Shaping Street Culture From LA to the World - Chris Gibbs of UNION
Streetwear has come a long way. Once a mere single avenue in the fashion sphere, through a complicated history of inter-genre infusion, resulted in what can only be described as undivided. Putting personal opinions aside, the fashion landscape we reside in today is undoubtedly more fluid, each and every style taking from one another, essentially breaking down walls between genres ever so prevalent up until recently.
Partly accidental, but for the most part intentional, the extent of freedom in expression we have today wouldn't have been possible without the help of those who came before us. Sometimes in the hands of a single person, other times by a team of creatives, though we remember them by names, more often than not, their fables are associated with movements. While the faces behind the title OG may differ from each era, their role in the history of streetwear remains so influential that their legends get passed down from generation to generation.
With the resurgence of interest for everything Y2K and the vintage-scouring sustainability-conscious thrift shop hunting still going strong, there isn't a better time to reflect on the history of 90s streetwear culture. Referred to as the golden age, some of the most recognizable brands to this day came to prominence during this era, eternally changing the landscape of not just streetwear, but fashion as a whole.
Time does not stop for anyone. It’s hard enough to capture the imagination of the youth for each generation, so imagine consistently being relevant for decades. An impossible task made possible by the very few, Union is among the household names not only for their history, but also for their undying pertinence to street culture. As of late, their collaborative projects with Nike and Jordan brand has skyrocketed in popularity, deeming a handful of them modern classic status, but make no mistake, Union has been around for longer.
First opening their doors to New York city in 1989, the famous Los Angeles location came shortly after. Originally owned and managed by James Jebbia of Supreme fame and Mary Ann Fusco, the humble store was small and unknown to the greater public for the most part. Union as we know it today, came to prominence in the early 2000s, and as the ownership was passed to a staff member at the original location, his passion not only for the Union label but street culture itself, expanded the humble store to a global anomaly.
Chris Gibbs along with wife and partner in crime Beth Birkett Gibbs are the heart and brain of the Union brand. Although a multi-label store that’s housed and nurtured some of the most exciting brands today, their recent rollout of in-house garments have also been providing functional yet stylish options for people to freely express themselves, and producing some of the most memorable sneaker collaborations in recent years while they’re at it. A pitless knowledge and an undying passion for everything street culture, Chris Gibbs is the living embodiment of an OG. 4 years after Union Tokyo first opening their door, ahead of opening another location in the states, Chris and the team also opened the doors to Union Osaka in October. From talking about his upbringing, the significance of Japan to streetwear, and what it’s like around the household, follow us as we dive deep into the history of the world of streetwear.
Suffice to say an introduction may be overboard, but can you briefly introduce yourself to the sabukaru network?
My name is Chris Gibbs, owner of Union Los Angeles, and I’ve been working there for over 25 years, first as an employee, then about 12 years ago, I was able to purchase the store from the people I worked for, and I’ve been kind of an heir to it since.
My history of working for the store started as the lowest position employee, and I remember taking out the garbage each night, but I grew with each step and learned more about different parts of the business like merchandising, buying, styling, or e-commerce, and photography; I’ve done everything!
Now, most of my time is spent designing because the business has evolved to trying to make our own products since historically, we’ve been a store that sold other people’s stuff. I’m a jack of all trades but a master of none.
From your childhood days to becoming the owner of Union L.A., and today becoming one of the biggest names in streetwear. Let’s start with what you were like as a child?
I grew up in Canada, my dad’s from Barbados, and my mom’s from Canada. I wouldn’t say I was troubled in the sense of getting caught by the police or anything like that, but I was a very mischievous kid. I had a lot of learning disabilities growing up, so I was a little troublesome. Although I treat it as an asset now, back then, it felt more like a liability, but growing up mixed, I was torn between two cultures. As a kid trying to find my identity and not really fitting in either of the cultures, it was tough since my cultures were polar opposites. So, I had a lot of trouble processing that as a kid.
At some point, finding where I fit made me feel more comfortable being who I was and not trying to associate with the cultural identities of who I’m supposed to be. The more I felt comfortable with that, the more that became an asset, and I think of myself as an out-of-the-box thinker because of that. So, that’s helped me exercise muscles in how I perceive things; I’m always looking at things from the outside as an insider, and I’m a little bit of both. So, that’s been really good when it comes to fashion, although I was not really into fashion as a kid. It really only started when I started working at Union, and my eyes were opened to this world that I was unaware of; the world that I now inhabit, in particular streetwear.
