This streetwear designer wants Queens to get the hype it deserves
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Md Kamruzzaman created his brand, Divinus, in 2013. Eagle photo by Victoria Merlino.
By Victoria Merlino
There are spots in New York City that serve as elusive, often inexplicable doors into the high-fashion world of streetwear — turn down certain streets in the Lower East Side or Williamsburg and look for the kids in the Champion sweats and the Balenciaga sneakers, the shops with names like Supreme, Kith and A Bathing Ape.
One 24-year-old Jamaica-based designer is trying to open one of those doors in Queens through his brand, Divinus.
“Me growing up, or like me skateboarding in Queens as a high school kid, I realized we weren't really being catered [to] when it came to the skateboarding industry or streetwear in general,” Md Kamruzzaman told the Eagle.
“Brooklyn is always a hot place. Manhattan, like, LES [Lower East Side] is a hot place. They have all like the cool shops, but Queens never really got the support that other boroughs did,” he continued.
In recent years, streetwear has left the skate parks and surf shops, bleeding out into legacy fashion houses, red carpets and magazine pages and becoming an important touchstone in current fashion. For Kamruzzaman, representing Queens in that fashion world is integral to his brand.
“Everything about Queens, I just like completely fell in love with. I mean it was such a diverse place,” Kamruzzaman said about the borough he moved to after growing up on the island of Saipan in 2010.
Kamruzzaman began working on Divinus in 2013, tie-dyeing shirts for friends and creating shirt stencils with tape. A passionate skateboarder, he was inspired in middle school and high school by the brands that skaters wore, like Supreme and Diamond Supply Co. Not having any formal training in design, Kamruzzaman would go to Barnes & Noble on Sundays and read different books on fabrics and fashion to educate himself and cook up new ideas.
The process that goes into designing a Divinus piece can sometimes take months, Kamruzzaman said.
“There was a certain point where I was making five graphics a night, you know, just like different T-shirt graphics and constructing different like prototypes for bags and outerwear, and I would just scrap them because it felt cool at the time and then it felt corny that next day,” he said.
The brand is a cocktail of nostalgia, skate culture and Kamruzzaman’s eclectic influences, with Kamruzzaman often remixing images and ideas from his youth, such as Happy Meal toys or Soulja Boy looks.
“To me it's like, this is what I thought was cool 11 years ago. So I'm going to reintroduce it today. It might not be the coolest thing. It might be corny to a certain point, but it's like it's a representation of my childhood which I use as the foundation of my inspiration,” he said.
Kamruzzaman must manage both the creative and business sides of the operation, and he fronts the money for any piece he drops. He said sales can sometimes be hit-or-miss — at times, he’ll recoup the $2,000 he spent on a launch in two days, while at other times, he won’t break even.
He is trying to better understand his audience, though that will take time, he said.
“This is probably where school is gonna kick in,” he said.
Kamruzzaman recently graduated from Baruch College as a digital marketing major. He currently works full time as a digital marketing associate.
He said he thinks few streetwear brands come out of Queens because some of the immigrant communities who call the borough home want to urge their children toward more secure paths to success, like law or medicine, instead of art, design and fashion
“I come from immigrant parents. My mom came from the Philippines. My dad came from Bangladesh. And both of these cultures — well, I would say the Bangladeshi community more so. They don't really focus too much on the arts,” Kamruzzaman said.
“They discredit other people's ability to do certain things creatively, because in Bangladesh you can't make a fortune shooting photos, but you can make a fortune being a doctor,” he continued.
”So they come to America and they have the same mindset.”
He feels fortunate, he said, that his own parents have always been supportive of his artistic aspirations.
Nevertheless, Kamruzzaman said he sees more artists like himself from Queens and other parts of the city rising through the art scene, something that he wants to support and promote. He recently launched a spotlight section on his website called DIVINUS CURATED, where he plans to highlight artists through interviews and curated playlists.
“I don't look at it as competition at all. I mean some people might, but if I could help boost up an artist, whether I know them or not,” he said. “If I can boost up an artist's ego and make them confident, feel good about their work, I'm going to do it.”
