Stüssy's Family Tree Runs Through Jebbia, Nigo and Virgil Abloh

Almost every road in modern streetwear runs back to one man with a marker. In the early 1980s Shawn Stussy was making surfboards in California and scrawling his surname across them in a broad tipped hand. The signature became a logo, the logo became a brand, and the people who passed through that brand went on to build Supreme, A Bathing Ape, Undercover, Off-White and the men's studio at Louis Vuitton.

This is the family tree, traced through who worked for whom, who mentored whom and who took whose chair.

Laguna Beach, 1980

Stussy began printing T-shirts, shorts and caps with that scrawled signature and selling them out of his car around Laguna Beach. In 1984 he partnered with his friend Frank Sinatra Jr., a businessman with no relation to the singer, to sell the clothes properly. By 1988 the brand had reached Europe and opened a boutique in SoHo.

In 1996 Stussy resigned as president and Sinatra bought his share, and the Sinatra family has owned the brand since. Stussy stepped away from fashion for more than two decades. He came back first for a Dior collection shown in 2019, then with S/Double, the label he started in 2008, which announced its return in 2024.

International Stüssy Tribe

In the late 1980s Stussy turned his friends into the brand's marketing. The International Stüssy Tribe began as a group of friends who carried Stüssy around the world, and its campaigns ran in youth magazines like The Face and Thrasher.

The names on that list became the first generation of the tree. Hiroshi Fujiwara carried the idea to Tokyo. Luca Benini founded Slam Jam in Italy. Jules Gayton was a DJ and skater, James Lebon a photographer, filmmaker and graphic artist, and Fraser Cooke went on to shape the direction of elite product at Nike. In London, Michael Kopelman's company Gimme Five distributed Stüssy across the UK, and in 2000 Kopelman and Cooke made a special edition Nike Air Huarache together.

Tokyo and the Ura-Harajuku Line

Hiroshi Fujiwara is known as a godfather of Ura-Harajuku, the back streets of Harajuku where Japanese streetwear took shape. He launched Good Enough in the late 1980s and later Fragment Design, which still turns up on projects like a Disney guitar for ComplexCon.

Nigo, born Tomoaki Nagao, played in a punk cover band called the Tokyo Sex Pistols at university, alongside Fujiwara and Jun Takahashi, and Fujiwara is considered his mentor. In 1993 Nigo founded A Bathing Ape, Takahashi launched Undercover, and the two opened Nowhere together in Ura-Harajuku. The Hong Kong retailer I.T bought a 90.27 percent stake in Bape in 2011, and Nigo left for good in 2013, three years after starting Human Made.

In 2003 Nigo partnered with Pharrell Williams to launch Billionaire Boys Club and Icecream, and he later worked with Kanye West. In 2021 Kenzo named Nigo its artistic director, and his Fall Winter 2026 collection is in stores now.

Supreme and Its Alumni

James Jebbia was born in 1963, grew up in West Sussex, England, and moved to New York in 1983 at nineteen. He worked at Parachute, an avant garde store in SoHo, then managed Union NYC. From 1991 to 1994 he partnered with Shawn Stussy. In April 1994 he opened Supreme in a former office space on Lafayette Street.

Supreme became the biggest branch of the tree, and its staff list reads like a directory of New York labels. Gio Estevez was Jebbia's first hire in 1994 and founded ANX Originals in 1999. Aaron Bondaroff started at the store in 1994 after dropping out of high school and launched aNYthing in 2001. Luke Meier was head designer for eight years from 1999, then founded OAMC and ran Jil Sander with Lucie Meier from 2017 until 2025. Brendon Babenzien rejoined as creative director in 2007, left in 2015 to relaunch Noah, and became creative director of J.Crew men's in 2021. Angelo Baque joined in 2006, rose to brand director and built Awake NY, which he still owns.

In 2022 Supreme named Tremaine Emory creative director, the first outside creative director it had publicly confirmed. He left in 2023 and kept building his own label, Denim Tears, which now makes Stüssy Tears with the brand Jebbia partnered with before Supreme existed. Supreme itself was sold to VF Corporation in 2020 and to EssilorLuxottica in 2024, with Jebbia still running it.

Louis Vuitton's Men's Chair

Kim Jones grew up on Stüssy. At 14 he went to the London warehouse and bought a Stüssy T-shirt, and while studying at Central Saint Martins he worked for Michael Kopelman at Gimme Five to pay for college. He graduated in 2002, became creative director of Alfred Dunhill in 2008 and was named style director of Louis Vuitton men's in 2011. In 2017 he brought Supreme to Louis Vuitton, the first collaboration between a luxury house and a skate brand.

Jones left Vuitton in January 2018 and took over Dior Homme that March. At Dior he brought Shawn Stussy out of retirement for a Pre Fall 2020 collection shown in Miami. His Louis Vuitton seat went to Virgil Abloh on March 25, 2018, and after Abloh died it went to Pharrell Williams in February 2023. Three men's directors in a row at Louis Vuitton, and every one of them connects back to Laguna Beach.

Chicago, Virgil Abloh and Been Trill

Virgil Abloh came into the tree through Kanye West. The two interned at Fendi in 2009, and in 2010 Abloh became creative director of Donda, West's creative agency. He launched Pyrex Vision in 2012 and Off-White in 2013, designed The Ten with Nike in 2017, and in March 2020 released a Louis Vuitton collaboration with Nigo, tying the Chicago branch to the Tokyo one.

In 2012 Abloh formed Been Trill, an art and DJ collective, with Heron Preston, Matthew Williams and Justin Saunders. Williams had made a jacket for West's 2007 Grammy performance and joined his team, then became the first artistic director of Lady Gaga's Haus of Gaga. In 2015 he started Alyx with Luca Benini, the Slam Jam founder from the original Stüssy Tribe, and he ran Givenchy from June 2020 until the start of 2024. In 2019 he also made a T-shirt with Stüssy itself. Samuel Ross became Abloh's first design assistant, worked on Off-White and Donda projects and founded A-Cold-Wall\* in 2015.

Abloh died on November 28, 2021, at 41. The Codes, a show of nearly 1,000 objects from his work, opens at The Shed in New York on December 10.

Every Line Leads Back to Laguna

Count the steps and the tree gets small. Nigo is two steps from Shawn Stussy, through Hiroshi Fujiwara. Virgil Abloh is two, through Kim Jones, whose Louis Vuitton seat he took. Matthew Williams is two, through Luca Benini. Tremaine Emory is two, through James Jebbia, and his Stüssy Tears collaboration now sells in Stüssy Chapter stores.

"He started it all," Kim Jones said of Stussy in 2020. More than forty years after the first surfboard, the line he started still runs through Supreme, Kenzo and the labels their alumni built.