9 Streetwear Designers and Their Passion Projects

The foremost fashion designers in the world of HYPEBEAST certainly didn’t get to where they are today by skimping on hard work, but even with all the toil of running a world-class brand, these restless creatives seem to never be satisfied with their many accomplishments. While the vast majority of us can barely find enough time to order pizza outside of browsing through this website’s comments section, these industry leaders are still able to find time and effort out of their packed schedules to devote to other causes, whether it be expanding their professional capabilities, transferring their knowledge to the world, or even formalizing their hobbies and passions. Here, we take a look at the most notable side projects that these streetwear designers are devoting their time to — we could do much worse than taking a page out of their book.

Jean Touitou: A.P.E. Preschool

By far the biggest and most ambitious leap from fashion is A.P.C. founder Jean Touitou’s Parisian pre-school. You heard that right — the outspoken French-Tunisian designer founded his own pre-school in 2008 when, searching for a place of education for his daughter Lily, he became disillusioned by the factory-like teaching methods of state-run kindergartens. The idea of enrolling his daughter in a private Jewish or Catholic school was also thrown out, due to the differing religious beliefs he and his wife held. The only solution, it seemed, was for Touitou to create the perfect pre-school himself. Today, Ateliers de la Petite Enfance (A.P.E.) has become one of Paris’ most fashionable and in-demand pre-schools — emphasizing freedom and creativity, the institution enlisted design agency M/M Paris to create a “visual toolbox” for playtime, fashion designer Jessica Ogden to teach part-time, while providing its students with cashmere nap blankets and rarefied Aalto chairs. 

Verbal: Kozm Agency

Repeatedly named as the most powerful couple within Japan’s creative circles, Verbal and Yoon are best known within HYPEBEAST for their hugely successful jewelry line, AMBUSH Design. However, their string of achievements extends far beyond their brand, with Verbal being best known for his involvement with game-changing hip-hop groups, m-flo and Teriyaki Boyz (alongside NIGO). Verbal is also a founder of a production agency outside of AMBUSH named Kozm where the rapper-designer manages electro artist and DJ Mademoiselle Yulia and other various artists and producers. As a duo, Verbal and Yoon also run an in-house digital team that designs 3D projection mapping for events.

Hiroki Nakamura, Hiroshi Fujiwara & Hirofumi Kiyonaga: honeyee

The year was 2005 when “Godfather of Streetwear” Hiroshi Fujiwara, visvim designer Hiroki Nakamura, and SOPH. founder Hirofumi Kiyonaga decided at one of their monthly meetings that the time was ripe to create a visual-heavy streetwear blog within the largely text-only Japanese blogosphere. The result was Honeyee.com, today one of the most referenced street fashion sites in Japan. On coming up with the name, Fujiwara explains: “All of our initials begin with H — Hiroki, Hirofumi, and Hiroshi — and Honeyee.com sounds like “honeycomb” with many sections. It also sounds like the Japanese word that means “to hesitate,” so there were many meanings. And the “.com” at the end can sound like come, like, “Honey, come. Come to honey…” Bringing a more personal, image-heavy aesthetic to the business of covering product releases, Honeyee.com has since become the premier Japanese streetwear blog, inspiring a number of copycat websites in its wake.

Gosha Rubchinskiy: Photography Work

In addition to enjoying the heights of hype with his eponymous main label, as well as making headway with a new skatewear label and COMME des GARÇONS-developed fragrance, Gosha Rubchinskiy also devotes his remaining creative juices to photography, having released a series of photo books in recent years. As a continuation of his previous role as a documentarian of Russian youth subcultures, Rubchinskiy’s photography provides a more profound visual accompaniment to the archetypal Muscovite hooligans that populate his runway. Beginning with his 2012 photo book, Transfiguration, Rubchinskiy has subsequently released four more projects that explore the ways in which forces such as orthodoxy, revolution, urban renewal and politics act on his muses within Russia’s burgeoning skate community.

Shinsuke Takizawa: The Sissy Bars

Having built cult label NEIGHBORHOOD around his twin passions of punk rock and motorcycle culture, it’s of little surprise that Shinsuke Takizawa devotes a sizeable portion of his waking hours to maintaining his hobbies to inspire future collections. His band — called The Sissy Bars in reference to the backrest of a motorbike’s passenger seat — was founded in 2011 and is comprised of four other motorbike enthusiasts, with Takizawa on drums. With a standalone album under its belt, the Sissy Bars performs annually at the Halloween festivities in Tokyo’s Shibuya district.

Bobby & Ben Hundreds: TikiFish

Fashion brands branching out into the F&B industry is nothing new, with Bobby and Ben Hundreds being the latest to make the leap this past summer with their new LA poke eatery, TikiFish. With their new venture, the pair translated their bright West Coast streetwear aesthetic into a peppy establishment, injecting vitality into everything from the poke and ceviche-laden menu by chefs Wonny Lee and Ulises Pineda-Alfaro, to the head-turning mural and covetable custom-branded merch ranging from dad caps to graphic tees. Located in a strip mall in the Palms neighborhood, TikiFish has already become a gathering place for The Hundreds’ friends and family from around the world whenever they pass through the City of Angels.