I went to college in New York and I was a skater, but I did a little bit of everything. Today you can be a skater and a jock, but when I was growing up you had to choose. But, as I’ve already explained, I was mixed, so I kind of did both. I was a big basketball and football player in high school, but I was also a pretty big skater. I liked doing both. It was weird and problematic for me, but by the time I moved to New York, I was still skating a lot and I got a skate shop. It was a small, unknown, skate shop, but I met my now-wife then-girlfriend, who had worked for James Jebbia at the time, and she was the one who told me I needed to check Supreme out. I didn’t really know about it, but over the course of dating her, I got to know what Supreme was really about. This was about 1996, and streetwear was still new and boring in the 90s, but Supreme was doing really interesting and different stuff.
I eventually started working for James Jebbia and Mary Ann Fusco at Union and started to learn what streetwear was, got into the downtown New York scene, loved it, and I guess I stayed doing that. I eventually moved to L.A. in 2003 to open the Union store, and like I said, in 2010, I bought it.
So, your first interaction with streetwear was when you started working for Union?
Actually, my first interaction with streetwear was probably… I’ll say this: I remember going to the original Triple 5 Soul store, which wasn’t in Lafayette, but in the Lower East Side. It was a really small store, but I remember being blown away by their store, and this was before they got really big. I was also a huge fan of the 40 Acres and a Mule shop that Spike Lee had which was in Brooklyn, and my dad’s family from Barbados had a lot of brothers and sisters that moved to Brooklyn, so I spent a lot of time there as a kid even before I moved to New York. There was another store right next to it called Too Black Guys, which is a Canadian brand, and they had a store in Toronto, as well.
Those were the early streetwear stores that I remember being into, and then when I moved to New York, I did know about Union, but I was really intimidated by them; it was weird. It was a really intimidating store, and I remember first going into the store, I was really afraid to touch anything.
Being a magazine that talks about not only fashion but subcultures in general, we have to ask, what are some other subcultures you are interested in apart from fashion?
Great question. It’s actually kind of hard for me to fully answer this question because I think “subcultures” are actually something that is kind of fleeting…When I was younger; hip-hop music, skating, punk music, streetwear, street ball, dj culture, sneaker culture, etc. These were all subcultures that only a few people really participated in. This was pre-internet, so you had to really live the life and it usually came to you in this organic way.
Today, all of the things I mentioned on that list have transitioned from niche subcultures to major industries. Is that transition because of the internet which has circumvented the life cycle of a “subculture” so much so that the fast pace of the new world, and the availability of instant gratification has made it so there can no longer be subcultures? Or is it just that my generation is older now and no longer spending the time to search out and participate in subcultures? I think it’s a little bit of both, but mainly with globalization of information, it is much harder for subcultures to exist because today, the moment they are formed the information around them is instantly available to the whole world and thus, “fast tracks” the subculture past “subculture” stage and immediately to pop culture.
We understand how Union and James Jebbia’s Supreme in the 90s had a major role in solidifying streetwear as a genre, but what were you guys wearing back then? What was the streetwear look?
That’s a really good question. For me I probably would’ve been wearing a lot of skate clothes. A brand I was really into was Elwood; I think they’re still around. I was into hip-hop, as well, so I would’ve worn brands like Triple 5 Soul. I probably would’ve been wearing a lot of skate shoes like éS with a t-shirt of either a brand I liked or a team that I liked; I was into the Hoyas at the time, but that was kind of it. As you can tell I haven’t grown up, I’m still a t-shirt and jeans guy with sneakers, so I haven't changed much.
Talking about your wife, I read that you guys met during your university days, specifically on a platform of a subway. Can you tell us how important she is to your life? Aside from your wife, what else is important to you?
She is the person who really introduced me to this whole world that I wasn’t familiar with at all until I met her. She was navigating and working in the New York downtown scene, and to me, there are different origin stories with any of these things, and there’s not necessarily a singular “streetwear started with this person on this day” type of deal. It was a global movement, and there were people who were important in that process, but I always think of it as how it might not have been literally borne out of New York, but the early adolescence of streetwear was nurtured in the downtown New York scene.
