// NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOE
IT’S STREETWEAR SEASON IN CHICAGO, AND NOBODY DOES IT LIKE JOE FRESHGOODS.
It’s streetwear season in the city, and nobody does it like Joe Freshgoods.
With T-shirts proclaiming CHICAGO OVER EVERYTHING and CHICAGO
LEGENDS NEVER DIE, Joe Freshgoods champions the Windy City like few other designers. Last winter’s “Thank You Obama” capsule collection brought the 30-year-old West Town resident national attention, but Freshgoods has long been a mainstay on the local streetwear scene, building cachet with cult brands Vita and DBM before adding a brick-and-mortar presence in 2013 as coproprietor of streetwear boutique Fat Tiger Workshop (fattigerworkshop.com). “I finally feel like I got my just due,” says the Austin native, who will move the West Town-based shop to a new location this summer. “So now I’m about to hit them with some crazy shit.”
Origin Story: Freshgoods began designing T-shirts in high school with the DIY ethos inherent to streetwear. “I started buying transfer paper from Office Depot, and I’d just print an image off the Internet and print it on my T-shirts.”
One of a Kind: “I’m from Chicago, I’m black, I’m independent… I’m the only person in the world who could’ve [done] this as I did it,” he says of the “Thank You Obama” collection.
New Digs: Freshgoods plans to equip Fat Tiger Workshop’s new store with a “classroom” space for hosting educational workshops. “Everybody has different ways of giving back to the community, and I think our biggest thing is [conversing] and just telling people they can do it [too].” joefreshgoods.com