Before Augusta had a name, it had an education.
I lived on Augusta Avenue from 2003 to 2017.
In those same years, I studied the brands that shaped me.
A Bathing Ape. Billionaire Boys Club. Ice Cream. Human Made. Cav Empt.
First from a distance. Then by hand.
Buying. Curating. Authenticating.
The archive at work. Toronto, 2019.
Learning how a garment is made, how it ages, and why some pieces are kept long after their season ends.
Under the name OGVLT, the archive built a reputation of its own.
In the winter of 2017, I brought OGVLT into a physical space for the first time with a month-long pop-up in Kensington Market.
As the archive grew, fellow collectors around the world came for pieces they couldn’t find elsewhere, and for the knowledge that came with them.
In time, that trust went both ways. Collectors began sending me their own grails, to document and place with their next owners.
Even the brands I studied began to take notice.
In 2018, one of the collectors I served, Matthew Chevallard, became artistic director of Ice Cream.
For its relaunch, he set aside a pair from the first drop, one of thirty, with a friends-and-family dust bag bearing my shop’s name in gold.
Ice Cream, Made in Italy. One of thirty. With a friends-and-family dustbag.
Twice, pieces I placed reached the late Virgil Abloh, at Louis Vuitton’s Studio Homme in Paris.
One was a Season 1 Ice Cream "Coneman" hoodie from Autumn/Winter 2005, nearly impossible to find by then, and still unworn.
A piece from the era that shaped him, preserved long enough to reach him.
Months later, it appeared in print, worn by him.
The page itself, from the founder’s archive. Pen Magazine, No. 479, August 2019.
In 2019, the lessons became a philosophy.
Augusta began as a Cultural Preservation Company.
Every brand I admired understood something I would spend years learning.
Toronto, winter 2019. Shot on film.
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