Brand Spotlight: Covered By God
FLOURYSH spent 5 minutes getting to know the vision behind the fast growing fashion brand Covered by God and why the founder, Ladun Thompson, wanted to use fashion as a way to bring up faith without saying a word and how a hand delivery to Diddy helped to grow the brand worldwide.
Enter the #FLO
Where did the inspiration come from to merge fashion and faith together?
In this day and age it's so it's such a weird space to be in when you're talking about faith. It's one of those things that, for some reason, it can create levels of unease when you're in a public setting, talking to people that you don't know about faith. So in that space I said, I would love to have fashion that speaks for you and when you walk into a room, people already know what time it is. And it also sometimes ends up being a conversation piece so it allows people to have an opportunity to have conversations about God. Because you just never know. You walk into certain places and some people are just like, yeah, it feels good to see somebody who believes in something.
Were you prepared for the growth? Did you expect the growth of this company to happen so fast? We’re seeing your hoodies everywhere!
No, I didn't. I'm from Northern New Jersey. I really thought it was going to be a Newark thing. It was a Newark thing, then it was a New York thing, then as a tri-state thing. And I was like, Oh, Cali, oh Florida, oh, Atlanta Oh, Chicago. Okay, America. Then it was like, oh, Greece, Oh, somebody in Africa, somebody in London, somebody in Canada, I was like, all right, God. I hear you.
Can you put your finger on any one reason behind the growth?
I think people have always wanted, and they're always looking for a way to have some connection with God or have some way to represent God. Sometimes it just feels like a cloak in armor sometimes. People that will say yo, I'm about to go to this interview. I'm going to put this hoodie on. People say, I'm gonna get on this flight, but they want to feel covered by God. You know what I'm saying? And sometimes, between prayer and all that, those sweatshirts, it’s not a bad thing to have on you.
It's been fun watching celebrities pop up with your shirts and hoodies. Do you remember the first couple of celebrities who started wearing your clothes?
I think Tiffany Haddish…Diddy would be a pop-up too because I actually delivered one to him, but he didn't wear it for six months. I was over it already (laughing) I was looking at him....he was talking about love. I was looking at him like man, you're talking about love! Where is the hoodie? In 24 hours I delivered a hoodie to you. I flew to Cali. I found out at 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM. I was already on a flight to Cali and I got to his house and I'm like, thinking about the talk to Diddy about God, it was like, thanks. I was like, cool. Let me go back to the airport
When he did wear it, though. What was that like?
My phone was blowing up because it was like three days back to back I feel like he wore it. It was a live, he was like, yeah, you know what time it is (points to sweatshirt). Then there was that nice shot of him walking around with it on. It’s a beautiful thing to see. But one of the biggest things now more than ever is the realization that as much as I love celebrities wearing it, what really resonates a lot of times is it's the everyday person and what it means to them . I've seen people who were just walking down the street and were like, that's a sign right there. That is a sign.
My God vs. My Enemies, what does that mean to you?
There's three tiers to it.The first thing people think about is their physical enemies. People who have ill intentions. But then the second tier of it is enemies being things that can affect me internally. So it was like my God versus my Enemies, but my enemy is my inner me. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes it can be my anxiety, mental health issues but then the third tier can be sicknesses and some people are dealing with just the spiritual level of things. A lot of people don't talk about this but we don't fight against flesh and blood. So a lot of times it's the spirituality of it. So that's so when I originally came out, it was more on a physical level. I was thinking like, God got me no matter who's against me. So then after a while I started realizing how much it resonated with people about their inner me, the things that they deal with internally.
Why did you want to join FLOURYSH?
Because it's still for us, by us. There’s a lot of brands that we love. I ain't gonna say any names… They start with a G and you got the LV. We love them because they do represent high fashion, but we are the culture.They aim for us. They target us because they love how we wear there stuff. How come we don't love how we wear our stuff? It's collaboration over competition to be on the same brand on the same website with other other companies, other brands, where we can highlight each other. At this point I'm like, let me buy some from this person because they got pants and I ain't got pants. So if I wear their pants, wear my hoodie, we are together shining. That's how we do. We shine together.
And we're just so glad to have you. So thank you so much for your time. I'm happy to be here and I look forward to flourishing with you guys.
