RSWD Forever: The Hundreds’ LA Store Closing Marks the End of An Era
In the ‘00s and 2010s, Los Angeles’ Fairfax Avenue was an epicenter of street culture. Now, with the last streetwear brand holding the block down closing its doors, a golden era is officially over.
18 years have gone by quicker than you can say “Adam Bomb.”
With The Hundreds’ recent announcement that it would close its store on Fairfax Avenue after a nearly two-decade run, two different chapters were concluded. The first to reach its end was that of The Hundreds’ retail presence. The brand has long been known for its immersive brick-and-mortar experiences, which, at their zenith, included — besides the Fairfax District store — hyper-localized outposts on both Post Street in San Fransisco (a design partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and encased in rock pulled from the very same quarry where the California gold rush began over a decade ago), Grand Street in New York City (a space that saluted Soho’s heritage and continued the Space Odyssey theme from the Post Street store and a shop in Santa Monica).
The Hundreds
The Hundreds
That’s not even mentioning the two different iterations of The Hundreds’ flagships around Fairfax, both pictured above. 7909 Rosewood, the brand’s first flagship, was tucked on a quiet, narrow side street between Fairfax and Rosewood Avenues, perfectly encapsulating streetwear’s IYKYK ethos when it opened in 2007. The second, a much larger establishment that served as a metaphor for the brand’s growth and deep Los Angeles roots, was around the corner at 501 Fairfax Avenue and featured an immersive installation inspired by the La Brea Tar Pits.
But the second conclusion — and what it represents — is the most bittersweet.
The Hundreds is the final OG Fairfax streetwear brand to close its doors for good.
At its peak from the mid-’00s through the 2010s, Fairfax — which replaced Melrose Avenue as LA’s most in-the-know shopping stretch when Supreme LA opened in 2003 — was one of the biggest streetwear hubs in the world, rivaled only by New York’s Lower East Side and Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood. The retailers on the street read like an all-star team: The Hundreds. Supreme. Diamond Supply Co. HUF. Crooks & Castles. In later days, Pink Dolphin and the Odd Future store. Now, if you stroll down the three-block stretch by Fairfax High School, you’ll find outfits like The Gold Gods, RIPNDIP, and Heaven by Marc Jacobs nestled amongst the area’s original Jewish businesses like Kanter’s Deli and a few OG holdouts like Flight Club and Hall of Fame.
“When we moved in, the only players [on Fairfax] at the time were Supreme and Reserve [a bookstore],” The Hundreds co-founder Bobby Hundreds said in a 2019 interview. “We felt like it could be where the future of LA was. We ended up moving in, and it turned into our clubhouse. Ben [Hundreds, The Hundreds co-founder] and I would work there, but people would just start hanging out in the afternoon. And then I would blog about it. We’d be playing music, smoking, drinking. We would just hang out there all day and all night.” What was initially used as an office space soon became The Hundreds’ first store after the brand made $100,000 USD (adjusted for inflation, approximately $157,000 USD in 2025) in one day with the release of their ultra-popular “Paisley” hoodie and reinvested the profits in its physical presence.
The Hundreds
The Hundreds
“All of a sudden, you had young kids of color moving onto the block and being loud, smoking a lot of weed out front, and just having fun building the next generation,” said Bobby Hundreds. “I used to throw a block party here every Labor Day. We would shut down Rosewood, break out a BBQ, and grill. We did that to bring the neighborhood together because even though we were all competitors, we understood that streetwear, as a market, was still very small. We were all the underdogs. So instead of working against each other, on this one day, we could all come together and show we supported each other.”
By the early 2010s, it was off to the races, with The Hundreds and Fairfax’s other brands drawing huge lines that would stretch to the end of the block. Streetwear lovers of all stripes came to visit: tourists from Tokyo, forum kids from Minnesota and celebrities including Jonah Hill and Morrissey to Kid Cudi and Drake. And it wasn’t just the goods that brought people to Fairfax either: it was an organic, community-focused vibe, the type that “big” brands twist themselves in knots trying to achieve in 2025. “Fairfax brands, especially The Hundreds, were a huge influence to us in Philly,” said Ky Cao, the co-founder of Philadelphia boutique P’s & Q’s, who’s stocked The Hundreds since 2009. “When we opened Abakus Takeout [the predecessor to P’s & Qs], those were the brands we wanted, and we felt like we made it when we got The Hundreds.”
Cao goes on to explain that it was more than just the graphics and goods — it was the familial vibe that permeated the block, as upon his first trip to Los Angeles the staff struck up a conversation and offered him a beer. “When I went to Fairfax for the first time, I was immediately welcomed,” he says. “I didn’t even mention that I owned a store and was looking to stock The Hundreds, and they still treated me that way. Since then, whenever I’d return, The Hundreds would always be the first store I visited.”
The Hundreds
The Hundreds
And the creative community that spawned on Fairfax and reached critical mass with the success of Odd Future influenced and impacted streetwear worldwide. Some of today’s biggest movers and shakers cut their teeth on Fairfax in the blog era, all of which was documented by The Hundreds as part of its long-running blog — meaning that even if you couldn’t make it to Fairfax you could still get an on-the-ground view of what was going on and see the talent that was bubbling. Fairfax “alumni” include Tyler, the Creator (who was once a Hypebeast forum member). Earl Sweatshirt. Josh Vides. Dom Kennedy. Sage Elsesser, a skater and model who also makes music under the moniker Navy Blue. “Fairfax was a hub, a neutral zone where people from all over the city and the world could connect” says Kacey Lynch, the founder of Bricks & Wood and a Los Angeles native (who, in a full-circle moment, collaborated with The Hundreds in 2019). “It just so happened that the friendship and the togetherness that was established there wound up setting the tone for culture currently.”
“Fairfax was the blueprint, and The Hundreds was the the store setting the tone. The clothing almost sold itself because of the environment they created and the people they brought to the block.”
Fairfax will eventually reinvent itself once again, as the only thing that’s a constant in a city the size of LA is change — and the ethos established on Fairfax can still be felt at a new crop of establishments like Brother Brother and Virgil Normal — but it’s hard to say that whatever Fairfax becomes next will have the seismic impact of the era that officially ended when The Hundreds closed its doors earlier in the month.
That’s not to say that the brand itself is a thing of the past, of course: it’s still carried at a global network of stockists and The Hundreds’ webstore, and The Hundreds Spring 2025 was released at the beginning of February.
“As one of the first ones in and the last ones out, we kept our promise to the block,” Bobby Hundreds said in a recent Instagram story. “To see this through, to finish what we started. And to give it everything we got.”
Just like the brand’s tagline says: The Hundreds is Huge. However, the world it helped build on Fairfax feels much smaller today.
The Hundreds
If you want to learn more about The Hundreds’ history and the rise of Fairfax, check out Bobby Hundreds ‘This Is Not a T-Shirt: A Brand, A Culture, A Community, A Life in Streetwear.’
