Shawn Stussy

Stussy was a surfboard shaper in Laguna Beach, born in 1954, who in 1980 began signing his boards with a broad-tipped marker in a handstyle borrowed partly from graffiti and partly from his uncle, the abstract painter Jan Stussy. The signature went onto T-shirts sold alongside the boards, and in 1984 he went into partnership with Frank Sinatra Jr., an accountant who surfed with him, to turn it into an apparel line. Stussy designed and Sinatra ran the business, and by 1990 it turned over $17 million.

His real invention was not a product but a network. He travelled to London, Paris and Tokyo and found people with his tastes — Hiroshi Fujiwara, Michael Kopelman, Luca Benini, DJs, skaters and club kids — and gave them clothes. The International Stüssy Tribe, as it became known, carried the brand into Japan and Europe before it had much advertising anywhere, and Kopelman has credited Stüssy as the first company to send boxes of gear to fans. He also invented much of the visual grammar of streetwear: the interlocking S's and Stüssy No. 4 that played on Chanel, the fashion cap that was not a sports team's, and the logo flip that later labels made into a genre. In 1991 he opened the first New York store with James Jebbia, who would go on to found Supreme.

The contested part is how he left. In January 1996, with revenue around $35 million, he resigned as president, saying he was tired of the day-to-day and wanted time with his family in Hawaii; Sinatra bought his half. The company had the worst year in its history immediately after, falling to $21 million, and the industry voices quoted at the time thought the brand might not survive. It did, using his handwriting and his archive, for thirty years and counting. He has largely stayed away from the company since, returning to fashion visibly only once, in 2019, when Kim Jones asked him to design for Dior Men. Whether leaving was wisdom or exhaustion is not knowable from the outside, but it is the cleanest test in this library of whether a brand outlives its founder.