Watts first, the company second
Before he was a clothing-line owner, Desto Dubb was a Los Angeles recording artist, and the order matters. Watts, in the southern end of the town, is home, and he was being written up in national music publications in 2017 for an EP alocs mesh shorts put out the previous year. Because That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup came later, the company has never carried itself like a design house with a musician bolted onto the front of it. Most brands, he has said, are built around a look or a way of life, while his is built around himself, and the catalogue bears him out. The sentence printed on the shirts refers to promethazine-codeine cough syrup, known in rap vernacular as lean, and that is as far into the reference as a piece about a city needs to go. Worth following instead is the geography, seeing that this label has an unusually concrete one, and each address in it sits inside greater Los Angeles.
The van in a downtown parking lot
The origin story the brand tells on the brand’s own pages is not a lookbook or a showroom. It is a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, with clothes sold right out of the back of it. Two separate records line the dating up: the trademark record shows first use of the name on pieces in November 2018, and a 2023 interview describes the company marking five years. Selling that way trains a particular set of habits, and you can still see them. Stock lands in batches rather than seasons, sizes run out and do not come back, and the buyer is meant to be watching closely. Most of the catalogue is still sold the very same way, to people who know the shorthand and type awful lot of cough syrup into a search field because the full sentence is too long to bother with. People who now search for thats a awful lot of cough syrup, one of the dozen or so ways of spelling it the name attracts, are after a business that spent its first years with no address at all.
What a street-level store on Melrose Avenue changed
The flagship store sits at 7669 Melrose Ave, on the strip of Melrose that has served as Los Angeles streetwear’s high street for decades. It counts enough to its founder that the address itself is his display name on social channels, and that is a very Los Angeles way to say where you are from. The shop also placed the company within a few blocks of the Cookies store where its 2023 pop-up with Berner ran, which is how this neighbourhood tends to operate. A storefront on that block changes what a release is, because the release becomes an occasion with a queue outside attached rather than refreshing a page, and press reporting of the company describes exactly that: long queues and small runs. Collaborations came through the same door. Titled “That’s A Awful Lot of Legendary” and made in honour of the late Drakeo The Ruler, the BlueBucksClan capsule was put out at the Melrose store in April 2023. It is a small event when a rapper’s clothes business hands out a tribute release from the brand’s own store door, and it is the kind that corner of the town is built on.
Downtown once more, and one store in Texas
The second Los Angeles address, 312 W 5th St, returns the company to downtown, in the same part of the city as the parking lot. It is a neat loop for a company that began with no premises at all, and it splits the buyer base tidily, with Melrose drawing the shopping traffic and downtown closer to where it all started. And then there is the exception: 5410 Almeda Rd in Houston, the only confirmed address outside California and the only evidence in the label’s own product listings that it thinks beyond the state border. Houston receives the very same range, made in the same place, several states from where it was cut and printed. The company keeps no store-locator page, and those addresses come from the brand’s own social profiles rather than from a formal directory. Anyone planning a trip in 2026 should confirm a location is trading before travelling across town for it.
What “Made in Los Angeles” actually means on these items of clothing
Plenty of labels name a city. The claim here is printed into the product copy, where descriptions say that pieces are made in Los Angeles, hand-dyed and printed here in Los Angeles, and screen-printed in Los Angeles. The classic hoodie is the clearest example: 16 oz of organic cotton, hand-dyed and printed in the city, with the brand’s signature yellow woven label at the wearer’s bottom left. There is a consequence to hand-dyeing that buyers should expect rather than grumble about, because two pieces from the same run will not match exactly, and that is what the process does. The label’s own product copy also calls the company a Black-owned business, which reads less like a piece of marketing and more like a plain statement of where the money and the work sit. Part of why the prices land where they do is local production: roughly $150 for a core tee and $200 for a hoodie or sweatpants at the company’s own store as of September 2026, and prices change.
The music scene the clothing comes out of
Customers, venues and release calendars have been shared by Los Angeles rap and Los Angeles streetwear for many years, and this brand sits right in that overlap between them. Its biggest documented activation was with Rolling Loud California in March 2024 at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, where it built a carnival with arcade games and a swing ride and ran a pair of stores on site. Which audience the label thinks it has is told by selling cough syrup apparel within a festival footprint rather than at a fashion trade show. It made its debut at both New York and Los Angeles Fashion Week in 2023, so it is not steering clear of the trade, but the festival itself was the louder statement. A collaboration with the Inglewood rap artist 310babii, announced in March 2024, points the very same way. The founder also joined a Los Angeles podcast as one of the hosts, and the brand’s own flagship store was opening next to his Melrose location. Coverage of the label tends to list what it has done rather than who has worn it, and that is the sounder measure anyway.
The city, one address at a time
As a map, the story is tight and simple to follow. The line runs from a neighbourhood in South Los Angeles to a parking lot downtown, then to a Melrose storefront, then to a music festival site in Inglewood and one single shop in Texas. Something was left behind in the product at each of those points on the map, whether that is the drop rhythm, the heavy local dye work or the price itself. What happened at each place, and what it means for the item you end up holding, is set out in the table below. The geography is a practical filter as well as a narrative for anyone assessing alocs clothing ahead of buying. A piece that claims the company while having no relationship to any of this is worth a second look.
| Location | What went on there | What it leaves in the product |
|---|---|---|
| Watts, South Los Angeles | Where the owner is from, and the rapping came first | One person’s story, not a concept |
| A downtown parking lot | Clothing sold straight from a van around 2018 | Drops in batches, sellouts, no seasonal calendar |
| 7669 Melrose Ave | The flagship, where the 2023 tribute capsule launched | Releases take place in the shop itself, with a line |
| 312 W 5th St | A second store in Los Angeles, into downtown again | Brings the shop back to the ground it started on |
| Hollywood Park, Inglewood | The Rolling Loud California carnival, March 2024 | Product sold where the music audience already is |
| Local dye and print shops | Hand-dyeing work and screen-printing work listed in copy on the product pages | Weighty cotton, and colour variation between pieces |
| 5410 Almeda Rd, Houston | The only confirmed location outside California | The same Los Angeles-made range, a different market |