The Hundreds locked the doors to its flagship store at Rosewood and Fairfax avenues one last time as the brand, and some might say the street, enters a new chapter.
The label announced the closure of its Fairfax District store, on a street once considered streetwear’s epicenter, late last month.
“We lived a full life here,” cofounder Bobby Kim wrote in an Instagram post. “We built it, and they came in droves and generations. And nobody can say we didn’t finish what we’d started.”
Kim founded the brand in 2003 with Ben Shenassafar. The Hundreds’ first office was located on Rosewood Avenue, opening in 2005. A couple years later its first store opened on that same street.
The Hundreds didn’t ink a lease on the corner spot, which was once the home of SLB skate shop and later RVCA, until 2018 when it opened at 501 N. Fairfax Ave.
“We can blame the pandemic for enervating Fairfax. Someone blamed Supreme’s departure as the death blow (I disagree). Most recently, the fires are the clear culprit,” Kim wrote in a piece for his Monologue newsletter on Substack. “But the real answer is that Fairfax hasn’t felt the same in years, even before Covid.”
In 2023, fashion trade Women’s Wear Daily ran a story with the headline, “Is Fairfax Avenue Dead as the Streetwear Hub of L.A.?” The piece suggested Supreme was an anchor to the street and its departure from Fairfax for Sunset Boulevard that same year signaled the street’s death.
Over the years, Fairfax had long been the home of a number of labels that created a community of like-minded brands. Aside from The Hundreds and Supreme, that roster also included Nick Tershay’s Diamond Supply Co.
Kim, in his Substack piece, threaded larger business trends, including the impact of the internet on brick-and-mortar, to a hype mentality in streetwear. On the latter front, Kim accused that mentality of “conflating comments with community.”
20 Years and Counting
In 2023, the brand celebrated a major feat for any business: 20 years. The anniversary served as a reminder of just how far the two founders, who go by Bobby Hundreds and Ben Hundreds, have taken the business.
Within The Hundreds’ corporate headquarters in the industrial city of Vernon, the walls are an homage to that history. It’s a timeline that includes the brand and its Adam Bomb logo running on a trajectory, followed by a contraction in the business that included layoffs and store closures and then another upcycle.
Along the way, the two founders have started side projects such as The Hundreds’ Second Sons services division for fledgling businesses, the Benjamin Hollywood restaurant on Melrose Avenue, TikiFish on Overland Avenue and several books.
In the streetwear space of which The Hundreds could be called a legacy brand, they’ve seen the ups and downs of the segment swinging from being part of the mainstream – the most recent cycle further pushing it into the luxury realm – and then out.
With each ebb and flow of the popularity tide, The Hundreds has remained.
“I think high fashion and streetwear have always had this dialogue,” Kim told WWD in 2019. “My generation of streetwear started with Stussy and they were ripping off Chanel logos, bringing high fashion to the streets. Sofia Coppola and Kim Gordon when they worked together on X-Girl, they did a runway show on the street in Manhattan. The idea of highbrow, high fashion, being on the literal street was interesting. We’ve always aspired to be high fashion and high fashion has always looked at streetwear and street culture to stay grounded and be relevant.”
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