In that scene, there was this convergence of all these subcultures, whether you were into punk music or if you were some kid from Ohio, most people didn’t understand. But once you got to New York and found the people you liked, you were typically hanging out downtown, and this was the same thing for skaters or a kid that’s into hip-hop. Whatever these sub-cultures that were also kind of countercultures, they all seemed to converge in downtown New York in the 90s. Although I might’ve grown up being into skating, now I can be hanging out with a kid that might’ve been into punk, and now it’s rubbing off on me. Now we both could be hanging out with some kid that’s a graffiti writer, not knowing he was one, but now it’s rubbing off on both of us, and now we’re all sharing these ideas together without necessarily knowing each of our backgrounds.
Chris Gibbs and Beth Birkett for GQ
My wife was already in that scene and introduced me to James, so she’s been really important since day one. That was in 1996, and we’re in 2022, so we’ve been together for that long, but we built Union together. She’s heavily involved in the marketing side of things, but she also does a lot of styling and shoots. She also directed the Air Jordan 2 promo video we just released, and she’s shooting a show for HBO called The Hype right now.
Family is very important to us. Our oldest son came to Japan for a summer when he was 15 years old and learned Japanese. He went to this school where in the morning they stayed in the dorms, and in the afternoon, they got to experience Tokyo. Akihabara one day, tea ceremony the next, and Yoyogi park the day after, but after that, he also stayed with my really good friend’s family for another three weeks. We all met around the same time in New York, and they’re like uncles and aunties to my kids, but my eldest son got spoiled since they run Palace here in Tokyo, so he interned there, got on the train to the store, worked, tested his Japanese, and went back home every day. It's funny how he learned Japanese because they had post-it notes with Japanese words all over the apartment for my son to learn.
Chris Gibbs and Family for GQ
So, yeah, family is important to us, and my wife is the reason I got into the industry, to begin with, and we still work together every day. We actually have a couple of capsule collections coming out in the next year or so; the Nike Cortez that's coming out in a couple of months, and that was my wife and I's collaborative project that we got to work on together design-wise, but we also have a big Jordan collab coming out in the summer of 2023 that we worked on together, as well. We actually tell our origin story and how we met through clothing.
Are these collaborations off the record?
We can talk about it. The Nike Cortez, although there are pictures that have leaked already, we call it the “Summer of ‘96” because that’s the summer we met, but it’s still in development, so it’s not finalized yet.
You joined Union in 1996, which is 7 years after the store itself opened. What were your first days at Union like?
Like I said, I was pretty intimidated. One of the beautiful things about working with James and Mary Ann was that they really embraced youth culture/counterculture and gave freedom and agency to the people that worked there. As a 20-year-old back then, people around me were used to going to work and being treated like crap but happy to just have the job, paying some bills: not really having a lot of control per se. But at Union, from day one, they were like, "ok, you're hired, here are the keys to the store," and I was like, "holy crap." I also remember being at the store, and I had asked what kind of music they wanted to play, and they went, "Whatever you like. What kind of music do you like?" I was into hardcore hip-hop at the time, and they let me play my music, so, as you can tell, we got a lot of freedom.
UNION x Nike Dunk
I don't know a lot of people, but for some people, that kind of freedom was too much. I talked to my wife about it but having that really gave us ownership of where we were and allowed us to participate instead of just following orders. I quickly became a part of the company in a way that I felt a certain sense of responsibility and ownership, and I don't know if James and Mary Ann knew what they were doing, but that provided a certain authenticity and loyalty.
I've tried to do that with my store and staff, and I really want to hire people who want to grow in this industry; people who want to have a say and participate. There are goals that we need to reach as a business, but it's not necessarily about that.
Union has changed over the years, but how do you feel it’s changed from then compared to how it is now?
There was definitely something on the business side that had, at some point, changed Union back in the day, but it was actually a really small store of only about 400 square feet in total. Most people won't remember it this way, but the truth is my era of Union was very much known for mixing high and low. I get the credit of selling $30 t-shirts with $1,200 overcoats and everything in between at Union today, but the truth of the matter is it's been a way of business since the day I got there.
