Q&A: The Vintage Hawks on their killer "Let's Go Hawks" collection + GIVEAWAY
The last time Streak Talk spoke with Tae-Vheon and Sae-Vheon Alcorn, they were juniors at KU, running track, going to school and holding up a major side-hustle with The Vintage Hawks, a vintage store running pop-ups and online drops. Now, they’ve graduated from KU—Sae-Vheon is working in Houston, and Tae-Vheon is in NYC—and are still pushing their brand forward with a new, sold-out collection of hoodies and tees.
I love what these two are doing, so I reached out to see what’s up—what was the inspiration for making their own clothes, and where are these Hawks headed next? Last week, we talked on all of that and more—you know, LET’S GO HAWKS.
Also, I’ll be giving away two hoodies and two hats to paid subscribers who enter the giveaway—please reply to this email if you’d like to participate and I’ll pick winners via random number generator.
Why did you want to start Let's Go Hawks?
SAE-VHEON ALCORN: Tae and I spent four years at Kansas. While we grew up, we knew about KU basketball, KU sports—we would always hear this saying, “Let's go Hawks,” and it never really resonated with me until probably last December, when the football team started picking up and things started rolling. The environment at KU, the energy… everyone was just so bought in on just being a Jayhawk. I felt it. And it was a great feeling.
I remember sitting at home and I was saying, “I have one more semester left in college.” How do I really summarize my college experience through this brand and really just emphasize that I love KU? And so the saying “Let's Go Hawks,” really just derived from how I felt, how my brother felt, throughout our years at Kansas. And I believe that many people also can relate to that because, I mean, all it takes is one game, one memory at KU to really just feel “Let's Go Hawks!”
TAE-VHEON ALCORN: I've always thought that KU was more special than what some people think it is. Some people just see it at that surface level and I saw beyond that. During COVID, not being on campus as a freshman took away a meaningful experience.
But in the midst of all that, we realized, you know, we have time on our hands, why not go ahead and make this new brand? We were entrepreneurial in high school and saw this as a unique opportunity. We spent many, many hours exploring this brand. And it really hit me that KU was special when we had our first pop up.
We always knew that everyone loves to support each other at KU. But when Sae and I promoted our first pop-up, the support we experienced from the KU community was special. And that really stuck out to me on a more personal level.
I love those answers. The passion for this project shines through—how did you translate that feeling into the collection?
SAE-VHEON ALCORN: To give a little more context on it, Tae and I are both first-generation college students. Our parents did not go to KU. We are fortunate enough to both go to KU and follow our older brother's footsteps who also went to KU. Seeing [Stephonn] go to Kansas and to experience everything KU has to offer, that was great. But it meant so much more to me knowing that Tae and I had the opportunity to go to college, to follow our dreams academically and also athletically. That was a great feeling.
Honestly, going to KU didn't feel surreal until COVID hit. COVID came out of nowhere and took away second semester. I would say that the pandemic and its impact made my passion and true love for Kansas even stronger.
I had so many friends that were seniors when I was a freshman. I never had the chance to say goodbye to them and I was really unfortunate. So I went back my sophomore year and I had a really great time. I had many more experiences with new people. I went out more, joined more clubs, I got more active on campus, got involved as much as I could. And The Vintage Hawks came from that experience as well.
TAE-VHEON ALCORN: Sae covered that really well. We’ve touched on this a lot throughout the years, but creating a unifying feeling amongst Jayhawks was something that we wanted the brand to be known for. With this collection, we locked into that unifying feeling through a phrase familiar to every Jayhawk.
I’d love to know a little more about the pieces in the collection—you’ve got this heavy hoodie and super clean hats. Why did you move forward with those two pieces, which I think can be hard to get right?
SAE-VHEON ALCORN: Through The Vintage Hawks, we sell vintage KU, general vintage, and vintage-inspired clothing. Everything we have relates to the Lawrence and Kansas City community. We wanted to make sure we kind of still have that vintage-inspired feel to the hoodies. So these hoodies have a more heavyweight feel to them.
They’re beasts.
It’s an homage to the true vintage textiles from the 90s and 80s and early 2000s—your stuff was heavier.
I never really thought about the hats until Tae mentioned the idea to me— his entire thought for the hats was to still have that same vintage-inspired theme like the hoodies did. We wanted to make something new, but also tie it back to the vintage inspired theme and have it be something that people would like.
The hats are so clean too. What was the idea behind those?
TAE-VHEON ALCORN: So my last four years at KU, I've always had hats on my wall.
They've always been vintage… but I've never worn a hat in my life [laughs]. But I always thought it was really cool to see my friends wear those vintage hats.
Even though I don’t wear them, I love vintage hats so much, specifically KU hats, why not try to integrate that into this drop too?
What’s next?
SAE-VHEON ALCORN: Our plan is vintage clothing alongside branded apparel items like the Let's Go Hawks hoodies. The next steps are definitely going to be to keep turning the wheels and do both alongside each other.
TAE-VHEON ALCORN: We’re looking forward to having students at KU help run the brand, specifically its day-to-day operations. You know, it's been great having a brand and doing this in college, but as we say goodbye to our college lives, this is a baton pass.
What are your KU grails? Do you have them or are you still searching?
I would say my favorite has been… it's a big graphic on a white sweatshirt. The graphic's black and white, and it’s an all-over print featuring Gale Sayers. But outside of that, I would say that finding the old KU Mickey Mouse stuff from the ‘80s and ‘90s has always been like a fun thing to do. I would love to find more if possible and get more. But they’re rare for a reason.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
those sweatshirts are sick...