“Four thousand dollars,” he states nonchalantly, pointing to his top. He lifts his feet up and says, “Four hundred dollars.” His YSL jacket and Gucci shoes make his designer pants look like army twill at $120. The video then moves from this high schooler to the next person in the park. Two-thousand-dollar Vetements jacket. Vlone X Off-White. Fendi bag. This isn’t a competition of athletic skills or talents, and it’s not even a game of style. These teenagers are puffing and posturing by way of wealth inequality, comparing how much money they can spend on fashion. Halfway through, one kid jumps into the contest as the butt of the joke, chuckling as he lists his “paltry” Fred Perry shirt and Levi’s jacket.
For the past several years, this has become the face and farce of streetwear. Price and monetary value have always played a role in streetwear’s hype, but there was also once an emphasis on design and storytelling to balance it out. I’d be remiss to exclude Supreme’s reselling prowess in propagating this virtual economy. They’ve done such a good job of making their pieces desirable and collectible that the majority of the people in the daily frenzied lineups outside their stores don’t even wear the clothing. Instead, they flip it to the secondary market for a markup. Some of the reseller stores and apps like Round Two, Flight Club, and StockX have become significant names in streetwear, changing the course of our future. My little cousin made enough money reselling Supreme this summer to buy his first car. Meanwhile, he refuses to wear the brand itself.
I don’t want anything to do with that. This is not why we founded The Hundreds, and it’s also not why we got into streetwear. Our drops—although on a micro level compared with Supreme—also sell out immediately. But there’s a marked difference. Some of it may pop up on reselling apps, but the majority of it ends up where we want it: on our customers’ backs. My idea of streetwear is that it was born of the streets and is meant for the people. I want to reach as many of them as possible and connect them in the process. That means selling to accessible stores on their level, making quality, time-tested product that holds value, and keeping it at a place where they can get to it. Streetwear didn’t excite me because of the hype. It drew me in because it inspired hope. It’s about the chase, the hunt, and the journey. But with The Hundreds, it’s a journey that anyone can afford to take.
Nowhere is this ideology more evident than at The Hundreds’ warehouse sales. To relieve themselves of surplus inventory, clothing companies and shops hold sales throughout the year, back-door their leftovers to hidden territories, or dump product on discount sites. Some of the world’s most exclusive and precious labels, especially in the streetwear ring, actually sell their overage to third-party retailers on the black market. The exchange is under the table and undisclosed to preserve the integrity of the luxury brand.
We take the opposite approach. Once every couple of years, The Hundreds throws a widely publicized warehouse sale at our headquarters to clear out inventory. High-end brands with ironclad reputations to uphold would shudder at that level of transparency. For one weekend, we mark down the prices on excess older product, fill up cardboard boxes on the warehouse floor, and open up our home to our community. Thirty-five-dollar T-shirts are twelve bucks, pants are forty, jackets are fifty. For many of our fans, this is the one chance they get to load up on clothing that is ordinarily above their budgets or otherwise out of reach. Some begin camping outside our door two days before the start of the sale. By early Saturday morning, there are thousands of fans in sleeping bags, prepared to wait another six to seven hours in line after doors open.
How could this possibly be worth it? The savings and the time spent don’t add up. Yet all the kids (even those who cop just a few items) leave with smiles and with bags of clothes that will last until the next warehouse event. In fact, the majority of people who attend warehouse sales are dressed head to toe in clothes they bought at previous The Hundreds warehouse sales. And they always have a story to go along with their well-worn tee or scuffed-up sneakers.
“I met [The Hundreds employee] Daniel at a warehouse sale years ago. We became good friends, and now he’s coming to my wedding!”
“My ex-girlfriend bought me this hoodie when I was in ninth grade. It’s been ten years and I’ve only worn it twice since then, just for special occasions.”
