Introduce yourself
What’s good my people! My name is Dami Akande and I am a creative. I was born in Nigeria and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I moved to Chicago in 2014 and so far it’s been a life-changing experience. I consider myself blessed!
You play a lot of roles, let’s talk about them. You are the marketing director of WORLDOFi. Talk to us about what WORLDOFi is
WORLDOFi is a platform for independent artists of all genres to develop their craft and bring their talents into a creative space where we encourage collaboration as well as providing resources for them to create. WORLDOFi hosts events that highlight our artists’ work in unique ways that emphasize the importance of creating an experience for the audience as well as the artists involved. We also use our platform to promote their work using our website and social media outlets. We currently have a plethora of artists we work with and are looking to add more at the turn of the new year. It’s been awesome to see the growth in not only the quality of content that our artists create but also the confidence they have in themselves and their work. I’m excited to see what happens in the next few months, I can feel a big breakthrough coming for the whole team.
You recently started a new brand called Damination. Talk about this endeavor you’re on right now.
In all honesty, I created Damination™ Brand almost by accident. There was no plan, just an organic inception. Over this past summer, I surrounded myself with a lot of creativity from my friends and artists I look up to in the Chicago art community. As I observed the moves they made and the work they produced I felt inspired and started creating myself. I’ve always been a creative person; I was introduced to music at age 5 when I started piano lessons which I took for 9 years. I also sang in the church choir until I graduated high school. I felt like I reached a roadblock in creativity when I started college, but the block began to disappear after the founding of WORLDOFi in October 2016 and now that I’ve started my own brand on which I have so many ideas for, the sky is the limit. Big things coming from Damination™ in 2018.
Your latest collection is Bliss. What inspired this collection?
Bliss is my first complete collection of clothing. It was inspired by a lot of different things, but the main inspiration was an experience I had with someone I love. Bliss was the way we described our relationship; supreme happiness and utter joy. The relationship ended but since then we’ve reached an understanding of what we mean to each other and I decided to pay homage to that relationship through this collection. I’d love for everyone to experience bliss at some point in their life if they haven’t already. Hopefully, I can experience it again at some point.
There are a lot of brands out right now. How do you look to set yourself apart from them?
My brand is sort of my own personal expression of my experiences in life as well as the messages I want to send to the world. I want my brand to exude love and positivity so that when people see it or hear about it they think happy thoughts. There is a lot of negativity in this country and the world right now and life is too short to focus on these bad things happening. As a person, my energy is quite contagious so I want my brand to have the same effect. I’m also going to be a lot more than just a clothing brand. I myself am my own brand. I have some things planned that will allow me to push my personal brand without even having to make clothes. I’m learning to DJ now which is really fun and a way to create good vibes and energy amongst a crowd or audience. I’ve also recently been given the opportunity to create content for Vans and help push “Off The Wall” activity through their platform and mine as well. I’m looking forward to using these opportunities and resources to take my personal brand to where I need it to be. World “damination” is the goal and I’m not stopping until I get there.
Chicago Creatives 