From Antwerp to Hartford: Arte’s Quiet Rise in America

Fashion

Jan 13

OUR TAKE ON WHY ARTE IS A BRAND TO WATCH IN 2025.

We first introduced Arte Antwerp to our shop with their AW23 collection. At the start, it gained moderate traction as our core audience was still getting familiar with the brand. Over time, we started receiving more inquiries and saw steady growth in online sales from cities with cultural density across the country. For many folks in our community, The CAF has been their first introduction to Arte. While the brand is well-known overseas, here in the States, spotting someone rocking Arte still feels like a rare gem—largely because it’s not as trendy or widely accessible for the average fashion enthusiast in our proximity.

That said, it’s becoming clear Arte is picking up steam, especially among those with an eye for underground culture. Last year, we noticed their AW24 campaign featuring Earl Sweatshirt and his longtime DJ and collaborator Black Noi$e. Rising DJ and cultural figure Zack Fox also wears Arte regularly, leading to appearances in Complex interviews, Doechii’s music videos, and appear to be affiliated with his DJ collective, Sportmode. Not to mention them being include in our first ever CAF Pop-Up alongside our friends Tell The Homies for New York Fashion Week last February. And those are just the high-profile moments we’ve noticed. Arte is quietly making waves in the U.S., though catching someone in an Arte piece here is still a novelty—whereas, in other parts of the world, it’s practically a given.

For anyone just discovering them, Arte Antwerp isn’t exactly a newcomer. The brand has been around since 2009, building an extensive team dedicated to refining the sophisticated standard set by founder Bertony Da Silva. They’ve got flagship stores in Antwerp and Brussels, and just last fall, they launched a new shop in Paris. And if you're a soccer fan, you'd know collaborating on a campaign with French legend Nicolas Anelka to market the store opening was a move as thoughtful as it was poetic.

We’ve been fans of Arte long before The CAF existed or we even dreamed of opening a retail space in Hartford. Choosing to stock Arte felt like a bold move because they remain so underrated in the far-western fashion market, but we had a hunch it was only a matter of time before their presence made its way across the Atlantic.

If you’re not sold yet, here are a few more reasons to pay attention. The quality of Arte’s pieces is exceptional—many are produced at high-touch facilities in Portugal. Their knitwear, in particular, rivals some of the "household" brands we stock but comes at a much more approachable price point. They synonymously overlap with other emerging East Coast streetwear brands with subtle nods to "golden-era" hip-hop but with much more cut and sew offerings compared to their contemporaries. So the pairing with adjacent artist dominating the underground rap scene at the moment feels a more culturally significant than an ironic coincidence. They contextualize storytelling through diasporic nuisances that are spearheaded by Bertony and offers a relatable glimpse of the Black experience in a European city. He briefly discusses this in an interview with ELLE Belgique editor-in-chief Marie Guérin here.

Curation has always been at the heart of what we do, and we’re proud to align Arte with shop staples like Bloomfield.Works, A Construct, The New Originals, and others. It’s been an honor to be Arte’s first American stockist, and we’re excited to act as a bridge for bringing thoughtful products and ideas to the Connecticut River Valley. If you haven’t yet, check out the remaining Arte pieces available in our online shop—and keep an eye out for more brands we think are worth your attention.