People don't remember it because as I like to call it streetwear with no chaser —graphic t-shirts, hats, hoodies, jeans, sneakers, or the general sensibilities of these items, were things Union was the first to do at the time. So, looking back, they see it through the lens of a graphic t-shirt, but the truth is, they were selling full collections even before I first started. They sold a little bit of high fashion here and a little bit of workwear there, but those weren't new; the new toy was streetwear, so people remember Union for streetwear and not the fact that we were always a mix of sub-genres in fashion.
I definitely ramped up on that when I took control and really turned up the volume on seeing things through the lens of high fashion and mixing the high and low. But it's always been that way, and when I first started working there, the store was small, the business was minuscule, and there was no such thing as Instagram nor eBay, so everything was through word of mouth. The sales were pretty humble and felt more like a small mom-and-pop shop, but over the years, we've grown. But like I mentioned, early on, it was a small shop with 400 square feet of space, and it was just me and one other guy that worked there, and we'd only work there on the weekends. It was a store run by one person a day. I opened it, got what the customer wanted, cleaned up, and left.
From what we can see, Union has had a tight relationship with Supreme, Stüssy, and UNDEFEATED, but what was the relationship like?
Before I even got there, James Jebbia, Mary Ann Fusco, and Eddie Cruz started the store. James and Mary Ann started the store together, and Eddie was their first employee. Although he was a friend, they already knew each other. Early on, they were parallel buying stuff from overseas, mainly the U.K., and finding new up-and-coming brands.
One of the first brands they got was Stüssy, and in particular, clothes from Stüssy did really well. Not only were they selling well, and this is one of the things I've been telling newer brands to take note of because there are a lot of new stores and opportunities these days: you should not only look at which stores you're selling to, but you should also be seeing who they're selling to because if they're selling it to corny people, your brand's going to be worn by corny people, and thus your brand will be corny. If you want longevity, you want dope people to wear your clothes, so you want to make sure you're not just selling dope clothes but selling to dope people; there's a difference. Today, a whack store can be selling dope shit.
James, Mary Ann, and Eddie were good at making sure they were selling to dope people, and Shawn Stussy noticed that early on, so he ended up partnering with both of them to open the Stüssy store in New York together. Having helped open Stüssy in New York, James later on decided to open shop and called it Supreme, but Eddie, on the other hand, shortly after moved to L.A. and opened the first Union store, which was called the Stüssy Union. The store later split between Stüssy and Union, and Eddie was running both stores at the same time, but around the early 2000s when the sneaker world was looking at streetwear to collaborate a lot, Eddie noticed that much like Stüssy selling so well and got to the point of deserving its own store, the limited edition/rare sneaker market was just getting started and was doing really well. So, Eddie teamed up with James Bond and opened UNDEFEATED, which was like the sneaker extension of Union.
So that's basically the relationship between the brands, and it all started between Eddie, James, and Mary Ann that grew these brands out of Union. As they grew, they opened their own doors and lived their own lives, I suppose.
2009 was the year you bought Union from Eddie?
That’s correct.
A few other interviews mentioned that even before Union Tokyo opened, Tokyo and Japan had a tight connection with Union from parallel buying. Can you tell us what this was about?
One of the things I quickly realized when I started to work in Union at New York, if 10 people walked into the store on any given day, and on Sundays we didn't even have that many people back then, but 7 of them were Japanese tourists or students. So, early on, streetwear was something heavily appreciated and supported by young Japanese people.
I liken it to back when American Jazz musicians went to Paris because the French were very understanding and supportive of the musicians. Even though they were creating amazing music, they were barely making a living in America, where Jazz is from, so they were flown out to Paris and lived a better life there instead. In a lot of ways, streetwear was almost exclusively created in America early on. But I would say it was consumed by the Japanese more than any other culture and definitely even more than in America.
So, that silk road between Japan and America started to develop at that time, and that's how I met really good friends that I've known for years; people from Japan who were living in America that supported all the brands of streetwear early on. You really can't tell the story of streetwear without a huge chapter, if not multiple, of how young Japanese subcultures were supportive to the point where streetwear wouldn't have survived without them.
Even today, if you count how many stores the top streetwear brands have around the world, there's a good chance they have a substantial number of stores opened in Japan, more than any other location. That shows you how important Japan is to streetwear. Heck, Union has two stores, one of them in Tokyo, and the third store in Osaka.
