According to founder Clint Ogbenna, what sets Corteiz apart is the way in which it asserts and advertises itself, the certainty and restraint of its self-presentation. Photo: The New York Times)
A few years ago, in the middle of a family crisis, Clint Ogbenna was dreaming big.
His family had been evicted from their home, and he was sleeping on his sister’s couch, gestating his then-nascent brand, Corteiz.
When his parents found a new home in Harrow, a drab neighborhood in northwest London, he turned it into an impromptu business address, having early shipments of stock delivered from manufacturers straight to their doorstep.
One afternoon last July, he was recalling those humble beginnings in the 25,000sqft (2,323sqm) warehouse-office hybrid Corteiz moved into in 2024, not far from there.
“I’d say a bad drop is, like, five to 6,000 orders on a drop day,” Ogbenna said, unimpressed. “And then a good drop is anything upward of 10 to 12 to 13,000 orders.”
He looked out over the merchandise – approximately 300 different items at any given time, stacked 30 feet in the air.
“Now, in my head, this looks small.”
In very short order, thanks to steady creative evolution, keenly intuitive marketing and a heavy dash of cult of personality, Corteiz (pronounced cor-TAYZ, or perhaps cor-TEEZ – “Say it how you feel,” Ogbenna said) has evolved from a bedroom concern to a leading and still-growing global streetwear player, with annual revenue in the mid-eight figures.
In a cluttered ecosystem erupting with new brands almost daily, Corteiz stands out for its rapid adoption, its ruggedness and sense of play, and its stubborn insistence on restoring the long-eroded thrill of the hunt.
And also its reach, given that it’s located in Britain, not typically a hotbed of streetwear innovation.
“The same way Supreme or Awake or Aime Leon Dore, all these kind of brands, they export a kind of New York energy to the world,” Ogbenna, 28, said. “I’m exporting a London energy to the world.”
Footwear made by Corteiz, in collaboration with Nike, in New York on Dec. 14, 2024. Over the last decade, streetwear grew saturated and stagnant. Corteiz founder Clint Ogbenna saw an opportunity. (Graham Dickie/The New York Times)Read more: Is this the end of streetwear? Malaysia’s fashion scene reflects a global shift
Corteiz – Corteiz Rules The World is the brand’s full name – sold its first garments in 2018, and from the beginning Ogbenna emphasised scarcity. The brand’s Instagram page was private.
At an early Corteiz pop-up in a graffiti-covered basement, Ogbenna allowed no photos or video.
Even now, the web shop remains open for only a handful of days at a time.
“The thing about Corteiz is that it happens offline,” Ogbenna said in one of a series of interviews over the course of a year. “It’s in real life. You’re gonna see the madness.”
Last year, that meant a four-city American tour, collaborating with brands in New York, Washington, Atlanta and Los Angeles on collections available only on the day of each event.
A student of local American micro-cultures, he set out to speak the language of each location.
His New York event was in a decommissioned subway station under the Bowery (four months before Chanel used it), and his Atlanta pop-up was at the strip club Magic City.
“That’s a landmark,” he said. “If that was in London, that would be a listed building.”
Born to Nigerian parents who relocated to London in the 1980s, Ogbenna is the youngest of three and the only son. Most of his childhood was spent in the unglamorous precincts of west and northwest London, far from any centers of creative innovation.
Growing up, Ogbenna wasn’t particularly interested in fashion.
“I didn’t know what Supreme was in 2014,” he said.
Operating as a pure creature of the internet, he built Corteiz with no fashion training, bolstered with a natural charisma and inspired by the independent hustle of Black-owned American rap labels like No Limit and Roc-A-Fella.
“There was just a sense of, like, We own this, this is ours and we’re doing it our way,” he said.
Bahr Brown, a longtime music and streetwear scene mover who serves as an informal OG to Ogbenna, said that Ogbenna “was able to establish what I would describe as almost the most authentic New York presence for a streetwear brand, even though it is not a New York brand.”
For the release of Corteiz’s Nike Air Trainer Huarache collaboration in December 2024, Ogbenna chose Tom Dick & Harry in East Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighbourhood staple for decades but perhaps best known for its cameo in Jay-Z’s 1998 video for Streets Is Watching.
Corteiz garments slot neatly into the dominant silhouettes of the day: a touch of European sportiness, a touch of New York toughness.
The pieces are straightforward streetwear – sweatsuits, track jackets, T-shirts, denim and cargo pants. Many feature the brand’s logo, a silhouette of Alcatraz, which Ogbenna described as a symbol of social constraint.
What sets Corteiz apart is the way in which it asserts and advertises itself, the certainty and restraint of its self-presentation.
“My clothes are made in the same factories as your favourite brands, but that’s not going to be my unique selling point,” Ogbenna said.
Corteiz has become known for orchestrating frenzies: a T-shirt giveaway in London’s Soho, where kids chased after Ogbenna for the final one; a limited offer of cargo pants for 99 pence (“That was just diabolical,” he said).
In 2022, he had hundreds of young people converging on a parking lot in far west London to trade in their North Face, Moncler and Supreme winter coats for new ones from Corteiz.
All those events – garment-specific and time-specific, but highly shareable online – helped burnish the brand’s lore.
“We don’t pay for attention,” Ogbenna said, shrugging.
It finds Corteiz nonetheless.
Read more: Have sneakers been left out in the rain? What happens when fashion’s hype slows
In 2020, Ogbenna received a cease-and-desist order from Nike for trademark infringement.
“I just kind of ignored it,” he said. “I didn’t want to understand the legal gravity.”
Afterward, he grew determined.
“I was, like, I need to entrench my brand in the culture as much as possible so that if Nike were to get rid of me, it would look like bad PR,” he said.
But not long after, an emissary from Nike, unaware of the legal wrinkle, reached out about working together. They’ve since released seven coveted sneakers together.
The shoes have even made their way to British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, a longtime Corteiz supporter, who has been photographed several times in the brand.
Though Corteiz doesn’t seed its clothing to celebrities who aren’t friends of Ogbenna’s or who didn’t buy the clothes on their own first, the brand has become a quasi-official uniform for British rappers like Central Cee and soccer stars like Eduardo Camavinga, Vinícius Junior and Lamine Yamal.
As Corteiz becomes more solidified, Ogbenna has begun to use it as a platform to showcase “facets of inner-city London, important culture from the place we’re from,” he said.
Recent collections have paid homage to rappers Giggs and Crazy Titch, as well as to a particular minor-league baseball cap that became a staple of Britain’s grime scene in the 2000s.
Though its reach is widening, Corteiz has remained an intimate affair. Ogbenna runs the brand with a full-time office staff of about 10 people (not counting warehouse and distribution employees).
Corteiz doesn’t wholesale – for now, every worldwide order ships from his warehouse (about half of his orders are from Britain, the US accounts for around 15%).
Ogbenna is still uncertain when Corteiz will establish its own retail footprint.
“Our energy comes from when we come to a city,” he said. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