Streetwear lineups in general are kinda silly, and have become a dick-measuring contest for insecure brand owners. They’re real-life manifestations of how cool and relevant your brand is at the moment. Every brand and designer thirsts for that glory. In 2005, Staple’s “Pigeon” Nike Dunk caused a riot outside of Jeff Ng’s Reed Space store. The New York Post ran a photo of the melee on its cover.
Whereas Altamont killed the hippie movement in ’69, chaotic streetwear lineup stories have only added to the fanaticism around rare shoes and T-shirts. Supreme’s demand has reached the point where cities and police departments have enforced a no-line system to maintain public safety. Some of the ugliest examples of modern streetwear-line chaos were seen at ComplexCon 2017 and the “Canary” Diamond Dunk release at Brooklyn Projects in late 2018.
I am trying, however, to shift the streetwear attitude of frantically buying something just to sell it. Our followers line up to be a part of the experience. They buy our clothes to wear them—a nearly rebellious idea in this new streetwear paradigm. There’s less emphasis on reselling and rarely violence in our crowds. People make lifelong friends in our lines. Our warehouse sales are family reunions. I’ve watched some of these children grow into parents. I remember the stories of their high school hardships. I thank their moms for being patient. I sign their The Hundreds keepsakes right next to my signature from eight years before. Our warehouse sales are like conventions. People show up wearing their favorite pieces—kids who discovered and fell in love with The Hundreds this year in G-Shock watches and Chinatown Market collaboration hoodies; the OGs breaking out the classics like “Pins” hoodies and “Cans” T-shirts from circa 2007.
The point of these sales is to free up warehouse space and make money, but we could do it bigger, faster, and easier online. Instead, we hold these sales at The Hundreds’ home base to bring our community together. Our designers, sales guys, marketers, accountants, even Ben and I work the floor. We ring customers up and stuff their bags. It’s our chance to meet people; for customers to ask us questions about the clothes they’re buying. The sales also serve as a reminder that we’re not just grinding away without purpose. We’re in this building every day, drawing at our desks, crunching numbers, and answering emails. It’s easy to forget why we do what we do, and who we do it for. I think every brand should have warehouse sales to restore a connection with their customers. But then I remember that most brands don’t have a community and a culture like ours.
* * *
A FEW years ago, I was in Seoul, visiting the designer Chan Ho Shin of the Korean streetwear brands Liful and LMC. I was filming my streetwear documentary, Built to Fail, at the time, traveling the world to ask various industry pioneers and players to define what the culture meant to them. Chan Ho, our mutual friend KB Lee, and I sat in his rooftop office, above one of his flagship stores, sipping hot Korean tea and eating dried fruits. We veered into the familiar streetwear conversations about brands of the moment and marketplace shifts. Over a decade old, Liful is seen as more of a heritage player in the young Korean street scene, so I asked Chan Ho if he considers his label’s growth and notoriety marks against his brand integrity.
“Can you stay authentic the bigger your brand gets?”
If you’re reading this as a student of traditional business, you might be confused with this sentiment: that the longer a company has been around, the more likely that fact will work against it. For generations, American success stories were centered on businesses that were built to last: Ford, Apple, 3M. But in the social media era, especially with regard to streetwear brands, time is not necessarily on our side. By its nature, street fashion is predicated on urgency in artistry. It’s designed and practiced
by young creative dynamos who are as flighty and finicky as their pubescent customers. Trends move fast, T-shirt shelves need to be restocked, and kids can’t be caught dead wearing the same logos in college that they donned when they were thirteen.
So, when I ask Chan Ho this, I expect the response I’ve gotten from streetwear personalities I’ve interviewed around the world: “The more you sell, the more soulless you become.” “The more you grow, the less connected you are with your audience.” “Stay poor, stay core.” The popular belief is that as a clothing brand ages, it becomes less credible and loses authenticity.
Chan Ho doesn’t miss a beat. “Not only do I think you can stay authentic; I believe you are even more so.” He answers so immediately and confidently that it actually makes me feel kind of dumb for asking the question.
“Wait, how do you figure?” Of course I need him to elaborate.