You guys opened Union Tokyo in 2018, which you are also the owner of today. What is it like to be able to have a Union store in Japan, a country that has been so tight with Union?
Yes we opened Union Tokyo in 2018 and we opened UNION Osaka in October of 2022! Having the opportunity to open Union in Japan was a dream come true, because of my love for this country that up until that point, I had visited 4 times a year for over a dozen years and had truly fallen in love with. I recalled that up until 2004 when Supreme opened in Los Angeles, they already had like 10 stores in Japan and only one store outside of Japan which was the original NYC store. Stüssy has something like 35 stores in Japan, so it made sense to me that we open up in Japan and even have multiple stores in Japan before other stores in the USA. Japan as a country has always supported the streetwear industry more than any other geography, and so it made sense for us to open up here.
We’ve heard you mention your first visit to Japan in the early 2000s as the time you first got into sneaker culture. How has the Japanese approach to sneakers influenced your own approach to designing a sneaker?
I was into sneaker culture way before visiting Japan, but it was always a niche subculture, where I was from. The thing that I learned when I first visited Japan was that it was not just a subculture there, but an entire industry had been built around it. This was back in early 2000, before the whole world was awakened to this industry and before it became the huge global industry that it is now!
We also understand that one of the first Japanese brands sold at Union was from Hiroshi Fujiwara. What role did he play in connecting the dots between Japan and the rest of the world?
He played a pivotal role. Asking what Hiroshi Fujiwara did for streetwear is like asking what Michael Jordan did for basketball. He didn't play a role in the team, but he was the team. The brands that we started to carry at Union were directly from Hiroshi, and Hiroshi's relationship came from Eddie Cruz being good friends with him. He introduced his brands and his friend's brands to Eddie, and that's how we got to import Japanese brands into the store.
It's funny how I'm still trying to figure out how a kid from Brooklyn can walk into the store and know about the Electric Cottage jacket we had without really having Instagram or the internet at the time. Early on, we actually didn't have a lot of stock in the New York store, and we only had Electric Cottage and GOODENOUGH, but Eddie in L.A. was actually buying more Japanese brands than the New York store. He was the one who brought in NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, corefighter, Tenderloin, and Hiroshi's litany of brands into Union. Although the two stores were related, they weren't necessarily franchises, so when Eddie moved to L.A., he was doing his thing, and that's how we operate our Union stores in L.A. and Tokyo today. I don't tell the Tokyo store what to buy, and they buy brands that we don't sell in L.A.
It’s funny how you mentioned corefighter, because we’re good friends with Wataru Hashimoto’s son and he’s managing a brand called Car Service right now. It’s peculiar how brands from the Urahara generation are experiencing a resurgence in popularity again, but what was it like witnessing the Ura-hara scene in its heyday from abroad?
I was blown away because when you think about American fashion, streetwear in particular, streetwear with no chaser was a $24 t-shirt back then. It wasn't logo-driven but, in fact, anti-logo and more about the graphic identity of a story, often referencing things only a subculture would understand. "You know about that shit?" or "you know about that band?" was at the essence, and that's what I really appreciated about American streetwear.
What I loved about the Ura-hara scene was that they were elevating streetwear. Although streetwear may have roots in America, a $24 t-shirt was sold the way a $24 t-shirt is sold to a teenager in America: it's on a rack with a bunch of other clothes, not necessarily presented in a beautiful way. But out in Tokyo, there was a lot of effort put into how these things were presented, and a lot of energy was put into ensuring quality as well. They weren't just buying Hanes blanks like we were, but they were making custom t-shirts made from better cotton. Later on, they were also making beautiful high-end cotton hoodies/jackets, but the Ura-hara scene's attention to detail really helped in elevating and evolving traditional streetwear in a witty manner.
One of my assets being my mixed upbringing, I'm a little bit of an outsider. I'm able to look at things from a different perspective, and I think the Ura-hara scene was looking at American streetwear in an omakase light and changing it in a witty and interesting way. Quite frankly, it was mind blowing then, and it's still as mindblowing now. I became a student then, and I still am to this day, so I enjoy walking around and seeing how certain cultures and scenes are reinterpreted to evolve streetwear fashion in Tokyo, and it still hasn't stopped.
