Warren Cochrane is the founder of Bloomfield.Works, a clothing brand that puts a modern twist on classic outfits for those who value community-building and the reverence of Black impact.
Cochrane spoke with rolling out about the brand and why he thinks Black designers are important.
Tell us about Bloomfield.Works.
Our brand is an expression of Black reverence. It takes a lot of Caribbean influences in the way of music, and we position that and create a lot of graphic design, graphic tees and a little bit of embroidery. It’s more about just expressing Black impact over anything else. We started the brand three years ago around the pandemic, and it was just a way for us to make our design and talent more actionable. We usually donate a lot of the proceeds to different foundations like the Black Arts Future Fund and the Breonna Taylor Fund. We try to continue that sort of sentiment in everything that we do.
Concept 10: WHO JAH BLESS® + Much Much More. Exclusively for @complexcon | Nov. 18–19 pic.twitter.com/1lA9vMfyb9
— Bloomfield.Works® (@BLOOMFIELDWRKS) November 10, 2023
What do you think separates your brand from others?
There’s so much austerity in a lot of other brands. And I think that, for us, we just want to sort of pinpoint more on prosperity. It’s a little bit more joy in the work, and we don’t want to capitalize on trauma. There are so many great things that Black artists and poets from anybody from Octavia Butler to Marcus Garvey — you can name a bunch of different people and how they impacted everything that we do. We just want to key in on that, and that’s what we’ve been doing.
Why are Black designers important?
There are so many stories to tell. We hear so many stories. I think that, for a lot of people who go through a traditional design journey, there are so many different design styles and visual languages and people that are taught to you that are a lot more Eurocentric. We must incorporate our visual language and things that we are receptive to in our art.
