How to Style Cough Syrup Shorts Tips and Tricks

That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup: what is the label?

That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup is an indie Los Angeles clothing label set up by rapper Desto Dubb. ALOCS is the short form it uses for itself, appearing both in its press material and in product names such as the A.L.O.C.S. T-Shirt. What the label sells reads conventional on paper, made up of tees, hoodies, sweatpants, shorts, denim and accessories, yet odd in practice, since the brand’s own name doubles as the main graphic alocs basketball shorts on most of it. Shoppers look for it under a dozen spellings, including alocs clothing, cough syrup clothing and the shorthand awful lot of cough syrup. The legal entity is listed as THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC, with no apostrophe and a trailing ellipsis. One detail is worth getting straight first: the brand writes “A Awful Lot”, not “An Awful Lot”, and the ungrammatical article is on purpose. Many searchers type thats a awful lot of cough syrup without the apostrophe; only the version with “A” matches the registered mark.

Who is the brand?

The founder and the chief executive is Desto Dubb, a rapper and entrepreneur from Watts in South Los Angeles. It is not a design studio that hired a rapper as a face; it is a rapper’s business, steered from the same crowd as his records. He was releasing music years before he sold a shirt, which tells you a great deal about how the company behaves. He has framed other labels as built around an aesthetic, and his own as wrapped around himself instead. The result turns up in graphics that read like song titles and in drops keyed to events rather than fashion seasons.

The internet suggests more about his legal name than the record will bear, and that record is light. The United States trademark for the phrase is registered to Joshua Kashif Taylor, and posts on the brand’s own blog carry a matching byline. Unsourced commercial sites circulate other names, and those are best left alone, because for every practical purpose he is Desto Dubb.

How did the name come about?

The public came across the phrase through a viral clip in which an officer’s line became the brand name, and Desto Dubb turned that line into a business. The anecdote runs through nearly every write-up, and it deserves care: material online claims the clip was staged, and no primary transcript settles it. Documentation extends to the commercial outcome rather than the encounter, and the trademark record gives first use of the mark in November 2018.

The phrase itself refers to promethazine-codeine cough syrup, the prescription medicine known in rap slang as lean, and the company does not pretend otherwise. The product names are loaded with medical and horror imagery, from Big Pharma and Promethazine Tour to Paralysis and Drankenstein, a graphic vocabulary rather than an instruction. It also declines to treat that as a selling point, and its own site displays a standing banner reading “! PLEASE DO NOT SIP DRANK AND SHOOT FIREARMS !”. The clothing is clothing, and the remainder of this piece deals with garments and prices.

What year did it start?

Put it at 2018. Two records line up: the trademark filing gives first use of the mark in November 2018, and an AllHipHop profile published in November 2023 describes the label marking its fifth anniversary. Two independent pointers to one year is more than most young streetwear brands can manage. There is coverage putting the earliest selling during the pandemic, but that conflicts with both markers, and the filing and the anniversary piece are the stronger pair.

Literally, it started with a van. On its own about page the brand recounts Desto Dubb selling clothes out of a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, an origin it tells on itself rather than one assembled by a reporter. That detail still describes the method: small batches, direct contact with buyers, and drops announced through social accounts instead of wholesale calendars. By 2026 the company runs an online store and physical retail, yet the rhythm still looks closer to a van than a department store, with fresh batches landing every week or two.

What is actually on the rail?

The core is heavyweight cut-and-sew basics wearing jumbo screen prints front and back. The heavy end is hoodies: the Classic Cough Syrup Hoodie is listed at 16 oz organic cotton and hand-dyed in Los Angeles, and sweatpants use a 14 oz cotton and recycled polyester fleece. Tee names cover King Of The Kill, Drankenstein, Juicebusters and Big Pharma, and the Classic Cough Syrup T-Shirt is published at 6.5 oz organic cotton. Denim is held deliberately thin, and the Double Cup Cargo Shorts, a 14 oz garment-dyed cargo short with double-layer back pockets, is the only piece in that collection in 2026.

The brand is given away less by any graphic than by two details: the signature yellow woven label, invoked again and again in its own product copy, and the published fabric weight. Set per garment, fit guidance is not uniform, because the classic pieces are called true to size while the lightweight jersey tees say plainly that they run small. Apparel stretches XS to 3XL, denim and workwear sell by waist from 28 to 44, and neither a global size chart nor washing instructions is published.

What are the prices?

Easy to hold in your head, the core prices hardly shift. A tee is about $150 at the brand’s own store as of September 2026, a hoodie about $200 and sweatpants about $200. Denim shorts sit near $150, puffer jackets between roughly $200 and $250, belts and Dickies trousers around $250, while the Dickies jacket tops the range near $350. The other end carries a bandana at about $25, socks and boxers in the $50 to $70 band, and women’s pieces roughly $48 to $160.

Streetwear prices and stock change constantly, so treat that ladder as a shape rather than a quote. The band places cough syrup clothing at the upper end of independent streetwear, well above mall-tier graphic brands and far below European luxury houses. It is likewise an authenticity signal: a $45 tee wearing this logo did not come from the company selling them at $150.

Where is it made, and where can you buy it?

Los Angeles, which the brand prints on the garments themselves. Product copy repeats “Made in Los Angeles”, and individual pieces are described as hand-dyed and printed or screen-printed in the city rather than finished abroad. That same copy calls the company a Black-owned business. At these price levels local small-batch production explains the numbers, since a 16 oz cotton hoodie made here was never going to be a $60 garment.

Its own online store runs alongside a small number of physical locations. The flagship is at 7669 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, with 312 West 5th Street in Los Angeles and 5410 Almeda Road in Houston also listed. There is no store-locator page and no published opening hours, so those addresses are worth confirming before travelling. Anything else claiming to be an outlet is best judged on the garment: the yellow woven label, the published fabric weight, the real price level, and whether the product name appears in the brand’s own catalogue.

Brand fact file

The table below gathers the details that survive checking and leaves out the ones that do not. Read from the brand’s own store in September 2026, the prices are hedged, because they move. Dates come from the trademark record and dated press coverage rather than brand mythology. The addresses are the ones the company lists on its own social profiles, with no published opening dates. For a contested claim such as the origin clip, the row records what is documented. Use it as a starting point for your own checks rather than a final word.