Everyone tells young creatives to build a personal brand. Far fewer ask how creative collaboration actually happens, or why many of the most influential creative movements of the past decade were built by groups, not individuals. Long before Brockhampton became one of the Internet’s defining music collectives, its members were simply finding collaborators online, sharing skills and developing a recognisable visual language together. Their story still has something to say to anyone trying to build a fashion label, studio, or multidisciplinary practice today, while also raising a question: has the age of personal branding made us forget the power of building creative work together? 

In the video for STAR, Brockhampton’s members paint their faces blue and drive a golf cart down an otherwise ordinary Los Angeles street: nothing about it looks expensive. The costumes could have been assembled after a rushed trip to a discount store, and the camera jitters with the energy of someone filming before the neighbours complain. The result lands somewhere between a rap video, a student film, and a very productive afternoon spent avoiding real responsibilities.

Then the same blue returns, along with the same streets, the same faces, the cheap effects, the primary colours, and the inside jokes. What first seems improvised gradually becomes something unmistakably their own.

How Brockhampton Built a Creative Collective Before Anyone Called It One

Brockhampton emerged in the mid-2010s as a large, multiracial hip-hop collective, though “hip-hop collective” never quite captured the full picture. Kevin Abstract recruited some of its earliest members through fan forums. The group eventually included rappers and singers, producers, a photographer, a graphic designer, a manager, and a web developer. Many lived together in Los Angeles, where bedrooms doubled as recording studios and the neighbourhood became a recurring video backdrop. They were less a conventional band than an art-school class that locked itself in and decided to release everything.

In 2017, they released the three albums of the Saturation trilogy along with twelve official videos, a documentary, short films, merchandise, and a tour. Much of the work happened inside the house and was documented as it was being created. Four years later, describing this output as a “content strategy” feels accurate but also slightly dismissive—the content had sweat on it.

For students planning a label, studio, magazine, or something too hybrid to fit neatly into a standard application form, Brockhampton’s story offers six useful provocations.

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What Brockhampton Can Teach About Building Creative Work

How Creative Collectives Find Collaborators Before They Have a Brand

As known as: Use the internet before you have something to promote. 

Most emerging labels arrive online fully dressed: name, logo, first campaign, and a solemn caption about a new chapter. By that stage, the internet has been reduced to a shop window. Brockhampton used it as a casting room.

The group’s online origins mattered because they allowed people with similar instincts but different abilities to find one another before geography, industry access, or professional status could get in the way. Kevin Abstract did not post a finished product and ask for admiration; he asked if anyone wanted to make a band. The question came first. 

A fashion student can work in the same order. The photographer who understands your clothes may be studying elsewhere. The person capable of building the right website may currently be using their coding skills to maintain a surprisingly specific archive of 1990s football shirts. A stylist might reveal themselves through the way they photograph friends, bedrooms, bus stops, or club queues, long before anyone gives them a proper commission.

Look for taste, not titles. A good collaborator is often recognisable by what they notice.

Why Creative Identity Comes from Difference, Not Consensus

As known as: Keep the part people advise you to cut 

Brockhampton called themselves a boy band at a time when the term still conjured up images of white shirts, synchronised dance moves, and carefully crafted personas. But they were also rappers, producers and filmmakers. Some were American, some weren’t. The label didn’t describe them neatly—and that’s exactly why it worked. 

By claiming the most manufactured category in pop, they exposed just how limited that image had become. A boy band did not have to be five polished singers assembled by adults in a boardroom. It could just as easily be a wild group of young men making abrasive rap songs in a shared house, arguing, dressing alike, and talking openly about their insecurities.

Design and fashion students are trained to clarify their ideas, and rightly so. Still, there’s a difference between sharpening a project and sanding away its fingerprints. The odd construction people call “difficult,” the local reference that seems too obscure for an international audience, the colour combination that disrupts an otherwise calm collection—any of these might be seen as mistakes. They could also be the only parts worth remembering.  