As far as youth culture in Japan revitalizing the Ura-hara scene, I think it's been a long time coming, and I'm happy to hear that. But I think, and nothing against the core Japanese brands known globally now, there's a place for new young energy that people haven't seen yet. I'm fortunate enough to be visiting Japan three times a year for damn near 20 years now, so I've seen the other brands. They probably don't like to be called this way, but I call them domestic brands because you don't see them outside of Japan. It's still the same 10~15 core brands that have expanded overseas, but for the most part, there are hundreds of super dope Japanese domestic brands that are thriving, and you won't get to see them unless you come here.
Even among the hundreds, most of them have been around for a long time, so I'm still excited to see what the next new young thing is and be part of it. It's funny because we just had our in-person meeting with the Tokyo team that we couldn't have for the last two and a half years because of the pandemic, and we realized that most of our Zoom meetings before focused on how we were going to survive the pandemic and didn't really take the time to plan for the future. So, this was one of the first meetings where we got to talk about how we can start incubating new young brands and export them to America, the same way the L.A. store imports American brands into the Tokyo store. Typically, Japanese brands are a little bit slower in generating momentum, but I'm very much looking forward to this project.
We’ve talked about a bunch of brands and Union’s history in mixing genres of fashion, but out of all the brands you were able to work with are there any brands that stand out or have a special place in your heart?
It's a long list, and for the sake of transparency, I don't do the buying anymore, but I've been pivoting my focus on creating our own products lately. So, the brands that mean most to me will probably be the ones we've had with us for a while, although I understand that this may sound hypocritical considering how I was talking about wanting to bring in more new brands. I've hired people to do that, but if you're relying on my 47-year-old ass to know about the next new streetwear kid from Japan, it's a mistake! We have a team to find those brands.
The brand that means the most to me we've carried in the store is Vision Street Wear. They were a really important part of the transfer from when I was working for Union to owning it, and they were in the middle of their major pivot at the same time. Although we weren't actively working together, I admit that I was inspired by what they were doing, and I wanted that to be a part of the microcosm of how we were going to grow the store.
Early on, visvim was a footwear brand, and that was around the mid-2000s. By 2009, when the balance of power changed from Eddie to me, was also right around the time visvim was really starting to concentrate on apparel. Again, it was more coincidental than anything, but growing and pivoting together was very special to me. Hiroki Nakamura's take on fashion/apparel was quite unique and revolutionary to me, so I used that; we weren't necessarily actively using it by having a plan, but it rather organically happened. Today, when you think of Union, you think of how it's known to be a mix of high and low, but us growing with visvim really set the table for that to happen.
I can imagine how different designers might hear this story and not be able to appreciate it, but if they can't, that's because they're not understanding the story. If you think about American streetwear, which is typically affordable t-shirts and so on, when you add Ura-hara Japanese streetwear, which is an elevated apparel with a higher price point, for me, it's still streetwear, but that was the next evolution for us, and visvim was the touchpoint for Union to springboard us into high fashion. Before we were carrying visvim, we didn't have a lot of fashion labels, but they became the bridge for quality, sensibility, and attention to detail of Japanese streetwear while also pushing it to fashion.
You have to remember the store pre-exists me, and I was in middle school when Union started, but different owners from different eras have what they can call their own. So, when people look at my era of what I'm doing with Union now, I'm probably somewhere between the guy that embraced Ura-hara; I didn't start it but really embraced it, and the guy that brought in the high-low mix of fashion. Consequently, visvim ends up being the brand that was uniquely important at that time, and it's funny thinking about who, when, and how things were happening, because the other story that comes to mind is Eddie's friendship with Hiroshi.
Embracing the Ura-hara streetwear scene wasn't really happening in New York but In L.A. early on. Since Hiroshi was good friends with Eddie, he had brought in some of Hiroshi's brands, but not necessarily as a business model. What ended up happening was from the outside looking in, the brands that the L.A. store had were hard to find and sought after in New York, but the L.A. store didn't really understand how it was appreciated globally. If you think about it in the early-2000s, L.A. wasn't the apex city that it has become now. People weren't really traveling to L.A. as they did to New York, but they had goods that the world wanted, so when I moved out there and eventually took over the store, I remember being like, "Yo, you guys have WTAPS, NEIGHBORHOOD, A Bathing Ape, and Silas." But they were buying it kind of as a hobby, but I knew that people wanted this shit, and you weren't just able to call up Hiroshi back then.