“When I first started, I thought, ‘I just want to make some stuff.’ But then the brand took shape, and I wanted to make it dope. The company grew, I got more opportunities, so I had to work harder to make it look right. So, as my brand gets bigger, it requires more of my time, my money—”
“There’s more of yourself in it.”
“Right. As I grow, the company grows. And as the company grows, I grow. Doesn’t that make the work more authentically me than ever?”
* * *
IN THE near future, there will come a point in time when The Hundreds will account for half of my life. Eventually, it will account for most of my life. My amusing side project—once daydream fodder, imagined to get me through class—will not only become inextricable from my identity but will also constitute the bulk of my identity. In a way, it’s already happened. When we started this company, my T-shirt references were pulled from our backgrounds and past experiences. Today, our inspirations come from The Hundreds moments. We’re beginning to appropriate and interpret our own culture. Like graphics professing “Maintain the Mystery” or homages to Ben’s dog Wallace.
I used to ask our fans how they first heard of The Hundreds. They’d say they fell into the brand in middle school, following their older cousin’s footsteps. Or that they’d read about it on Hypebeast because of some big collaboration. Nowadays, they reply, “Huh? I dunno. You guys have just always been around.”
It’s like asking people the first time they saw a pair of Converse All Stars or drank a Coca-Cola. Kids born after 2003 have never known a world without The Hundreds. In my rear view, I was starting to lose sight of that world as well.
33. HOMECOMING
I WAS RECENTLY invited to speak at the University of Washington. There weren’t too many formalities. Just a simple letter, a plane ticket, and a loose agenda for the evening. I’d give a twenty-minute summary onstage of how we built our brand; then the moderators and I would segue into a forty-five-minute Q&A session with the students.
I’d never given a lecture in Seattle. I knew we had customers in the area but didn’t know the demo very well. We guesstimated that maybe fifty kids total would attend. Even when I’d done talks in our own backyard—USC, UCLA, even at The Hundreds store—we’d ballpark somewhere around that fifty-person mark.
By the time the doors opened, there was a hefty crowd of UW students and Seattle locals pushing inside. Over three hundred students filled the seats in the room, and I walked out from behind the curtains to a full house. I guided the kids through a slideshow of The Hundreds’ decade and a half of business, the ups and downs, and all the parties and collaborations in between. I read the room as I paced the stage. There were general streetwear kids out there as well as the fashion fuccbois and sneakerhead hypebeasts. It was also nice to see that the audience didn’t just comprise dudes; half the auditorium was female. There were scholarly-looking students, athletes in team jerseys, and even some older folks, who I guessed were faculty or parents. But everyone was equally engaged. Even when I went over my twenty-minute mark, they didn’t flinch.
As I took my seat for the question-and-answer portion of the night, I warmed myself up for the usual queries:
“What’s up with the beef between you and so-and-so designer?” (Eyeball roll.)
“Longtime fan. What’s your favorite collaboration?” (It’s like asking me to pick my favorite child.)
“Do you have any advice for me?” (Yes. Ask more original questions.)
But those questions never came.
A blond girl with glasses raised her hand from the third row.
“Hi. Thank you for coming to UW. My question for you is, how do you feel about the lack of female representation in streetwear? The pervasive misogyny in your designs and rhetoric? And what are you doing to fix the inequality?”
Oh. I swallowed hard.
“I admit, we are part of the problem. I am guilty for objectifying women for T-shirt art and advertising materials, without consideration of their depth as people.” I took a sip of water. “Also, early on in our company, we had zero females on staff. I can blame this on the fact that we are a men’s brand and a lack of female applicants, but it doesn’t excuse that the discrepancy is unrepresentative of the world around us and what we value as a complete team. We’ve spent years making a conscious change as to how we hire and who we elevate. We now have more women in leadership positions in our organization than men. Our editor in chief, head apparel designer, art director, digital director, and accounting department are all women.”
