Dear Champion,
 
As a child of the ’90s growing up in London I always idolised some of the characters I’d see wearing your brand, particularly those prominent within the London sub-cultures of Jungle/Drum and Bass and graffiti — the latter a culture I went on to play a significant role in.

I remember seeing images of Jungle MC’s Stevie Hyper D and Shabba wearing Champion garments back in the day — a grey spell out hoodie having a particular imprint. I was transfixed on trying to get one but in the early 2000s they were very difficult to find in Britain.

I settled for a less iconic olive green and blue one which my mum bought me aged 15 while we were on holiday in Italy in 2001 after stumbling across a Champion flagship store — something which did not exist in London at the time.
 
I never stopped hunting for that grey Champion hoodie though and, with Ebay failing to provide, I even spent a weekend in 2010 searching the thrift stores of NYC for one.

I was unsuccessful, but I did secure a vintage grey T-shirt with an embroidered logo on which I wore with pride, including when being filmed for an interview about London graffiti culture for “Crack and Shine” — a video which can still be viewed on YouTube.

It’s fair to say that it was people like me who pushed Champions clothing back into popularity among the street-culture aficionados of Britain.
 
People like me wearing it in a way that referenced the brand’s sub-cultural heritage was the reason Champion were able to come back with a bang, open flagship stores in London, and be celebrated by the “Hypebeast” generation in the years that followed.

With all of this in mind you can imagine I was honoured to have been asked to collaborate with you on this upcoming release at your Soho flagship. I have a solid understanding of the brand’s cultural heritage and was greatly looking forward to lending my knowledge and creative direction in assisting the brand’s positioning moving forward.
 
Sadly, today, I’ve learned of your upcoming collaboration with Coca-Cola — a multibillion-dollar corporation that heavily invests in and supports the apartheid state of Israel which is currently engaged in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people in which an estimated 8,000 or more children alone have so far been slaughtered in just six weeks, with thousands more being orphaned or suffering life-changing injuries. Tragically the crimes against humanity inflicted by Israel go well beyond what I’ve just outlined.
 
I imagine this letter will almost certainly not lead to your upcoming collaboration with Coca-Cola being terminated — in which case this is my official notice of withdrawal from our own planned collaboration next week and furthermore the end of my support for the Champion brand from here on out.

As people we must learn to do better than this. Placing individual financial gain over human life and the wellbeing of our planet is a behavioural pattern that needs to end — if not then the planet as we know it will surely end with it.
 
For the sake of humanity, I can only hope that in some shape or form these words will have a positive impact on the direction Champion, and brands like Champion, choose to take moving forward.

After publishing this open letter in early December, Champion removed the announcement of their work with Coca-Cola from social media. However, I believe their deal with Coca-cola is still in place.

Following on from this I have recently learned that the parent company of Champion, Sarah Lee, is one of the biggest corporate investors in the state of Israel therefore I would have had to pull my project with Champion with or without their Coca-Cola collaboration going ahead.

Since then, we have launched the London Creatives Corporate Watchdog, a direct action, BDS movement, that is here to challenge the presence of unethical corporations within London’s creative industry and beyond  — see @lccw_alliance on Instagram for more information.