The following was written directly into the motherfking CMS.

For the past seven years, Aimé Leon Dore founder Teddy Santis has ridden hard for an NYC-centric Venn Diagram of ‘90s hip-hop and Ralph Lauren nostalgia. And throughout that time his superpopular “grown streetwear” brand has stayed remarkably consistent in message, designs, and branding. To the point where I see it now and automatically hear DJ Premier and Nas.

What the brand did with its recent lookbook, however, is switch things up a little bit –– while also releasing promo imagery starring, uh, DJ Premier and Nas –– by subbing clothing models for around 30 real New Yorkers, and making a case for falling in love with New York in the present day.

The carefully chosen cast approximates the local menswear zeitgeist, pulling in anthropologists like New York Nico and Mr. Mort, GORP legends like Kyle Kivijarvi, and the father of men’s street style Josh Peskowitz. All bases are covered from industry to cool kids to media.

Particularly nice to see is the inclusion of other brands’ designers, like Aaron Levine (Abercrombie) and Antonio Ciongoli (18 East), which makes the whole thing feel like noncompetitive kinship.

Those names may mean nothing to you, but they are all menswear cognoscenti, non-influencer influencers. And of course everyone involved shared their campaign image to their own social channels on drop day, completing the promo loop. It was pretty impressive to watch it roll out, hitting exactly like it was supposed to.

Thematically, with this lookbook ALD is gesturing to real-time legendary status, saying New York should be equally proud of itself because of these lesser-known icons, and not just lionized figures of the past. And the city isn't broken, either. It doesn’t need to “rebuild” or trade for new players. They’re all right here.

To me, the lookbook is also part of a larger New-York-falling-in-love-with-itself-again picture that's coming into focus, after 20 years of NYC losing rap status to Atlanta, and losing creative people to L.A. Eddie Huang's movie Boogie will probably be the biggest example of this new type of love letter to New York. But the NY Mag Zizmorecore and GQ's Quaranzine piece get at a similar thing, too. New York is looking locally to find cool, and not even bothering to see itself in "the grand scheme." And there's a lot of strength in that –– both in the celebration and in the letting go.