Tony // Hidn Showroom

Costa Mesa, March 28 2024

Can you tell our viewers a little bit about yourself. What's your showroom about, what you're doing?

My name is Tony. We’re in the Hidn showroom. I've had my background in archive design clothing from 2016 to 2019, working at Horror Vacoi in Los Angeles. That really helped establish my love for not just clothes, but particularly clothes that have an impact on the history of art, design and stuff that we put on our body. That's the common thread that ties us all together today. This showroom has that in its DNA with how we curate our second-hand and our brand-new merchandise. Half of our store is carefully selected second-hand goods that are sourced from all over the world, featuring brands from Europe, Asia, and America. The other half is wholesale accounts that we brought into the showroom that I think represent the new age of fashion. So, we mix the new and the old. For instance, we're a retailer of the popular streetwear label, Thug Club, as well as Sovereign Air from Saigon. We're trying to represent different facets of fashion all over the globe and just bring it out here to my home, Orange County.

Can you expand a little bit about how you started this whole thing? What were you doing before this that led you down to this path in the first place?

So, when I was working and just even being in LA all the time, I always thought to myself, how could I bring this back home in a way that represents myself? Community is a very big part of what's important to me. I think the people that come here recognize that. It's like at the end of the day, I don't really care if you buy something as much as I care that you have a good time and that we're able to build a little hub for people to come and hang out. I would say I can't even count on my hands how many near and dear friends I have in my personal circle that originally started off by just coming in here as clients. In here, really organic bonds are formed. And sure, we connect over fashion, but at the end of the day, it's people being people. But I started during COVID, man. COVID was really a great opportunity to just try something. Not many people know this, but originally this showroom was the proof of concept we had. We didn't know what to call it, so we called it Hidden Street Market. Kind of like Dover Street Market. We took their logo and flipped it. We had an IG, and got some traction. And then they actually banned our account. They copyright-striked us essentially on IG. But then that's when I was like, wait, maybe something's being done right. Maybe I can actually try this and build a foundation in Orange County and then just grow through that, elevate the experience and just make something that I'm comfortable with, that people can come and enjoy what I bring in.

In talking about how you curate stuff, could you dive into that and how that mixes with your own personal style? I think it's difficult sometimes to separate your personal style with what actually sells in the store. 

I think that's actually one of the most difficult parts of having a store is curation. Balancing what you like versus what you know other people will buy. It has to be a healthy blend of both. I think if I were to just put this store full of only things that I enjoy, nothing would sell. So, it's important for me to stay up to date with current trends. What kind of silhouettes and styles are popular, not just here, but in different countries. Then I try my best to blend both my taste with what the mainstream would enjoy and bring it to a nice, healthy medium. We don't always get it right. In the sense of performance, some things stay here longer than they should. But I think as of late, it's been pretty healthy, and it's nice to see things come and go. For instance, not everybody can afford a $10,000 Issey Miyake 1996 cargo jacket, right? But, by introducing new brands with wholesale accounts, I think more people are down to drop like $200 for a pair of pants. Like, that's a lot more accessible. And I think at the end of the day, I still also appreciate these new brands that we're bringing in. So yeah, it's just a healthy balance.

What does your customer demographic look like?

It's honestly such a mixed bag. I get so many people of Latino descent. I get a lot of Asian people. We're getting a lot more white people. It's just Orange County, man. It's everything, everyone. And it's so nice because then I get to connect to so many different people. Again, we can all just touch base back to clothes, but then everyone has different stories too. I like to also ask people, "Well, how did you get into clothes? What brought you here?" And more often than not, it's a different story. I take that, I ingrain it, and then I keep it in mind for when I'm trying to strategize how to market to people overall.

I know you mentioned you've brought in a couple recent brands like Thug Club. I know you recently added Haven Court. Are there any future brands that you'd like to carry in the store in the future?

There are some brands that are just near and dear to me that I really appreciate, that whether or not it performs well, I want to bring in. Like Ready Made from Japan—they’re so cool. Our next big brand we’re gonna bring in is a brand called AFI. They're from Tokyo. They're super big in their local scene, but they haven't necessarily made their biggest mark internationally yet. The owner, Youth, long-time friend, he actually used to own an archive store in Tokyo called Empty Room. He’s since branched off and focused on AFI, his own brand that, to me, encompasses all of his interest and his expertise working in the industry. He’s worked with Kenzo Shimizu, who made Needles. He’s worked with X at Hysteric Glamour. I believe he’s right on the mark and will be what we consider an archive brand that people know and love in due time. I'm really happy to introduce it out here in the Western Hemisphere, because his stuff is sick. 