The girl was somewhat satisfied with my response, as imperfect and inadequate as it was. She whispered, “Thank you,” and sat back down.
The microphone floated to the top of the room, where a loud and sobering voice projected forward.
“You guys have made a lot of money producing … stuff. On top of that, you are inspiring others to create more. But have you ever asked if we really need more crap out there? There’s so much waste already, yet you’re pumping and dumping more and more clothes and designs into our world that we don’t really need. Streetwear is the last sector to hit this topic, so I’m going to put it on you. What is The Hundreds doing about sustainability?”
&$@*!!!!!
“Who is that?” I held up my hand to shade the spotlight from my eyes. I surveyed the last row of the auditorium. The silhouette of a tiny Asian American girl stood up as the room turned around to find her. Then they turned back to see what I had to say.
“First of all, thank you. I’ve never been asked that before. And to be honest, I’ve never thought about that before.” I paused and absorbed the issue. “I don’t have a good answer for you, but I will tell you this. I won’t forget your question, and now it will stay with me in how I direct the future of this company. You’ve changed the course of this brand. I don’t know if I’m going to solve this problem tomorrow, but I promise you that I will work toward that change.”
For over two more hours (until we were forced to leave the building), I fielded questions as thoughtful and challenging as these. Of course, there was the occasional ask about the next collaboration on the calendar and my thoughts on the designer of the moment. But something had changed. The kids used to care most about material and fleeting interests like T-shirts and sneakers. And, truthfully, I was always more than happy to talk about that with them, if that’s what brought us together—the way our mutual love for Jordan IVs united Ben and me. Yet I often feared that I was distracting the youth from more pertinent matters, like their careers, finding purpose and happiness, and sociopolitical issues.
The journalist Rob Walker caught this dilemma way back when he profiled us in 2006. In his New York Times Magazine cover story, “The Brand Underground,” he wrote,
Even so, sometimes Bobby felt as if something were missing. When he talked about it, he seemed to be grappling with the kinds of things that had bothered me earlier when I had been trying to figure out whether there was more to the Hundreds lifestyle than buying certain products and brands. “I kind of feel like these kids—all they know is sneaker collecting and buying T-s
hirts, and they don’t think about anything else. Every T-shirt brand is just something stupid—a rapper and some guns.” Bobby said he wanted to steer the Hundreds look in a more “socially conscious, activist-oriented” direction, maybe dealing with issues like the way efforts to defend freedom can curtail freedom. Now that the Hundreds has a voice and a following, he said, “I’d like to say something.”
For the first time in my life, I was connecting with my community in a meaningful way that was on my terms. Everything was converging: being a minority, surviving as an underdog, thriving in a streetwear career, and having faith in the youth. In that University of Washington theater, we went from a standard guest speaker lecture to a town hall discussion on America’s future: these kids, their hopes and dreams, their love for streetwear and cool brands, and their place in this world. Each one wanted to feel heard and un-alone, and just because I was the headliner didn’t mean I wasn’t searching for the same.
That night felt like one of the hardcore shows I attended as a teenager. I was now the singer, but we were all collectively chanting the same rebel yell. I passed the mic around through the crowd, and we pushed and pulled against each other in a churning pit of camaraderie, getting closer to the truth. This wasn’t a bar basement or concert venue of filthy, angsty punks. It was a big university hall of college students in sweatpants. But we were still speaking our minds, sharing ideas, and taking our turns to spin the world. It was music to my ears.
34. LAUREN’S LESSON
“YOU EITHER DIE a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Remember this? The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent’s warning foreshadowed an ending in which Batman, once heralded as a vigilante hero, would be cast as public enemy. It’s not a terribly original comic book plot, but it is realistic. We (the nasty and vile collective “we”) have the shameful habit of building idols to break them down. The entire tabloid industry is built on this system. America loves to paint its sweethearts as impossibly sublime portraits, only to ravage them with controversy and imputations. Taylor Swift, Logan Paul, Tiger Woods, for example.
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