The Brand

Solomon Selassie

Solomon Selassie is a sustainable, one-of-a-kind fashion house rooted in ancestral reverence, spiritual intention, and the radical luxury of the handmade. Every piece is wearable art — structured, shapely, and alive with meaning — equally at home draped across a body, hung on a wall, or resting on a table as a sculptural object.

Look closely at any piece and you will find it — a line of red thread, stitched into the seam or traced along an edge. This is the Bloodline. The blood of our divine ancestors, running through every garment. It does not ask to be noticed. It simply is.

The Bloodline runs deeper than thread. Solomon Selassie's grandfather was a master tailor in Washington D.C. — a man whose hands dressed U.S. senators, presidents, and the officials who shaped a nation. He passed before Solomon was born, but his presence has never been absent. That red thread is his blood too. It is an acknowledgment that this craft did not begin here — that these hands are an extension of hands that came before, and that every garment made is a quiet act of communion with a lineage that never left.

The fabrics themselves carry history before a single cut is made. Mudcloth, handwoven textiles, and hand-painted indigenous cloth — sourced with care and handled with the reverence they deserve — are brought into conversation with luxury fabrics, fine leather, and rare vintage materials. The result is something that has never existed before and never will again. Because the fabric is one of a kind, the piece is one of a kind. Full stop.

Intentional rawness lives alongside bespoke precision here. Frayed edges are not accidents — they are a philosophy. They speak to the untamed, unfinished nature of existence: the beauty in what resists being fully contained. Where other luxury houses smooth everything over, Solomon Selassie lets certain things breathe.

The brand was built on sustainability not as a marketing posture, but as a practice. Fabric scraps — sourced from our own projects, from other fashion houses, and from upholstery companies — become new pieces. Remnants too small or irregular to become garments become textile art: fabric compositions that live on walls and shelves. Nothing is wasted. Everything is transformed. This is the Bloodline in material form: something passes through, and what remains is made sacred.

Most pieces are made reversible — two faces, two lives, one object. Afro-futurist in vision, indigenous in foundation, luxurious in execution. Solomon Selassie does not ask to exist within fashion. It exists beyond it.

The Artist

Emperor King Bishop

Emperor King Bishop | Solomon Selassie is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans fashion, music, visual art, photography, textile art, and curation — not as separate disciplines, but as one continuous, living expression. From the beginning, his first languages were many: music, image, photography, and the tactile intelligence of working with his hands — fixing cars, working with electronics and mechanics, understanding how things are built and how they come apart. That knowledge lives in everything he makes.

His relationship with music began in grade school with the saxophone, deepened through time spent at a family-owned recording studio and at church — learning production, sound engineering, and the spiritual dimension of sound from the inside. He taught himself additional instruments, studied formally through university at Morgan State, and built a practice rooted in both rigorous tradition and fearless experimentation.

The goal was never mastery for its own sake. It was to study deeply enough to move freely — to stand inside structure and improvise without losing either.

Improvisation is not a technique Solomon reserves for music. It is the animating force across every art form he works in. In fashion, in visual art, in photography, in curation — he brings the same improvisational spirit: present, responsive, unrepeatable. Because improvisation, to him, mirrors life itself. Every morning is a new measure. Every day an unrepeatable chance. The experimental arts do not imitate life from a distance — they reflect it directly, and his work lives in that reflection.

This practice is grounded in the spirit of Sankofa — reaching back to draw forward, honoring ancestral wisdom while moving toward what has never yet existed. Solomon believes in deep study across traditions so that when the moment calls for freedom, the freedom is earned and true. His work integrates the experimental and the improvisational with the language of structured pedagogy and sacred tradition — not as a compromise, but as a higher synthesis.

He never knew his grandfather. He passed before Solomon was born. But growing up, he heard the stories — of a man whose tailoring was so respected, so precise, so trusted, that senators, presidents, and Washington D.C.'s most powerful officials came to him to be dressed. Solomon did not set out to become a tailor. He came to fashion through music, through art, through the simple refusal to wait for someone else to make the things he needed to see in the world. And then one day he looked up and realized: the needle was already in his hands. The Bloodline had been there all along — not as a plan, but as a pull. A spirit reaching forward through time, finding its way back into the work.

He never met his grandfather. But every time he sits down to construct a garment, he feels him. That is what the Bloodline means. That is what the red thread carries.

He also curates shows and events with this same intention, creating spaces for genuine communion — with each other, with the Most High, with the divine ancestors whose presence he honors in every stitch. The Bloodline that runs through each garment is the same soul-line he activates in every room he builds: ancient, living, and unbroken.

Solomon Selassie began making clothes for the same reason he began making music and making images — because the things he needed to see, wear, and hear did not yet exist. So he made them. Art is not something he does. It is the life he lives, and everything he creates is an invitation to meet him there.