On the first buy trip, I went crazy and bought so much of it because I knew people wanted it, but that really sort of changed things, too, since actually having a lot of it helped Union as a brand. Even though the L.A. store was selling it early on, the orders were only sold to a handful of customers, maybe even just the staff at times. Early on, I remember in New York when Union didn't have those brands NORT/RECON had them because STASH and FUTURA were really tight with Hiroshi, so they actually sold those stuff there. But again, it was so limited that you were lucky to get a t-shirt. So, when I did get the chance to buy these clothes, I went crazy and bought a silly amount and almost got fired over it.
How do you keep brand curation fresh when everything is out there online?
Dope gear is dope gear, and we are always looking for freshness. Yes, these days designers don’t need to do things that traditional way, and by traditional I mean back in the days, a new streetwear brand would typically get “discovered” by launching with us. But today, there are so many options and outlets since the industry has become so big. That said, we still have our eye that people trust and appreciate. We still have our provenance that people rely on, and we still have our talent that comes with over 20 years of experience to not only be able to judge new dope brands, but also judge whether they have staying power that aren’t just trends. That is our “super power” for lack of a better term.
UNION x Nike
Moving on to today, seeing that you have a beautiful family, what does a day in the life of the Gibbs family look like?
My oldest son Solomon is a senior in high school, and he's quite independent, which is good. He wakes himself up in the morning, also a foodie, so he cooks for himself. He usually likes my wife's cooking because mine's not good enough for him. He drives himself to school, he's a very good student, and I'm very proud to announce he's into fashion. We just learned last week that he got into Central Saint Martins, so he'll be going to CSM next year. Super happy about that. Largely he's kind of raising himself at this point. He's a very busy dude, but that's good, and he'll be out of the house in September, doing his own thing.
Our youngest son Ishmael is a freshman in high school, and he's very much into sports. Big athlete, and he plays for every sports team in school, so he spends a lot of time in school. In particular, he's into football, so he spends most of his time making sure he's keeping up with school work. But we have to wake him up in the morning, which is sad but true. We get him out the door, and when he comes home, we eventually get him fed and make sure he's doing his homework; that's the daily routine. As easy as it is to manage our oldest son, we're doing a lot of work for our youngest.
Typically my wife and I wake up at around 6:00am. Get Ishmael up and running. Even though we work on a lot of stuff together, my wife and I have different offices, so I head to my office. I'm not complaining since it's a great thing, but Union has been growing rapidly, so we're experiencing a lot of growing pains as of late. On any given day, I'm usually surprised by what I have to deal with, but for the most part, I do a lot around the designs. I have a small team that works on designing the collaborations, but I'm also dealing with what's going on on the internet or talking about marketing plans for a new product we're selling.
I also talked to the Tokyo team about things that we want to figure out around there, but I usually get to work around 8:00am, and once I get to work, I put my head down. I'm a little bit of a workaholic, so I usually work through lunchtime, but my day typically ends around 6:00~7:00pm. I go home and we're kind of a cosmopolitan family. I wish this was not true, but we often do not have dinner together, sadly. Like I said, my oldest son cooks for himself, and my youngest son doesn't get home until 8:00~9:00pm at night, so he'll eat whatever we have left. My wife and I usually eat together and catch up on the day. I probably shouldn't admit this to cool young hip people, but I like my sleep. I go to sleep early, so I'm usually in bed around 10:00~11:00pm. That's about it.
Does your son ever cook for the family?
You know what, that’s a problem in the household. He only ever cooks for himself.
What does the future of Union look like? What’re the next few steps?
Union is like an amalgamation of a lot of different sub-silos of business. We're a mixed brand shop that sells other people's stuff, and even then, we buy more value-driven streetwear that are $40~50 t-shirts, Japanese streetwear, high fashion garments, and everything in the middle.
We have the brands that we've carried for 15~20 years and the relationships we want to upkeep and keep growing. We also have the new brands that we're always looking for, but those two things require a different muscle. So, even just our wholesale business on its own is like a living organism, but we also have brick and mortar stores in L.A. and Tokyo. E-Commerce is also a channel that sells globally, but that's just that. Then you add in our collaborations which is a big part of our brand, and so we're constantly managing and wanting to grow that. The Union brand is also a private label that's relatively young and growing, and it needs a lot of attention.