Creative Collaboration Works Best When Decisions Stay Close 

As known as: Keep the important work close to the people who care about it

Brockhampton’s records, videos, artwork, photography, websites, and much of their management were handled by group’s own members. HK Sileshi and Ashlan Grey helped shape the visuals; Roberto Ontenient developed the digital side; Jon Nunes dealt with the challenging task of organising a group whose membership sometimes seemed to require a seating chart. The people writing the songs were close to the people deciding how those songs would look when they reached the world. 

A student label does not need to bring every job in-house. Attempting to design the clothes, photograph them, write the press release, code the website, calculate VAT, and personally deliver each order isn’t a business model; it’s a recipe for breakdown. Some tasks, however, are worth keeping close. 

When the photographer has followed the collection from its first ugly sketch, the final images usually carry more than just styling. When the person building the site understands the purpose behind the clothes, navigation, typography, and movement can share the same mood. Even if the execution is rough around the edges, the result can still feel cohesive because the people involved know what truly matters.

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How Visual Identity Becomes Recognisable Through Repetition 

However: Beige is not a strategy 

The Saturation videos used blue faces, blown-out colours, old television proportions, cardboard props, masks, wigs, golf carts and intentionally awkward green-screen effects. Their homemade appearance wasn’t just about limited resources—those rough edges were part of the plan. The amateur feel was deliberate and consistent. 

Fashion has absorbed a version of minimalism so thoroughly that it sometimes shows up before the actual idea: the narrow sans serif, the pale campaign, the concrete room, the chrome chair placed just so, as if someone’s read Apartamento. What you still need, though, is a clear sense of character. 

Brockhampton did exactly that, returning again and again to their own distinctive visual language. The blue paint reappeared. The 4:3 frame came back. The suburbs, the costumes, and Robert Ontenient’s “Me llamo Roberto” introduction all returned until their world became instantly recognisable.

A new label needs its own codes. They might come from a recurring silhouette, a regular casting choice, a strange flash, a particular spelling, an object that keeps turning up where you least expect it. Recognition rarely comes from a single flawless campaign. It builds through repetition.

Why Authenticity Can’t Be Treated as a Marketing Campaign 

As known as: Don’t turn the hard part into a side campaign 

Questions of identity sat inside Brockhampton’s music, not beside it. Kevin Abstract wrote with rare directness about growing up in environments where self-expression did not come easily. Other members explored race, masculinity, alienation, and the need for acceptance. These themes sometimes clashed with hip-hop’s inherited codes. That tension gave the work its charge. 

Established fashion likes to celebrate identity, but only after it’s been “formatted” just right: with a clear statement, a campaign date, and an approved vocabulary. Real experience, though, is usually less cooperative. 

A project may begin with the failure of standard sizing, the gap between home and diaspora, the challenges of disability, or the way a local subculture gets copied by brands that would never speak to its creators. These aren’t automatically marketing themes. Sometimes they’re design problems, sometimes emotional realities; often both. Don’t manufacture struggle just to seem deep, or erase it just to make things comfortable.

The Best Creative Projects Ignore Categories at First

As known as: Let the category come later

Brockhampton moved fluidly between hip-hop, R&B, pop, indie rock, documentary, fashion, internet comedy, and performance. Much of the group’s appeal came partly from that movement. Fans could discover them through a song, a video, a member’s personality, a piece of merchandise, or the fantasy of having twelve talented friends who were always available to make something. Different doors, same messy house. 

A young label can operate with similar freedom. Clothes might lead to a film; research might become an installation; a launch could evolve into a club night; an archive might produce an object rather than another post. This variety does not automatically create confusion: confusion arises only when the outputs have nothing to say to one another.

The Limits—and Lasting Value—of Creative Collectives

Brockhampton eventually broke apart, and its story also shows how the romance of a collective can fall short: friendship does not ensure good management, proximity does not create accountability, and a house full of talent can still breed exhaustion, hierarchy, and hurt.

So the takeaway is not to find thirteen people online and move to Los Angeles right away—rent is high, and group chats are hard enough as it is. 

The real lesson is subtler: surround yourself with people who sharpen the work, protect the quirky details, keep the essential decisions close, repeat your strongest codes until they stick, and allow the awkward truths into the room. Then make enough noise that the world has to catch up.

Edoardo Passacantando
Editor, London