Behind the Design: How Awake NY Brought the Soul of Queens to DoorDash’s Biggest Summer Launch

The intersection of sport and fashion continues to reshape the language of contemporary street style. This summer, as the beautiful game prepares to hit home soil, the anticipation is reaching a fever pitch. To capture this exact frenzy, DoorDash has rewritten its own playbook to partner with Angelo Baque, the visionary founder of Awake NY, for an exclusive soccer capsule collection. It’s a collaboration rooted in the authentic, everyday rituals that connect style, food, sport and community.

We caught up with Baque during a campaign shoot to get the ultimate breakdown of the collection and to understand the creative synergy that brought these two distinct brands together. Right from the jump, Baque made it clear that a platform like DoorDash wasn’t looking to overshadow his label’s identity. Instead, the alliance was built on a foundation of mutual creative trust and a shared design vision. As Baque emphasized, “DoorDash allowed us to stay true to the Awake brand.” The process allowed Awake NY to pull the partner into their own world. Baque notes that this approach is intentionally disruptive and designed, “to push this partnership into a territory that DoorDash may not have been able to envision on their own.”

The crown jewel of the capsule is undoubtedly the soccer jersey, a piece that bridges the heritage of vintage football kits with modern streetwear sensibilities. The front of the top boasts an intricate tonal red checkerboard pattern, dramatically overlaid by a sharp, massive star graphic that commands the silhouette. On the right chest, a gold-embroidered collegiate “A” is crowned with five stars and anchored by a script “Champions” motif. The left chest balances the look with a gold-stitched globe emblem, signaling a nod to the Queens Unisphere and the international scale of the sport. Right at the center sits the iconic DoorDash chevron, thoughtfully modified with its own streetwear crown, sitting cleanly above “DOORDASH Awake NY” typography that mimics a legitimate, high-tier club sponsor. Baque explains the intentional choice behind the dominant graphics: “Normally, I would think of a brand like DoorDash in the streetwear context. Some would try to minimize the branding and try to make it some kind of secret. For me, it’s like, no, let’s make the logo big.”

But it’s the reverse side of the kit that delivers the ultimate narrative gut-punch and highlights Baque’s deep-rooted inspiration. Spanning the entire back of the shirt is a full-bleed silhouette image of the Unisphere. It’s the legendary global framework structure located in Flushing Meadows, Queens. Stamped over this vivid blueprint of New York soccer history is a bold, bright red number 10, the universal designation for the game’s ultimate creative playmaker. Baque takes intense personal pride in this unique feature, highlighting it as a hallmark of his design language: “For me, the biggest highlight is being able to get this silhouetted image of the unisphere on the back, you don’t normally see a big photo like this on the back of football kits.” By placing this local architectural icon on the kit, Baque effectively tethers a global movement to the exact geographic coordinates that raised him. The rest of the capsule expands effortlessly outward to complete a balanced, four-piece lifestyle look. The matching mesh shorts completely subvert traditional athletic gear by utilizing a rugged, tree-bark camouflage print. For those cooler summer nights, the collection introduces a minimalist, heavyweight black three-quarter zip pullover that lets the custom co-branding do all the talking. Rounded out by a classic black-and-white paneled mini soccer ball, the entire capsule avoids the trap of feeling like forced promotional merchandise, operating instead as an organic extension of a contemporary wardrobe. Selfishly, Baque adds a touching personal note to the equipment’s origins: “The reason, selfishly, why I wanted a mini (soccer ball) is I made it basically for my son. Like, it’s my favorite toy to play with them right now.”

This deliberate design philosophy directly targets a shifting tide in modern fandom. Trend-driven casual fans are no longer interacting with sports simply as single-team loyalists; they treat massive tournaments as entire seasons of cultural delight where digital community translates into real-world shared experiences. They want participation, local flavor, and high-style aesthetics. Baque notes that his approach to this collection was explicitly intended to capture a “semi traditional bootleg football kit that you can find at a flea market” vibe, anchoring it heavily in his own upbringing in Queens and his family’s weekend cookouts. The pieces are built to move seamlessly from an intense, fast-paced afternoon pickup game under a concrete bridge to a casual, late-night shared meal over local spot plates with a group of friends.

Ultimately, this project functions as a love letter to the beautiful game as it enters a historic era on domestic soil. Baque meticulously refined his messaging throughout the shoot to encapsulate this profound seasonal energy: “Soccer is the biggest game on Earth, and it’s hitting our home soil soon. This is the capsule I designed with DoorDash to meet that moment.” It pushes the broader sport culture forward by proving that soccer fashion doesn’t have to exist strictly on the pitch or inside isolated stadiums. It can thrive on the stoops, in the transit systems, and inside the neighborhood spots that dictate the rhythm of the city. It adapts European street stylings, where kits are seamlessly mixed with lifestyle elements. And it updates them through a purely American street culture lens.

DoorDash anchors this entire cultural ecosystem by acting as the literal and figurative connector to the flavors, communities, and real people that shape local identities. Baque remarks on how the project humanizes the delivery giant, expanding beyond the perception as just a “food app” : “How do you emotionally connect with an app? With this partnership, they’re actually deeper than that. They actually care about the community and they care about people.”

By positioning the brand as a supporter of these local fan rituals, whether you’re ordering a quick lunch to fuel up before hitting the pitch or securing the capsule itself, the collaboration demonstrates genuine utility. And soon, a wider web of diverse people will wear the gear in their everyday life, and the message remains completely unified. The collection exists to celebrate the vibrant, beautiful chaos of a city living and breathing the sport. Stay tuned for more details on how to get your hands on the collection.