Blacklava: "Clothing for a New State of Mind"

EON Member Profile

Find Clothing, Products and Programming with an Asian American Consciousness

Evolving from a small, independent business producing Asian American-themed apparel with a political consciousness, the new Blacklava.net web site has grown into a vital online hub for a wide variety of products and information of genuine Asian American (pop) cultural relevance.

The main sections include a unique online store carrying music, books, adult and children's apparel, knick-knacks and sporting gear produced by and for highly diverse creative folks in the (trans)national Asian American community.

Beginning as a small T-shirt business, Blacklava quickly made a name for itself producing ethnic-themed designs and rapid-response, activist slogan designs rapidly produced to address topical political and social issues in the community, from Wen Ho Lee to Abercrombie & Fitch to SARS coverage.  As the Blacklava brand became known, the company formed new cooperative partnerships to help distribute designs for individual artists and small collectives, including Secret Asian Man, Big Bad Chinese Mama, Mango Tribe and Taikoproject.  Naturally, other forms of apparel soon followed, and Blacklava began to invite and expand to a variety of independently produced stuff ranging from musical instruments to videos -- virtually anything that pass the Blacklava litmus test.

It may seem odd to hear people refer to themselves as "fans" of an online store, but devotees of the Blacklava brand have come to find much of sticky, non-commercial interest as regular visitors to the site.  A deeply entrenched presence seen more or less everywhere throughout Asian America, proprietor Ryan S. Suda has operated the outfit since its inception as wholly in-community enterprise.  As a result, Blacklava is not only a regular fixture at APA conferences and events nationwide, but has been itself a dedicated sponsor of real-world event programming including "Tuesday Night Cafe," a series of California-based (for now) concerts and art performances that raise funds to establish arts resources in Asian American neighborhoods, and the "Youth Art in Action" program.

The third main site section offers additional resources just for online visitors, including the open, user-friendly Blacklava Forums, a Career Center with free job search tools offered in partnership with IMDiversity.com, the "Lava Rockers" feature promoting independent APA musical artists, and a categorized Links section that collects a particularly interesting array of hard-to-find, personal and independent arts sites.

The Village editors can't recommend this site highly enough, so whenever you've got gifts to buy, events to deck out for, a hole in your music collection, a great design to promote, a hankering to take up taiko, or just an  urge to blow some spare change on unique stuff that's next-to-impossible to find anywhere else, drop by the store in Torrance, CA or visit Blacklava.net.