Get Fly with Will Smith
Photos and Words by Cameron Dorsey
If you are located anywhere in the 757 and spot someone sporting anything with a big purple W on it, chances are it was designed by todays feature. Will Smith (yes Will Smith) is a designer from Hampton, VA whose fanbase is only growing with every drop. After stumbling into design in his dorm, the Virginia State alum is using his love for fashion to create pieces with inspirations ranging from Virginia Tech’s mascot to reworked McDonald’s uniforms.
You post a lot of old screenshots and pictures of pieces that you had back in the day and it's evident that you've been into fashion for a minute, where does your love for it come from?
It came from just being around art shit. I was always in the arts programs, I went to a community program at Doris Miller Community Center growing up, and that kind of helped shape my desire for fashion. They were a real open-minded facility and they kind of let us be kids and just figure out what we wanted to do. We’d cut up magazines and make a little poster, I guess it was a vision board now that I think about it. Just shit just get our mind going really and I'm really grateful for that. In middle school, I had a polo for every day of the week, Monday through Saturday, and not no regular Polo like the actual Ralph Lauren shit. I’d mix that with some dunks or some little Jordan brand shoes, it just started like that. But I say the community center really like ignited that fire in me.
So where did the idea of starting your own brand come in?
When I was in high school, everybody knew me as a fashion nigga. I just always said to myself like, alright, I'm gonna just keep putting these clothes on but I don't want to make a clothing brand. For some reason. I was just against having a clothing brand, even in college. And then my senior year at Virginia State, I saw this post on Grailed, a blue shirt with Chicago going across it in a collegiate font. And I saw that and I was like this she could use something else, this could be better than just a regular Chicago shirt, so I bought the shirt for like $40. So it came to my dorm and I was like, hmm, what can I do to make this different? I started thinking about what resonates with Chicago, I thought of all the sports teams and Chicago Bears was the first one I came up with. I was like alright, boom, what if I turned upside down? And I was like, fuck it, I went and got it printed in the middle of the mall the next day and everybody was fucking with that shit, it actually made me feel good. I was like, what if I just turned it into a brand, it was almost like I couldn't escape that shit. But I did that and the rest was history, bro. I did variations, I always loved DC, I got family out there. Chicago was the I was the first one by default and obviously Virginia was the third one, I was born and raised here. But um yeah, and it just started from there.
So once you started doing it consistently, and you were building the brand up to the way we know it today, how did you figure out your brand identity?
Honestly, I'm still figuring it out bro I can't even lie. If somebody were to ask me, and they probably will more than likely, what does Willsfortune stand for, honestly just get fly. I've been running with that since inception. My brand is my name, Wills-fortune. My brand identity is if you're gonna get fly, then get fly, don't be scared to put that shit on. You know, I had that put that shit on mentality before niggas was even saying that.
So what's been the hardest part about both starting the brand and then maintaining it today?
Support. Niggas will sit there and look at you and see you doing good, then once you finally blow that's when they will support you, it's said a lot but it's true. When you blow it’s like, “Oh yeah now I’m about to buy”. If I got a sale for every person who said “Yeah, I need this/ When this is gonna drop”, I would be gone, as far as my career success, I would have been out of here bro. I don't know, it's almost like they’re scared to like take a chance on somebody. You know it’s hard, but you hesitate, you’re second-guessing, like just support, it's not gonna hurt you. And I'm not saying the only way to support is by buying, you can repost, that's the simplest way. It is what it is though, gotta charge it to the game. But that support is the biggest thing, from the beginning to now. I have a good community of supporters and all that like my sales are always better than the last one each time. But it's just that group of people showing fake support, it’s irritating but it is what it is because we gonna ball for sure.
And that's it's funny that you say that because from the outside looking in, it looks like you have a solid base of support locally and I want to ask how that feels and what that means to you.
Bro that shit feels so good. Like my first $1,000 day, for one I almost didn't go to work that day, but I got a little teary-eyed. I'm like damn, like that shit really put it in perspective. That and then when I had rereleased my McDonald's shirt. I didn't do any promo, I was coming off a hiatus of like three months, I just made a post the day before I dropped, and the next day like half of them sold. That really put it into perspective, like niggas is really fucking with me, like not just me but like the brand. I had my first pop-up in April of this year and it was just an outpouring of love. It was just beautiful to see everybody come out for some shit that you created.
So you curated a project back in 2020, Virginia Vol. 1 tape. How did that come about?
I’m about to bring that shit back, you put the battery back, you just charged me up. So that nigga Shiggy had worn my hoodie, which brought a bunch of attention. So I was like, this is bringing attention to Virginia, bringing attention to me, why don't we highlight these artists? You got people not just in New York but everywhere that follow Shiggy that are gonna see these Virginia artists, somebody might get signed you know, it is what it is. And I'm a music head as it is, so we put a little compilation together. I got my boy Sweeney, shout out DJ Sweendawg, he mixed that whole shit. We sat together for a cool two or three hours just mixing, fixing the tracklist and all that. That's really how that came about, I was just looking at what I could do to keep the ball rolling with that buzz from the Shiggy thing. The reason I stopped was because niggas were too Hollywood for me bro. It was like I'm putting this on SoundCloud bro, so I’m getting no money off this shit, I can see if I was putting it on Apple Music or Spotify but I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna do what's best for me. I had a cool 15 songs and I was looking for some more, but then they just started like “Nah, I can't do it my manager, or I need this and that, like bro why yall acting weird? I don’t argue with anybody so I just left it at that. But I'm glad you said that bro. I'm gonna say fuck fuck the haters and just drop.
You said the whole meaning or identity of the brands is just to get fly, so if you could give three tips or steps to follow to help the people get fly what would they be?
Confidence is first because if you’re gonna wear some weird shit, you can't be walking around slouched over like, “Oh, they're looking at me”. No, you want them to look at you, own that, own that fit. Second, know what works for you too, because you can be confident but you also can look fucking crazy, so it's about finding that balance. The third is to know what you’re wearing. You can’t just be running around in some neo-Nazi shit. And I get the whole “it’s just clothes” thing but that shit holds weight. I love Kanye too, he’s controversial I get it, but when he was going through that period of wearing a damn Confederate flag patch like damn I can't justify that.
