Michael Camargo, AKA Upscale Vandal

The Business of HYPE is a new weekly series brought to you by HYPEBEAST Radio and hosted by jeffstaple. It’s a show about creatives, brand-builders and entrepreneurs and the realities behind the dreams they’ve built. On this week’s episode, Jeff sits down with Michael Camargo, the branding/lifestyle manager, consultant, and true multi-hyphenate also known as Upscale Vandal, at Sole DXB. Jeff and Mike’s conversation was recorded just after midnight in Dubai. This is a crucial point, because Camargo was not allowed to travel internationally until June of last year. “Everything I’ve accomplished in my career so far, I’ve done on probation” Camargo says, just after removing his Audemar Piguets timepiece and over $100K in jewelry. From the outside looking in, it might be difficult to figure out what exactly it is that Upscale Vandal does. Whatever it is, he seems to be doing a lot of it, though — whether its sharing Instagram Stories of himself burning the midnight oil with screen-printers and distributors or photos of his meals as the Hood Anthony Bourdain. In this far-ranging and wide-reaching sit-down, Camargo explains why he doesn’t take interns (“I don’t wanna teach people the wrong way to do something”), growing up in Ozone Park (“John Gotti was seven blocks away”), and why Kanye West was right: everything really is Pusha T. After all, when Upscale first ventured into the field of lifestyle and brand management, it was Pusha who told a young Camargo that everything he kne