Fashion Art Director / Producer / Creative Strategist

Here's what happened.

I spent 20 years being the funniest person in every room I walked into. And I was good at it. Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me. WBEZ. Vocalo. Inside Amy Schumer. I built a career out of reading people fast and making them feel something they didn't expect.

Turns out that's also the whole job description for a fashion art director. I just didn't know it yet.

I'm Brian Babylon. I'm from Bronzeville on Chicago's South Side. I make fashion. I direct campaigns. I build brands. I do all of it across Chicago, Berlin, Paris, and Johannesburg — not because I'm trying to sound international, but because that's genuinely where the work lives.

BB SPOKE is my label. Low-batch luxury. No restocks. No markdowns. Produced in Sialkot, Pakistan — a city with real manufacturing skill that most luxury brands fly over without looking down. I looked down. Every drop is fully finished work: concept, design, direction, photography, campaign. Built by me, in-house, from the ground up.

House Cardi is a fashion line I co-direct with comedian Michelle Wolf. It's about getting dressed. The actual act of it. The part of fashion that everyone experiences but nobody talks about seriously. We talk about it seriously.

I use AI tools in production. Midjourney. Higgsfield. Kling. Runway. Suno. Not because I'm lazy — because I'm fast and I have too many ideas and these tools let me see things before I build them. The craft is still the craft. The tools just keep up with me now.

The comedian didn't retire. He just decided the wardrobe was the next bit.