Five Fits With: Ade Kassim
A conversation with the Shop and Brand Manager of C'H'C'M'
I’m sad to report that this is the final installment in my long-standing series. There are two others that I completed that will be published by Esquire in the near future, but after those go live, that’s it for Five Fits With. I have officially locked in that new series I mentioned in the last newsletter, so I will share more details once that’s out in the world. I will continue to run In Medias Res here as well.
I’ve known Ade Kassim, shop and brand manager of C’H’C’M’, for many years, enough to actually forget when or how we first met. His warmth, complete with a friendly smile and vivacious dap, always welcomes me when I enter the shop. I’ve often and publicly called it my favorite men’s store in New York City. At the heart of this series was an impulse to learn and to highlight equally. Usually, the folks who are on the ground floor talking to customers and in showrooms talking directly to brands and designers alike know far more about what’s actually happening than forecasters or influencers sitting at desks. Ade is a tapped the fuck in, and he’s as swaggy as they come.
Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, he later moved to Chicago as a teenager to finish high school. Kassim landed in New York in 2013 after finishing college, where he’s happily remained since. “Most of what I’ve been doing has been centered around retail and apparel,” he says. His first job in New York was interning for the now-defunct public relations and production agency BPMW. He moved on to work retail at a host of small boutiques—Hickoree’s and Joinery, to name a few—whose focus was often “specific, niche clothing,” as he puts it. “That was always a preference.” In the end though, Ade says music is his biggest interest, with clothing running a close second.
We shot most of these images next door in the private alley beside C’H’C’M’, because Ade and the team at the shop rarely get a break. There are always customers in and out of the shop to peruse the newest wares on offer. They typically break newer brands many seasons before anyone else even catches on. Ade and I sat on a bench in said alley to discuss how he first became interested in style, how he started working at C’H’C’M’ and what his role entails, what makes the shop special, which new brands have him impressed, his relationship to music, and much more.
Was there a seminal moment that you fell in love with clothing and style?
My dad was very much into clothing. He always had custom clothes made.
Nigeria has a serious sartorial inclination, right?
They do. If you have some level of financial resources, you have your tailor, and that was his thing. So, in a way, retrospectively, that was kind of a foundational interest. And then of course, being in Chicago around the time of streetwear, St. Alfred’s was a big shop. Things like Crooks and Castles and The Hundreds and SB Dunks and things like this were popular. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and found an interest in all that stuff. Especially being at the NikeTown, a lot of my friends were very much into sneaker collecting. Moving through college, I started reading blogs. Tumblr blogs were foundational for me too.
