Jef-A-Sun is the creator of
Jef-A-Sun is the creator of Afr-letics, an African-centric clothing line that combines Black history and modern sports logo designs. The fashion line celebrates different ancestral figures like the Black Panthers, Marcus Garvey, Nat Turner, and Harriet Tubman.
Jef-A-Sun spoke with rolling out about the fashion line and what inspired him to create it.
Why did you create this fashion line?
One, it came from me being a sneakerhead, appreciating sports and authentic sports jerseys, and also going through a conscious journey of learning about different people in our history. So upon discovering the Dogon tribe, of Mansa Musa, it was very enlightening to me, so me and my business partner in athletics merged those two together, and we created the athletics brand. We celebrate our particular historical icons versus celebrating sports teams, who most likely have let you down at some point.
What’s your process of finding a historical figure to highlight?
We would look at their accomplishments and the things that they did on their journey and life path, or the historical facts that we know about them. We will merge that together, create a sports logo, and then think about what particular colors of popular sports teams we want to mimic so it can be a theme throughout and be related to sports, but not related to sports. For the Black Panthers, we did a Raiders motif because they’re close to Oakland and they mostly wear black and it’s a mix of the Oakland Raiders and the Black Panthers. We could pull people in with those particular colorways but then when they see “Oh, this is a panther,” this is something that represents me. This is something that represents people who did great for us in history, so that was our basic premise on that.
What does this do for the Black culture?
It puts our history above a lot of things because in school, you might have gotten Harriet Tubman and probably Martin Luther King Jr., but that was pretty much it for your particular history, and they definitely didn’t go beyond slavery. With our line, we talk about Mansa Musa, who was the richest man ever in history, but you’re never going to hear about that in school. You’re never going to hear about that anywhere unless you research it. We decided to make it in a sports motif and make it more presentable and palatable to younger folks so they can gravitate to the colorways and the sports look.
Where can people find you?
They can find us on IG @afr_letics, and our website is www.afr-letics.com
