Zang: Slick Streetwear, Bold Beachwear

Surfboards, and pineapples, and guns, oh my! Those are just some of the colourful edgy-cum-fun art doodles featured on the tees of the newest streetwear brand to hit the city, Zang. The brand’s SS15 kick-off collection captures the epitome of summertime beach-side surfer cool vibes perfectly, with crop tops and side-open tanks that have bearded men and pineapples wearing glasses sketched onto them. And dammit, this summer we really are loving our pineapples.

The brand was founded by Bassam Emam, and their first collection is titled Beach Rave. Which is apt, because we can totally imagine the party-going youth of Cairo donning these tops at a beach rave. Actually, you’ll probably see them in Sahel doing just that this summer. “It just started with a really small idea; just to create clothing that we ourselves like,” explains Emam. So he teamed up with the current marketing manager of the brand, Nour El Refai to pull together a team, working for a year to ensure they would end up creating top notch, high quality products. “We wanted to capture the idea and mentality of street wear abroad, but recreate that locally so that instead of people buying from high street international brands, they would buy Egyptian, and we could contribute to pushing the Egyptian industry forward and at one point be able to compete at a global level,” Emam tells us.

In doing so, they knew they needed to hit the nail on the head when it came to design, and paired up with two artists, Khadija Sharawy and Nour Gohar, to design the works to be featured on the clothing that would tie in to the street wear essence of the brand’s aesthetic. And thus the sunglass-clad pineapples were born! And y’know, Technicolor skulls with their faces melting off. “We wanted to create something original; a lot of brands often just grab a photo off the internet and print it on a t-shirt,” Emam says.

But though the summer collection is all colour and loose cuts, Emam promises that Zang will be switching things up every single season. “Our logo is a chameleon… The winter collection will be very different from this one. It’s called Wicked and there’s going to be a lot of black and white…it’s a much darker theme.”

With cool designs that will feature different themes every season, we can’t wait to see what Zang turns out next! Take a look at the full summer campaign below, shot by Studio X.

You can check out their Facebook page here or follow them on Instagram @zang_eg.