A Caribbean brand from Santo Domingo founded in 2014 by Angelo Beato & Yamil Arbaje. The brand aims to provide a wardrobe that supports young people across the Global South to redefine their masculine and feminine identities while playing with conceptions of historical narratives and conventional ideas of youth through the culture of graphical production.
LEBLANCSTUDIOS became the first Dominican brand to successfully cultivate an authentic presence amongst the country’s youth. Thus, a core of the brand’s identity has become its reliance on its community. Creating inclusive, aesthetically curated spaces where people can enjoy fashion, music, and dance are key ways in which LEBLANCSTUDIOS manifests physically.
These welcoming and carefully developed spaces have become characteristic of how LEBLANCSTUDIOS presents its collections. Transparent, bilateral collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and architects across mediums only further deepen the brand’s ties to its community, country, and zeitgeist.
In November 2018, the Singular Unity collection was shortlisted in the finals of the Design and Entrepreneurship category at the Ibero-American Biennial in Madrid.
In May 2019, LEBLANCSTUDIOS was invited to design a collection for the Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana on the merit of the previous collection called Murder is My Business. That same year Angelo and Yamil were invited by TedxTalk to present “How We Produce Culture Through Fashion”. In 2020, Yamil’s thesis collection was included by 1GRANARY and Pinterest in the best portfolios of 2020.
In addition, its work has been featured in different local newspapers and magazines of the Dominican Republic, and internationally in Vogue Thailand, Forbes, Dazed and Confused Magazine, Office Magazine, Models.com, 1Granary, Bully Magazine, ODDA Magazine, No Kill Mag, British Thoughts, Kaltblut Magazine, The Men Style Brasil, The Forumist.
LEBLANCSTUDIOS offers its community a chance to tap into the underbelly of the Caribbean’s past, present, and future. It’s an ode to its political palaces, complex identities, and disenfranchised youth rather than the typical swan song for its beaches, music, and women.
Extensive research, satire, and profound conceptual artistry are fused together to create a colder, sober but deeply authentic look into Latin American youth and its history.
Preserving our region’s characteristic charm is crucial to our creative process. The storied and detailed substance behind our tailoring is always backed by our ability to be part of a larger conversation. Our colors remain vibrant while our fabric options aim to flatter as much as they challenge sartorial conventions when wrapped around the body.
LEBLANCSTUDIOS flirts with the darkest parts of Latin America and persuades them to be as refined and sophisticated as they know themselves to be.
