On June 13, 2020, the first day of Phase One of New York City’s reopening from the pandemic, a three-story building at 74 Orchard Street opened its doors for the first time. The timing was accidental. LAAMS founders Scott Selvin, Joe Ro, and Stevie Skytel had signed the lease on March 2. Twelve days later, the world shut down.
What could have been a disaster became a communal hub for the city’s underground creatives. While beloved streetwear institutions across the city dissolved, LAAMS emerged as exactly what New York needed, a space where people could gather, create, and connect during one of the most isolating periods in history.
“It was literally the rise of the Phoenix,” Skytel says. “All these places that we knew and loved, they dissolved and died. Everybody had so much energy because we were mandated to stay in the house. When we made the announcement that we have a store, people were coming up, masking up, and they were buying shit.”
We spoke to the trio behind LAAMS to discuss the origins of the space, their first Nike collaboration, and what it means to build a creative community in New York City.
To understand LAAMS, you have to understand what Selvin, Ro, and Skytel were chasing, and what they felt the city had lost.
In the 2000s, spots like Alife, Supreme, and Dave’s Quality Meat weren’t just stores. They were cultural institutions where creatives congregated, friendships formed, and entire movements germinated. Alife Sessions were almost a rite of passage for performers; DQM’s deli-themed interior and “Bacon” Air Max 90 were conceptual art.
“It felt like our thing,” Selvin recalls. “Over the years, as it got more commodified and corporate, prices went up, places became less welcoming, and the spaces became less of a hub for creatives. There was a lot more gatekeeping.”
That frustration eventually crystallized into action. The three founders, Selvin with his bespoke backpack brand SR, Ro with his photography and custom bookbags, Skytel with his entertainment management background, had been friends since 2010. Each had accumulated a different skillset, network, and perspective. When they finally merged those worlds under one roof, the overlap became LAAMS.
Walking into LAAMS is a sensory experience that defies categorization. The ground floor features rotating art shows and archival streetwear. KAWS Bearbicks sit alongside 3D-printed toys from emerging artists. Vintage magazines and coffee table books line the shelves, serving as what Selvin calls “a major source of inspiration that’s offline and algorithm free.”
The second floor houses Rotten Island Records, showcasing a plethora of genres alongside emerging designers and independent brands. Comic books, VHSs, DVDs, and vintage magazines create what feels like a time capsule of pre-internet culture.
The third floor, the Femme Boutique, represents LAAMS’ commitment to inclusivity, offering Y2K vintage, designer pieces, and natural cosmetics in a space curated by women from the community.
But the physical inventory is almost beside the point.
“Aside from all the cool shit that’s on the wall, it’s more about the people,” Skytel explains. “On a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you might see a pro skater, a painter, an athlete, or a kid that’s just coming there in his free time.”
The stories of discovery are now legend among the LAAMS family, or “LAAMily,” as they call it. There’s Omi, who gifted the team hats when the store first opened and evolved from selling $125 fitted caps to becoming a full-time artist. There’s Kyzer, a Washington Heights skater and painter who walked in one day and essentially never left. There’s Dante, hired for a single day to do complimentary monograms. His embroidery machine has been running in the shop for four years now. There’s Spirit, who came up from Arizona for a week to do videography two years ago and is still in New York.
In 2025, five years of community building culminated in a Nike collaboration.
The ”Please Post Bills” Air Force 1 Low debuted at ComplexCon in Las Vegas before releasing in December. Limited to just 2,000 pairs, the design is immediately wearable and deeply layered with meaning.
The deep green woodgrain leather upper pays homage to the construction walls that line New York’s streetscape. Those temporary plywood barriers marked “Post No Bills” inevitably become canvases for posters, tags, and creative expression. LAAMS flipped the message into an invitation.
“Those are the city’s free canvases,” Selvin explains. “The city’s algorithm-free message board. Anyone can get up on those. Anybody can display their work, but they always represent something being built behind them. We felt like that was a strong parallel to what LAAMS is.”
The details tell the story of a community:
- The baby blue drop shadow beneath the off-white Swoosh mirrors the LAAMS logo.
- The tongue features a woven Lower East Side map, one of LAAMS’s recurring design motifs.
- The insoles display a collage of five years of LAAMS flyers, all designed by Ro.
- A hidden tribute to artist Kyzer, the “Kyzer Kiss,” appears on the tongue to honor one of the first artists who came up through the shop.
- The tissue paper inside the box maps out legendary NYC sneaker spots: Alife, DQM, Recon, and the original Supreme on Lafayette.
For the commercial, they secured Bobbito Garcia, the godfather of sneaker journalism, voice of NBA Street, and a walking encyclopedia of Air Force 1 history, to provide narration.
“Getting Bobbito to do it, nothing’s unachievable at this point,” Skytel marvels. “Getting a Nike, getting a billboard, getting Bobbito to narrate it. What else could we push our brains to?”
When the LAAMS commercial appeared on the massive digital billboard at 34th Street and Madison Square Garden, it represented something larger than marketing. It was validation for the founders, the LAAMily, and for anyone who believed that community-driven retail could still matter.
The surrounding apparel collection extended the shoe’s visual language: woodgrain-printed hoodies, beanies, work jackets, blankets, and bandanas. Everything connected back to the story of New York’s green walls and the permission to post freely.
In an era of drops, bots, and influencer marketing, LAAMS operates on different terms. Open Calls invite any creative, regardless of follower count, to show their work. The shop’s screen-printing and embroidery capabilities mean ideas can become products the same day they’re conceived. There’s no marketing budget or minimum order quantities.”Some of my favorite moments at the shop are after hours, walking through and seeing everyone utilizing their skills to help each other,” Selvin shares. “One of us might be great at one thing but lacking in another area. Seeing people just working together and something come out of that, it’s always awesome to see.”
Five years in,, the founders are thinking about expansion.
The fear isn’t growth itself. It’s losing the essence that made LAAMS matter in the first place. They’ve watched streetwear become corporatized before. They have no intention of repeating that history.
“It’s sick to see what we’ve done on Orchard,” Selvin says. “I’d love to see what would happen if we did this in Tokyo, in London, in Paris. We know there’s sick talent that’s unfound in those cities. We’d love to try to find it, work with them, and inspire more collaboration.”
The LAAMS story ultimately isn’t about product. It’s about proving that physical spaces still matter.
The five-year anniversary collection handed creative control to five LAAMily artists.. It was both a celebration and a mission statement. This was never about three founders building a brand. It was about creating infrastructure for others.
Outside on Orchard Street, the block has transformed. Extra Butter, Awake, Fugazi, Bode, Sandy Liang, and Kartik Research all share the same stretch of sidewalk. The Lower East Side has become, once again, a destination for people who care about culture more than clout.
In the middle of it all sits LAAMS, still welcoming strangers, still printing T-shirts on the same day, and still proving that the best things in streetwear were never really about the clothes.
LAAMS is located at 74 Orchard Street, New York, NY. Open Tuesday through Sunday. Complex livestream is heading to LAAMS this Tuesday, March 10.
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