Monthly Archives: January 2013

Complex has done it again – another list, another round of controversy – whichever way you look at it, whether it’s about information or education, whether it’s about racking up impressions – it works in Complex’s favor.  Agree or disagree or agree to disagree, they have become the measuring stick by which everyone else compares themselves to. They are the ones consistently making lists, and if it really offends or bothers you, the Internet is free-of-charge to also make your own lists.

That being said…!  Yesterday, Complex totaled up their 25 most powerful people in Streetwear.  I am so grateful and appreciative to be cast at #10, and I am respectful of the company that I’m in.  To have my name so close to some of the guys (and girls!) on this list is a serious honor, and I’m thankful. Many of these individuals are my heroes and icons… Even if this is one man’s opinion, or one magazine’s opinion, it is still very flattering and it’s nice for our work to be acknowledged amongst them.

What do I think?  I won’t touch on who shouldn’t be on the list (I’d rather abstain from all the e-beef and coolguy posturing that would no doubt ensue).  I think some very important people to Streetwear are missing, like Nigo and Alyasha and Tyler, Poon and Edison, I could go on and on… much further than 25 people.  I think Aaron Levant should be in the Top 5 instead of 19, because behind the scenes, this man orchestrates the economics and dynamics of the Streetwear industry more than anybody.  I think Asia and Europe were far undervalued here, especially when most modern American Streetwear is nothing but derivative of their work.  But hey, it’s not my list.  It’s Complex’s.  I think it was accurate, except for the questionable yahoo at #10.

What do you think?  Read Complex’s Top 25 Most Powerful People in Streetwear HERE.

by bobbyhundreds

Yes, that’s our Hyenas shirt that Beth is wearing on this month’s cover of FRONT Magazine.

Not that you even noticed that she was wearing a shirt.

Returned from Hong Kong to the California sun and a merciless onslaught of jetlag… One of my favorite sleepless pasttimes is drowning in Internet k-holes, digging so far deep into Flickr and Google Images and eBay, that it takes me just as long to climb my way out.

I rarely buy anything off eBay and this is why. I found the jacket of my dreams. A “dreamcoat” as Jayne would call it (or Joseph and his amazing technicolor one).  It came down to a bidding war in the final seconds that I lost out on over a few bucks.  Anyways, it’s a vintage Stussy parka from the early ’90s, and it’s the right color and everything.  This was the golden era of Streetwear and all the popular kids – guys and girls – had one of these. Which is why I didn’t.

And I still don’t.  If you won that auction, I hate you (but trade??)

So then I started poking my nose around, and came up with this.  How do we bring back the Mexican surf ponchos? And how do we make them not itch so bad?

So this is the holy grail of all things ’90s Streetwear.  The Stussy 8-ball keychain.  Very rare.  So rare, that this is the only legitimate photograph I can find of one on the web, plus the Stussy logo has rubbed off.  Maybe the coolest keychain of all time (only second to the key-ringed plastic miniature skateboards of the ’80s) only multiplied by its unicorn status.  If you can find me one, I’ll be your best friend forever.

The reason why I dig for these ghosts of Streetwear past is to help reawaken that nostalgia – the memory – of how exciting all this stuff was to me as a young teenager.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s all still awesome, but after it being my career for a decade, Streetwear can lose a little bit of the sex appeal.  So from time to time, I need to hit the Refresh so that I can again relive and re-tell that experience and sensation through our own product and branding.

I remember the first Stussy t-shirt I really noticed, and that was the “Dice” tee.  To this day, it’s still the coolest and best in my opinion, and I could be mistaken, but I don’t think they’ve ever re-issued it.  Again, it’s another almost-impossibility to find an image of on the Internet.  I’m a size Large, btw.

Many of my Streetwear recollections from this era are rooted in Stussy graphic t-shirts and baseball caps, but that neglects the others like 26 Red, Blur, Sjobeck, Clobber, GAT, Blur, and so on.. It’s just hard to source them on the web, which seems to have quite a selective memory when it comes to this kinda stuff.  Stussy was everywhere though in the early ’90s, so it’s relatively easy to unearth my 7th grade all over again:

The Western Exterminator Company parody was a popular one in the market for this period. These were Stussy’s and Mossimo’s flips.  Now you can better understand why we did our own rendition years later, where the rat was bigger than the man (which, for whatever reason, I can’t find a photo of right now).

Speaking of Mossimo, before the beach volleyball shorts designer eventually blew out through the Target channel, there was a moment of time where his t-shirts were poised to be the next wave after Stussy’s market inundation of the mid-90s.  Clearly it’s evident why, from the signature to the stylings.  This was probably my favorite Mossimo tee back then:

And of course there was also Freshjive, which was embracing the rave wave of the 1990s.  While all other Streetwear was using characters and parodies, Jive was turning it up a notch with the pop color combos.

Split is now a massive action sports brand or something, but for a season, they also laid into the rave sensibilities with this little monkey/bear/chipmunk mascot.  I had this hat, but I also had the accompanying long-sleeve bright yellow shirt with a bold red Split logo across the front, and the character on the back-neck.

I mean, we can go from the ’90s Streetwear thing to the Rave thing, and you wouldn’t be far away from Skateboarding, which was kinda the hub of it all.  Or like the nexus, the intersection… I never had this beanie, nor would I have worn it, but I was searching through “Underworld Element” archives and found this hat.  Before it was Element, it was Underworld Element, and the branding and personality were far more interesting to me as a teenager than it is now; for example, their “UE” logo was classic.

Once we start getting into ’90s Skateboarding, then I start rehashing all this buried treasure.  The artwork and the attitude were so fantastic back then – the re-appropriation of cartoon art into something adult and sardonic – the bold corporate parodies – the lack of taking one’s self serious… It was the best of times.

Just off the top of my head, some of my favorite skateboards from the ’90s, including some I owned and some I wanted and all I wish I had now:

But we’re not gonna get into this right now, that blog post will have to wait for another day…

all photography not mine, but that of the Internet’s
by bobbyhundreds

Just about wrapping it up here in Hong Kong with The Hundreds Design… We hammered out Spring 2014 this past week and nailed it! Anymore carpentry metaphors? Nah, I wood’nt do that to you.

All this apparel design is getting in the way of Jayne’s Instagram.

Our Spring 2014 color palette is TOP SECRET.  Or maybe this is a full-color photograph and we are using 50 shades of grey (no relation to the bestselling novel)

The other night, Benjie and I partook in a raw, vegan, gluten-free, absolutely disgusting dinner down in Central with Frank Liew, Creative Director of Silly Thing.  He handed off two of the latest issues of their Obscura Magazine before I fell asleep on a big leather couch in a rooftop public bar. JETLAG IS A REAL THING.

Along with finalizing Spring 2014, we’re also tying up the loose ends on one of our most anticipated upcoming collaborations of the year… if you read The Hundreds Magazine, you’re already up on it.  World premiere exclusive sneak peek!  Rery vare:

by bobbyhundreds