Issue 47 ☞ The Weed Brand Becoming Street Fashion
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Cookies, the popular cannabis brand, was founded by the Californian rapper Berner. Berner has released over 40 albums, none of which have been notably successful. But for many years he also ran a sideline as a weed dealer. In 2022, Forbes valued Cookies at $150 million. Others have suggested that Berner, whose real name is Anthony Gilbert Milam, is worth much, much more. (According to one estimate, he is a centre-millionaire.) Cookies is a legitimate operation. The brand now has 64 outlets across the US, as well as stores in Canada, Israel, and Thailand. But the company’s fortune and reach is built on Milam’s pre-Cookies success as a dealer. According to the New York Times Magazine, which runs a large profile of Cookies this week, “the core of Milam’s appeal is the charismatic narrative of his rise from black-market hustler to mogul.” Milam’s appeal is similar to that of Teddy Santis, the head of New York fashion brand Aimé Leon Dore, in that both Santis and Milam are stylish men at the head of internationally recognised brands who, like plenty of others before them, have wormed their way into the culture by selling attractive and specific lifestyles. (Santis does not have a public background in dealing cannabis.) As well as weed, Cookies now sells expensive merch – hats, hoodies, accessories – and in this way it has become a kind of crossover brand. Customers who have never smoked weed – customers who have never even considered smoking weed – are buying Cookies t-shirts. The title of the Times’ Cookies profile is: “How Do You Make A Weed Empire? Sell It Like Streetwear.”
In Cookies’ case, the hoodies are important. “Clothing plays a key role in both the brand’s origin story and its current marketing strategy,” the Times writes. “When Cookies was strictly a black-market concern, hoodies and hat sales allowed it to gain a foothold above ground.” Or: while the weed wasn’t legit, the hoodies and hats were. For these reasons, Cookies is frequently compared to streetwear brands like Supreme and Palace, two labels that have links to countercultural movements (skateboarding, mostly, which has its own reputation as illicit) and which make a lot of money through what the Times calls “collaboration-based marketing”. Cookies might yet fail as a cannabis brand — it is the subject of several lawsuits, and is under investigation by regulators. But Cookies the streetwear brand might well be here to stay.
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