I want to dive deep into archive in general, that term. Everyone has a different definition for what archive means. What is your definition of archive?

I think, unlike vintage, archive is unique. I don’t think it has a clear, objective definition just yet. Whereas with vintage, people say, "Oh, it’s 20-plus years old, it’s vintage." For me, archive could be anything that’s just a past season. Like, even a post that you post on Instagram today, you can archive it, so technically, it’s an archive post, right? For me, it’s just anything that was. Even something that releases today, next season it’s something that was. 

Yeah but I think some people consider certain brands archive too. 

To me, if you're going to say, "Oh yeah, this brand’s archive," more often than not it’s a brand that may not be around anymore. You see a lot of brands popping off that people consider archive brands such as La Grande Blue, LGB, or If Six Was Nine. These are brands that may or may not be doing stuff anymore within respect. Now, I'm sure that’s a brand that is archive. That’s just me. Some people might have a completely different interpretation.

I want to get your opinion on rep culture. Do you mess with people that wear reps? Has it affected your job at all? 

I think when it comes down to the person, if someone walks in here wearing reps head to toe, I really wouldn’t mind. I think the idea of reps being stigmatized is very much rooted in Western culture. That was a big eye-opening moment for me when I first went to Asia and toured across Vietnam and Korea. You see a lot of people wearing fakes. Nobody bats an eye because at the end of the day, it really is just clothing. But when it comes to the respect of work, it can be a little bit difficult. Let’s say somebody wants to bring in stuff to sell, and they bring a bunch of reps, and I find out after the fact. I have to go tell them, and that gets a bit frustrating. But i’m never going to knock someone that wears reps because, again, not everybody can afford a $10,000 jacket, but some people just want to appreciate it, right? I think it’s important to recognize that you don’t necessarily have to be rich to appreciate a certain style of fashion. But it also depends on how you frame it too. If you're coming into a business trying to sell clothes and knowingly just selling reps, I think that’s a bit dishonest. If you're upfront with it, I respect that a little bit more. But it does get difficult because reps do get really, really good.

Have you just kind of self-taught yourself over the years through experience of identifying reps? Have there been times where people lie to you?

All the time. I think at the end of the day we’re consumers of the culture. We’ve been finessed. We’ve been fleeced. You just learn. It helped for me that I actually used to do the authentication on Grailed for a few years, so that experience helped a lot. For anyone that would want to learn more about what are the telltale signs to legit-check something, especially with clothes, the easiest way to go about it is to compare the wash tags and index tags. 

I’m sure it's not easy to run something like this or even start something like this in the first place. So, what were a few of your biggest challenges that you faced over the years of growing this? 

Long story short, everything. First and foremost, building the right team. It’s hard to find people that are as motivated as yourself, being the brand owner. Finding people with the right skill sets and the right energy to synergize. Some people just don’t work well together, and that’s just fine. Everybody’s different. Next is learning to find the right balance in curation. That took a long time before I even got a little bit more adaptive at it. Because at first my initial curation was literally just my personal closet. I’m a hoarder, man, I love clothes. To this day, my room has an abundance of pieces that I’ll just keep. When I first wanted to open up the showroom, I filled all the racks with all the extra stuff I had. But then I found out, it doesn’t necessarily look so good together. There’s no cohesion. It feels more like an expensive garage sale than anything right now. I’m not trying to be all over the place. So, learning to build a cohesive curation of clothing was, to me, a very big point. Also, just learning how to talk and deal with people. For instance, when people are bringing in stuff that they want to sell to me, I hate being the bearer of bad news sometimes when I tell them a price they don’t want to hear. But it’s important for me to learn to inform people like, "Hey, you know, this is a business. We can’t necessarily pay you market rate because we have to be able to sell it too, or it’ll just sit on the racks." Because I’ve gone through that as well, where I’ll pay someone high for a really dope piece they’ll bring in, but then it’ll just sit for a year plus. I’m like, that wasn’t necessarily the most business-savvy move. So again, a really tough part of building a business was finding the balance between having a business mind versus doing something just because my heart tells me to do it. So, it’s a bit of both.

It’s super inspirational to see you building a community with what you’re doing. What are your plans for the future? Do you ever want to open a store in another city or expand?

