What on earth is That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup?

The LA rapper Desto Dubb founded That’s A Awful Lot Of Cough Syrup, a privately held streetwear brand out of Los Angeles. The label reduces to ALOCS, a shorthand carried by the press material and present in item names such as the A.L.O.C.S. T-Shirt. The range is conventional on paper, made up of tees, hoodies, sweatpants, shorts, denim and accessories, and odd in practice, since the brand’s own name is the main graphic on most of Awful Lot of Cough Syrup streetwear it. Registered as THATS A AWFUL LOT OF… LLC, the legal entity has no apostrophe and a trailing ellipsis. A dozen different spellings get shoppers there, including alocs clothing, cough syrup clothing and the shorthand awful lot of cough syrup. Fix one detail before anything else: the brand writes « A Awful Lot », not « An Awful Lot », and that ungrammatical article is no accident. Many searchers type thats a awful lot of cough syrup without the apostrophe; only the version with « A » corresponds to the registered mark.

Who is the brand?

The founder and chief executive is Desto Dubb, a rapper and entrepreneur from Watts in South Los Angeles. This is not a design studio with a rapper attached as a face; it is a rapper’s business, operated from the same circle as his records. He was cutting records years before he sold a shirt, which accounts for much of how the company operates. He has cast other labels as built around an aesthetic, and his own as wrapped around himself instead. You catch the result in graphics that read like song titles and in drops pegged to events rather than fashion seasons.

His legal name is a thinner record than the internet implies. 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.

Where did the name come from?

A viral clip carried the phrase to the public, an officer’s line became the brand name, and Desto Dubb built a business out of that line. Nearly every write-up repeats the anecdote, and it deserves care, because material online claims the clip was staged and no primary transcript settles it. The commercial outcome is what is documented, rather than the encounter itself, and the trademark record records first use of the mark in November 2018.

The phrase 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 carry medical and horror imagery, from Big Pharma and Promethazine Tour to Paralysis and Drankenstein, a graphic vocabulary rather than an instruction. It stops short of treating that as a selling point, and its own site carries a standing banner reading « ! PLEASE DO NOT SIP DRANK AND SHOOT FIREARMS ! ». Clothing is clothing, and what follows here is about garments and prices.

When did the label start?

Put it at 2018. First use of the mark is recorded in the trademark filing as November 2018, and an AllHipHop profile published in November 2023 describes the label marking its fifth anniversary. Some coverage puts the earliest selling to the pandemic, which conflicts with both markers; the filing and the anniversary piece are the stronger pair. Two independent pointers to one year is more than most young streetwear brands can manage.

The start was literally a van. The brand’s own about page has Desto Dubb selling clothes out of a van in a parking lot in downtown Los Angeles, which is the origin it tells on itself rather than one assembled by a reporter. The method is still defined by that detail: small batches, direct contact with buyers, and drops announced through social accounts instead of wholesale calendars. The company runs an online store and physical retail by 2026, but the rhythm still looks closer to a van than a department store, with fresh batches landing every week or two.

What does the brand actually sell?

Heavyweight cut-and-sew basics bearing jumbo screen prints front and back are the core. Hoodies occupy the heavy end, with the Classic Cough Syrup Hoodie listed at 16 oz organic cotton and hand-dyed in Los Angeles, while sweatpants use a 14 oz cotton and recycled polyester fleece. Names like King Of The Kill, Drankenstein, Juicebusters and Big Pharma cover the tees, while the Classic Cough Syrup T-Shirt is published at 6.5 oz organic cotton. Denim is deliberately thin: 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 identified 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. Sizing stretches XS to 3XL on apparel, with denim and workwear sold by waist from 28 to 44, and neither a global size chart nor washing instructions is published.

How much does it cost?

The core prices move very little, which makes them easy to hold in your head. Reading the brand’s own store as of September 2026, a tee is about $150, 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, and the Dickies jacket tops the range near $350. At the other end a bandana runs about $25, socks and boxers fall 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 doubles as an authenticity signal: a $45 tee wearing this logo did not come from the company selling them at $150.

Where does it come from, and where can you buy it?

Los Angeles, and the brand declares it on the garments themselves. Across the product copy « Made in Los Angeles » appears again and again, and individual pieces are described as hand-dyed and printed or screen-printed in the city rather than finished abroad. The same copy also describes the company as 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.

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

A brand fact file

Below, the table gathers the details that survive checking and leaves out the ones that do not. The prices were pulled from the brand’s own store in September 2026 and are hedged, since they move. Dates here depend on the trademark record and dated press coverage rather than brand mythology. The addresses given 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. It works best as a starting point for your own checks rather than a final word.