I think what I've tried to do is take the baton and carry the race that James, Mary Ann, and Eddie had started, so foundationally, Union isn't so different from what they started. The brands, faces, and names might have changed, but what we do; the sensibilities, the energy, and the narrative of what we're trying to do haven't really changed in 30 years, and I like that. That doesn't mean we can't be fresh, carry new brands, and have 21st-century issues that we're tackling within the growth we want, but I appreciate that we've never really tried to be a fad or a trend.
So when I look to the future of Union, I look for us to be able to continue doing what we've done, which has been being a marketplace, but also a social hub that's community-based and driven for streetwear. I really look forward to doing more and growing that, but we also want to be a place where new up-and-comers can showcase and grow. Tomorrow, I want to start selling a brand that in 15 years I could be like, "wow, I've grown up with this person," the same way I can say about Shin Takizawa from NEIGHBORHOOD, or Tetsu Nishiyama from WTAPS, and Hiroki Nakamura from visvim. I've just mentioned a bunch of Japanese brands, but in as much as I say that the truth of the matter is, because of the culture of streetwear within Japan, those are the brands that we've grown and stayed with.
There are so many other brands that we've started with, but because Japan is family-oriented, we've lost brands that didn't share cultural values with the Japanese as they grew up. No bad blood, but it's telling how I'm still good friends with the people I've mentioned, and still appreciate the "I want to grow" mentality. In fact, there's a change I'd like to make: I want to see how we can affect the same relationship through non-Japanese brands. I want to grow a brand and have them stay with us for a really long time. Other brands that we carry are people that we've grown up with, like Noah and Awake with Angelo Baque.
Through the lens of a timeline, our own in-house brand is still an infant. Fast forward 10~15 years from now, my hope is that we have all those things. I don't want to be just Union, but a union brand where there's always a healthy mix of brands, and if you zoom way out, it's a union of all these things.
Do you have any words of advice for the younger generation?
That's a good question, and it's often asked. I feel like my answer is stale, but it's heartfelt. I guess to the degree that I'm sitting here and giving advice means that certain people think I'm in a place where I've been successful. I'm not suggesting that I haven't, but success is in the eye of the beholder. I admit that I feel successful and accomplished by what I've been able to achieve, so I'm not suggesting I don't. But I feel really really really blessed in how I've been able to stay true to myself and my beliefs.
I've been able to share that story/narrative and build/grow it with people who wanted to participate in it as much as I wanted to participate in their story. I was able to do this by not chasing trends. Not chasing what someone else wants Union to be, and it's always been what I wanted it to be. Being honest and fair with my partners, staff, and co-workers about what our intentions are; being transparent, and sharing those ideas have been integral. It's also been really important for me to grow my own community and support it, not always thinking about the dollar bills.
I'm always conflicted when asked about how I can give advice to a young person because, on the one hand, there's this honest and pure advice I want to give saying, "believe in yourself and work hard," and that is not untrue. But I think it’s also true that there are people and entities out there trying to take advantage of you. You have to be mindful of that, and you have to look for honest/organic relationships. I've always tried to put myself in mutually beneficial relationships. So, if you're in a relationship where you're the only one gaining, something's wrong, and it's going to catch up. Looking for the long play is what I'm into, but I admit that in today's high-paced world, it could be difficult to navigate. So you have to find some mentors that have your best interest at heart, but also don't forget to put the work in and yourself out there. It's a lot of things to keep in mind, but it's a tough world out there.
I think the one piece of advice I've received from my parents that's held true is to really know who you are and do the things that support that person. 9 times out of 10, the long version of that will be successful. I will admit I feel truly blessed since not many people can tell the story of working a minimum wage job at a company folding t-shirts and within 12 years, turning it around by buying the company. That's not going to be everyone's story, but again, this was partly because of how the owners embraced me. If they hadn't embraced me that way I wouldn't have worked this hard, so if you're in that situation and you're not getting that love, don't give it. But if you're getting the love you should give it, too. As a 20-year-old, I worked for the store in 1996, just as hard as I work today with the same pride.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with us!
Interview - Casey Takumi Omori
Text - Joe Goodwin
Interview Photos - ifucktokyo