It’s been a process, to say the least. We have another showroom concept coming, and I think it'll be a lot of fun to expand. I definitely want to give some representation to the Los Angeles County area because I also have a lot of roots there. That’s where I started my passion and my livelihood into all of this. I remember I was really big into the Facebook buy-sell-trade groups back in the day. There was this one particular group called Cartel Talk where I made such incredible lifelong friends. My friend, who now works at StockX, we met up in person for the first time. He was in the group too. We both just left the Supreme drop, and then we linked up. He was like, “Yo, my buddy has this really cool store. Check it out.” So, we both pulled up to the intersection of Pico and La Brea, and it was a dirty-ass area, full of auto shops, super sketchy. But in a tiny little corner, very hidden, was Los Angeles' very first archive store. At that time, I knew nothing of designer archive. I didn’t know anything besides streetwear. I came in wearing a Bape Tiger camo jacket. I had the CDG Play Converse—the black one on my left foot and the off-white one on my right foot. I thought I was hot stuff. But I walked in, and the first thing they said to me was, "Yo, we're gonna roast you, but then here, check this out. This is a brand called Undercover. This is a brand called Common Projects." And I was like, "Whoa, that's like a whole different world." I'll never forget that. So I'm gonna give my flowers to Horror Vacui. So shout out Cal, shout out Miyabi. Yeah, that was a foundational experience for me.

Could you expand a little bit on how LA is different from OC? I think OC gets overshadowed by LA. I think there's a huge community in fashion here.

Long story short, they’re just different. Because even in Orange County, we have so many different pockets. Like, you get towards the beach, it's a different vibe compared to Santa Ana. Same thing with Los Angeles. You go to WeHo, you go to downtown, East LA, there’s so many different vibes. To me, it's just different. But I do agree that Orange County is often overshadowed by Los Angeles purely because Los Angeles is heavily marketed in an international scene. That's what people know it for. It's the entertainment capital of America. But I do really want to bring representation back to folks like us out here in Orange County because we do have a strong fashion scene. I see it every day when people walk in with crazy fits. I love it. If there's one mission I have with having a showroom, it's to be able to shed some light on the people that come in here and their interests too. We got to represent Orange County as well. I post people on the IG stories all the time. Everyone that walks in has an immaculate fit. So yeah, shout out OC.

I want to run through a little quick checklist: LA versus OC and you're gonna say which is better. First one: food.

OC.

Next one: culture.

Culture just in general? OC. I love how chill it is here.

I'm not gonna lie, going into this, I thought you were gonna say LA for everything.

I’m partial because I'm a very proud Vietnamese-American. Orange County has the largest Vietnamese diaspora in the world outside of Vietnam. And this is home for me. I live in Viet Town, Little Saigon. So I love it. It makes me feel closer to my fellow countrymen. The vibes out here are definitely infinitely more chill. I don't have to deal with the 5 p.m. 405 traffic. Out here it's calm. You can be in your little bubble. It's comfortable.

Another one: nightlife.

Nightlife. I'm gonna give that to LA. LA has some of the most fun events, for sure. It's good for networking. I feel like at the networking events, it gets kind of clicky and not super fun, but it's good for professional reasons. But then there are a lot of really dope culture events, there's some of the most fun art events. I'm really into low-key cocktail bars. Shout out to the Gold Line in East LA. That's one of my favorite vinyl record bars. They're owned by Stone Throw Records. They'll have people come in and spin from their vinyl library and just make some crazy drinks, and it's a good vibe.

Another one: nature. What do you think?

Orange County. Biking through Irvine during COVID were some of my most memorable nature experiences.

Another question I wanted to ask is what is your formal college school experience? You graduated from UCR, correct?

Yes.

Do you think looking back, was it important that you went? For other people that are trying to do similar things, do you think it's worth it?

I think to keep it 110% real, there's very little that I learned in college that has been practical to what I do in my day-to-day livelihood. However, there's so many people that I've met through the college experience that have been crucial to what I do now. I can't emphasize that enough. So with my take on college, it's really important for people to go to learn to be independent. Trying to socialize and make these connections because the most seemingly mundane connections you meet through school may actually end up being super helpful for when you're trying to start a business. I also understand that in the creative field, you do not need to go to college to succeed. I stand by that. I have so many friends in the industry that are thriving that have not had a formal college degree. Because let's say you're a concert photographer, let's say you're a stylist—you don't necessarily need to go to school for that. You need to go to YouTube University, build some good taste, network and build a portfolio. Even for me, when I'm hiring people to work for product shoots and editorials, I'll look at your portfolio. What kind of work can you do? Can you deliver?

So for what you're doing, do you think you were glad that you went to college?

Yeah, I'm really glad I did, but I'm also sure that if I didn't go, I'm sure I'd be fine.

