Brandon Blackwood Is Leveling Up

Brandon Blackwood isn’t afraid of growth—personally and professionally.

For a number of years, Blackwood, the Brooklyn-based designer and recently inducted CFDA member, was best known for his multicolored mini tote bags with “End Systemic Racism” embellished on the front. Produced at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and worn by the likes of Winnie Harlow and Kim Kardashian, the accessory became a signifier of where one stood amid turbulent times. As the tote’s recognition grew, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue began selling a range of Blackwood’s bags. (The designer says his business grew by 50,000 percent from 2020 to 2021, a feat that’s still hard for him to fathom.) There’s no denying that that bag built Brandon Blackwood’s business, but now, he’s ready to stretch his design strengths and evolve beyond the tote.

Brandon Blackwood’s ESR tote.

Brandon Blackwood NYC

“These last two years for me have been really about finding the brand’s aesthetic and really beginning to mold itself,” Blackwood says on a recent Zoom call with BAZAAR from his (famously documented) Bedstuy home. “We built the foundation in the last few years, but—I know it sounds corny—we’re trying to really find our voice.”

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The brand’s latest collection is a testament to that goal. Moving past mini bags and into shapes with more structure and higher quality fabrics, Blackwood is leaning into the luxe. His spring and summer offering includes woven raffia purses perfect for beach getaways, oversized leather shoulder bags for the stylish jet-setter, and minimalist shoulder bags for the ’90s fashion obsessive. Meaningful detailing like bamboo hardware, rattan handles, and beaded fringe pay homage to his Jamaican background. Blackwood also launched his debut shoe line last month, featuring pointed-toe booties, denim and satin platforms, and the delightfully kitschy joint and taxi heels—strappy sandals with a faux blunt and classic New York City taxicab replacing the signature stiletto.

A look from Brandon Blackwood’s spring 2023 campaign.

Ojeras

“Right now we are definitely more colorful and playing with more textures. We’re incorporating a lot of woven materials that I swore off of last season, like rattan, wicker, and a netted leather. With this collection, we really got it down with it feeling warm and vibrant, like you just wanna go on vacation,” Blackwood says. “But with that, it’s all becoming a little bit more minimal, a little bit more focused. The designs are a little more serious, less whimsical than the past. We’ve really found the foundation of what I know it will all grow into.”

An image from Brandon Blackwood’s SS23 shoe campaign.

Zhong Lin

The Jasmine Bag from Brandon Blackwood.

Ojeras

That being said, Blackwood has an inherent ability to know what his customer wants. It’s not an easy feat to have mass appeal and have everyone from Gen-Z to city-dwelling aunties sporting your accessories. (“My grandma is almost 80 and my little cousins who are 22 can go into my showroom or go on the website and each find a favorite bag,” he quips.) For Blackwood, listening to his customers when they chime in on social media or via email about what they’re hoping to see and buy, whether they’re asking for more colorways, fabrics, or additional size ranges, is key. Most footwear styles, for example, will be available in sizes 35–44, in a conscious effort for all genders to sport a serious heel.

“The smartest thing that we could do was really learn who our new customer was. If you see on Instagram, I’m always posting sneak peeks and I’m always asking in stories ‘What do you guys wanna see? What colors you wanna see?'” Blackwood adds. “We’ve done well because we’ve integrated the customer into the whole experience. Seventy percent of the colorways are chosen by customers or suggested by customers. I always say I have the easiest part, which is just making the item! The customer definitely molds the direction of the brand and molds each collection. These are the people that are ultimately wearing it at the end of the day, so they should be included in the overall conversation.”

Blackwood’s brand has come to be much more than just bags. Along with shoes and statement-making outerwear, he’s planning to expand into swimwear this May, a new market that to him is a natural extension of the brand and something his customer base is hungry for.

Brandon Blackwood

Brandon Blackwood NYC

“We’ve been really just trying to step outside the box so that our customers could all feel special while owning something. Whether it be sunglasses now, coats, bags, shoes. Now we have swim coming out,” Blackwood explains. “We kind of turned [swimwear] into outfits. Again, no one’s gonna expect us really to do swim, but we see where our customers are wearing our other products and it just makes complete sense.”

While there’s no denying Brandon Blackwood’s growth, he does feel as if his company rests in a type of fashion industry limbo. He’s not quite a small business anymore, but not quite mainstream either. Outside of New York and Los Angeles, there’s still a bit of an if-you-know-you-know essence to wearing one of his pieces out in the world. He’s perfectly fine with not fitting into any box.

“This brand is such an anomaly that it’s hard to even put us in any sort of category. I for sure, a thousand percent, believe that if this was [a] white-owned company, or maybe a different person was running this, we would be seen as mainstream,” he says. “I don’t get called a mainstream brand and some people would still call us small, even. We’re one of the few Black brands really garnering that reach and that visibility. So I’m fine with that. As long as people like what we’re making, I don’t care where we end up. I just want the customer to be happy.”

It’s not so much about notoriety for Blackwood as much as it’s about maintaining longevity. How the industry perceives him, quite frankly, isn’t his concern.

“You don’t really ever set that goal [of being successful or becoming mainstream] for yourself. I could say I want to be like this brand or the next whatever, but it’s literally up to the customer and how fashion embraces us as a whole,” he says. “It is becoming a crowded market, but I think there’s still space within it and things like that don’t normally get to me.”

Going forward, Blackwood’s design mission is crystal clear. “My job is just to make cool shit,” he laughs.

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Culture Editor

Bianca Betancourt is the culture editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she covers all things film, TV, music, and more. When she’s not writing, she loves impulsively baking a batch of cookies, re-listening to the same early-2000s pop playlist, and stalking Mariah Carey’s Twitter feed.