Clothes with a message and a cause. Madison-based clothing brand Holy Godz merges spirituality and fresh fits to spread awareness and reach the youth with affordability and style. Kingston Robertson founded Holy Godz to following his own past troubles. Holy Godz is fueled by Robertson’s own faith and determination to find a better life, but his journey starts back in high school.
Robertson was raised in Chicago, where he started tinkering with clothing design in high school. He would create his own clothes using cheap shirts he would buy at Walmart, but the passion fell off as life got in the way. As a teen, he began a seven-year prison sentence, and decided to take the time to examine where he wanted his life to go.
“During that process, I did a lot of studying and got my GED,” Robertson said. “I started putting a plan together before I got home.”
When he got out, Robertson worked jobs while attending Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville to keep his life on the straight and narrow as he aimed to execute that plan. The plan in mind came from a memory during his more turbulent past. He recalled his bond hearing, more than seven years earlier.
“When it came to bond money, I couldn’t bond out with money,” he recalls. “(The judge) said if I had a property or something, that I can bond out with that. That gave me an idea that I wanted to study what real estate was about.”
Two years after leaving incarceration, Robertson purchased properties in Milwaukee, but the COVID-19 pandemic curbed his ability to maintain the buildings. He was unable to find staffing to maintain and repair buildings to the point that he was losing more money than he was making. He ultimately bowed out of real estate to find another path.
Another idea popped in his head soon after: start a clothing brand. Robertson started with shoes. He wanted to expand to something to coordinate with the shoes, because “it’s easy to make clothes with them,” he said.
“I started developing my why, and my why came from when I was a troubled teen,” Robertson said. “I noticed that as a troubled teen, and back in the day, before I even was a teenager, most of the things that I did was to make sure that I had clothes, shoes or just something to eat.”
And again, another idea popped in Robertson’s head: to pair his fashion line with a message. He noticed the actions he took, which often led to trouble, and realized that other kids would make negative decisions for a “fly fit in school.” His why started to become fleshed out — affordable, fly clothes to make sure kids didn’t have to engage in actions that would land them in trouble.
Robertson took it a step further by combining his faith into the brand.
“I got a message in my clothes, my beliefs, and just how to be a man and things of that nature. Certain messages are like laws of the land,” Robertson said. “I try to give them a message in the brand that they can always have in their closet.”
Ties to faith are the inspiration behind Robertson’s designs as he tries to reach the youth. His first shirt was inspired by Ephesians 4:10-18 and the armor of God. He plans to make a full Bible collection in his line.
But Holy Godz is just a start for Robertson. His efforts to reach the youth go past his clothing brand. He often visits children in the juvenile detention centers in Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay with Dee Star, host of OuttaDeeBox Podcast, to give them a lesson on podcasting.
OuttaDeeBox is centered on telling the stories of former and current inmates in Wisconsin. Robertson shares his story with the youth to comfort them and allow them to ask questions they normally wouldn’t. Star then teaches them how to transform his story into a podcast for the youth to get a hands-on experience.
“When you talk to me, I’ve already experienced what you went through, what you’re going through, and I will hope that we can prevent you from going to the extent that I had to by you still being young,” Robertson said about his talks with the kids.
In Robertson’s early stages of his post-incarceration life plan, he studied network IT. He used the knowledge gained to help build his business websites and all web related things he would need. He wants to take the educational step even further with hopes of starting his own trade school by 2030.
Robertson is already making strides to start his own trade school. He works with Jackson’s Yard Care in Sun Prairie on its new workforce development program that teaches trainees — for free — how to be successful in landscaping.
Robertson aims to have his trade school give students the ins and outs of starting their own business and or fashion line through his own learned experiences.
