This Bay Area Filipino Streetwear Is a Favorite Among Rappers and Rebels

“O

ur first drop had maybe ten orders,” 23-year-old Jaden Yo-Eco tells me in front of Oakland Filipino restaurant Lucky Three Seven. “Now it’s thousands, but it’s still only two of us packing in our garage.”

Yo-Eco, along with his best friend Humbert Lee — who’s not here because he’s training for an MMA match — is the owner of the streetwear brand Enter Nostalgia. Their clothing line, which modernizes classic Filipino cultural wear, has found viral online success and has been worn by a long list of rappers that includes YG, Blxst, Toosii, Rucci, Shordie Shordie, 1TakeJay and others.

Tonight, the owners of Lucky Three Seven have allowed Yo-Eco to shoot a lookbook in the restaurant. It’s been overrun by a fleet of photographers and videographers, and in the kitchen, a group of models — which include Stockton Filipino rapper MBNel — are laughing and eating chicken wings and lumpia as they wait for the shoot to begin.

Underneath the iridescent glow of the restaurant’s red-and-yellow electric sign, Yo-Eco leans against the hood of his car in baggy cargos, Timberland boots and a faded purplish Enter Nostalgia crewneck. The car, which Yo-Eco bought after one of the brand’s first successful drops, is a vintage 1999 Mercedes SL500.

“I’ve always been into things from before my time,” he says. “That’s why I chose [Lucky Three Seven]. The neon signs remind me of the city back in the ’40s when they had the bright signs everywhere.”

The past, Yo-Eco says, is one of his biggest design inspirations — hence, the name Nostalgia. Their latest collection draws upon the traditional Filipino garment barong tagalog, a type of sheer, long-sleeve button-up shirt typically worn at Filipino weddings and celebrations.

“Growing up, I had a barong I’d wear on special occasions like my sister’s coming of age party — in Filipino culture, it’s called a debut,” says Yo-Eco. “So I thought, what if we did a short-sleeved version?”

Yo-Eco and Lee originally released a cream colorway in March and shot the lookbook for it at Barong & Formal, a Filipino bridal shop in Oakland. The photoshoot garnered online attention, helping Barong & Formal gain their first couple thousand followers on social media and inspiring them to launch an online store, Yo-Eco says.

“We’ve had instances where something blew up, but those didn’t mean as much,” Yo-Eco says. “With these shirts, we started telling stories and giving exposure to [Filipino-owned] businesses, like the barong shop. So it’s different.”

After the initial success, Yo-Eco released new colorways the models are wearing tonight: olive, grey and blue. The shirts, he notes, are not a totally faithful rendition of the traditional barong. They sport a paisley pattern drawn from hip-hop culture, a culture whose innate anti-authority spirit offers Yo-Eco — who dropped out of college to pursue Enter Nostalgia — a different, but valuable, medium through which to articulate his experience as a Filipino American.

“I’m that delinquent son that got tatted, got into the art and clothing scene,” says Yo-Eco. “Many Filipinos have talented creative arts backgrounds, but our immigrant parents just want us to find stability, to be a traditional nurse or a doctor or something. It means a lot to be able to represent this different side.”

After eating some of the best tocino I’ve ever had, Yo-Eco and I say goodbye. We plan to meet again at Lee’s house where the two pack their orders in Lee’s parents’ garage.

As I drive away, I play MBNel’s most popular song, “In My City,” on my car’s aux. “I never went to college like my mama, papa wanted,” MBNel croons.

A

week later, Yo-Eco, Lee and I are standing in the Lee family garage on a rainy Friday night. The small space is cluttered with countless brown cardboard boxes filled with the brand’s shirts.

Lee, who is wearing one of the brand’s crochet cardigans (“It’s some Asian grandma shit,” he says with a laugh), is in a phenomenal mood. He and Yo-Eco haven’t seen each other in some time due to his rigorous MMA training schedule, and the two friends are elated.

They originally met in high school. Yo-Eco recalls how shortly after he started the brand in 2017 — “At the time, just words screen-printed on a T-shirt,” both concur — Lee would make the hour-and-a-half drive from Daly City to San Jose and back to pick up the T-shirts that Yo-Eco would then sell to his high school classmates out of the trunk of his car.

“It was mutual brotherly love,” says Lee. “It didn’t have to be T-shirts — it could’ve been anything. He could’ve opened a donut business, I would’ve gone to get dough or oil for him.”

In 2019, once the two graduated high school, Yo-Eco asked Lee — who knew how to build websites — to come on board as a co-owner of the brand and launch an online store. The two differ in many ways: Yo-Eco is reserved; Lee is extroverted. Yo-Eco is creative; Lee is more business-minded. They say that’s precisely what makes their partnership so fruitful.

“I’ll do the emails, file with the state, the financial stuff. But he’ll do the creative work, like the photoshoot at Lucky Three Seven or the designing, and I can train full time,” says Lee. “That’s why it works so well.”

One commonality the two do share, though: the small butterfly tattoo that they both have on their middle finger. The two decided to get the matching tattoos on one of their many trips to LA when they’d drive down every two weeks with the intent of trying to get their clothes into the hands of rappers.

“The whole thing about butterflies starting as cocoons,” says Yo-Eco, referencing the tattoo. “We always had dreams that other people thought we were crazy for having. But we never doubted. We always knew we just had to stick to the script.”

This shared blind faith — or “delusion” in the words of Yo-Eco and Lee — is what they both ultimately attribute their success to.

“I feel like even if we didn’t do Enter Nostalgia, we would’ve at the end been at the same place with anything else because of our mindset,” says Lee.

“It’s the same with anything in life,” agrees Yo-Eco. “To get somewhere, you have to be delusional about it.”

Enter Nostalgia’s next collection comes out in 2024, and will be announced on Instagram.