something that could only come from here, then keeping it that way through licensing approvals and a full production run.

What I personally led: creative direction, graphic design, model casting and campaign shoot production.

What was shared: licensing terms with Humbert, and approvals with the NFL and Fanatics.

The references came from swap meets, airbrushed kiosk tees, lowriders and hand-me-down Starter jackets — not stadium merch. I grew up around this stuff, so the collection came from inside it instead of pointing at it.

I directed the campaign, cast it and produced the shoot so the clothes looked like they belonged to the same Bay Area the graphics came from — real people, real cars, not a studio backdrop.

nfl-camp-1 · 4:3

nfl-camp-2 · 4:3

• Creative direction
• Graphic design
• Licensed product development
• Approval-ready artwork
• Model casting
• Shoot production
• Campaign assets
• Launch support

Taking a ceremonial garment and rebuilding it in denim — close enough to read as itself, changed enough to actually wear.

The hard part was knowing which details to keep and which to let go, and being honest about both instead of pretending nothing changed.

Mandarin collar, frog closures, boxy line, ceremonial proportion.

• Product concept
• Silhouette translation
• Denim direction
• Trim development
• Construction specs
• Sample feedback