Being Vietnamese and that being super prevalent in Orange County. Could you talk about how important it is incorporating your own culture into your work?

For me, I believe my impact on trying to incorporate my ethnicity, being Vietnamese, into the business is by putting some more light on Vietnamese brands. Slowly but surely we're going to bring out more Vietnamese labels that I like. For instance, we just brought on Soulvenir. Soulvenir is super dope, run by Gen and Nui. They're fantastic. Before starting, they had an IG mood board-esque page that focuses on Vietnamese history and then putting it into pop culture, letting people know, "Oh, this is what's cool about Vietnam from the past, present, and future." And their clothes are sick. The tees that are brought into the shop are some of my favorite blanks that were made. Everything's cut and sewn. They do all the screen printing by hand. And with that said, when it comes to the Vietnamese fashion scene, people don't hear about it too much, but they're cooking out there, definitely.

You've traveled a bunch too. You've been to numerous countries and cities. What would you say are some of your favorite Countries and why?

Easy. Vietnam, Japan, and Korea. I think in that order. Vietnam is a whole different monster. I think that really taught me to understand what it means to hustle. Out there, you have young cats that don't necessarily have any resources at all that are building crazy communities, events, brands, and doing something to uplift their people. And I love that. I respect that so much. Tokyo in particular is my second home. I used to go to school out there. A lot of my best friends reside out there. A lot of people that helped shape my worldviews and my taste reside in Tokyo. Tokyo is my favorite spot to just people-watch, to trend-spot, to learn what I should bring back here to California. Korea, in a similar vein, their taste is impeccable. I really love their nightlife too. I think of everywhere in the world, nobody has their nightlife on point like Korea. I don't know if a lot of people know this, but a bottle of soju out here is seven, eight bucks when you go into a spot, right? It's less than a dollar out in Korea. So people turn up there; they drink that like water.

I think in recent years, retail is dying. I think customer shopping habits are becoming more centered around online. Do you ever see physical stores dying out completely? And how do you combat that in the first place?

I believe that a lot of big-box stores are struggling. Stores that have the traditional model, like big-box stores like Macy's and JCPenney, they're going through it because who goes there when you can go online, right? But right now for retail, I think it's the age of smaller brands, like independent brands and artists that have a really unique taste and curation to offer to people. I think now is the easiest time for small brands to blow up with social media. I get blasted by ads with small brands every single day. Like even Collegium, before I met the team, I got their ads all the time. I believe that the shopping retail experience will never go away. It's just adapting to the new landscape of social media and the internet. For big-box stores to survive, I think it's gonna take a lot because they have stakeholders, investors, and stuff, so they're not as flexible to change things up and make it as directly appealing to the younger audience. A lot of stores are shutting down. I think a lot needs to change. Because I look at malls in South Korea—they're insane. There's a mall owned by Hyundai—yes, the car brand—called The Hyundai, and it's the most insane department store I've ever seen in my life. Some genius architect went in, and he was like, "Okay, this is going to be the new vision for malls in the world." So right now, when you go into a mall in America, everything is blocky, kind of like straight lines and everything. The field of vision when you walk in a door, you can only see so many brands. The way that they're structuring the new malls of the future, starting with Asia, every vendor has a different height. It's not just like a square layout. When you walk in, you can see all these different brands at once. Everything has a different display, a different vibe. Now, if I were to take that same energy and apply it to malls out here, I believe we'd be infinitely more successful.

Do you ever see yourself closing down your store? Do you ever see yourself ever transitioning outside of being an archive store and doing something completely different?

I believe archive will always have a part in the DNA of this store. As I move forward, not just as a brand owner but as a business, I want to put more emphasis on having a more boutique shopping experience and carrying brand-new clothes with labels that I find are just really cool from around the world and bring it back here. More often than not, these brands have more accessible price points that people can buy into, and that's important to me. Because as much as I love seeing people come in and share the same appreciation I have for very expensive designer archive pieces, I understand that not everybody can afford that. And to run a business at the end of the day, if stuff's not selling, we would go under. But with this new approach, having kind of like a mix of both brand-new retail and secondary retail, it's been doing really well because I can still shed emphasis on really storied pieces like a 1996 bomber jacket that Robin Williams wore for the red carpet premiere of "Flubber," or like Yohji Yamamoto doing a collaboration with a racing leather jacket company back in 2004. Things like that—they have stories. That's so important to me because that's what really got me into what I do in the first place.

Yeah, that's super cool. Well, thank you for your time.

Of course, man. Oh, and I didn't answer that last question fully. No, I'm not going to be closing down anytime soon.