Hang Ten

HANG TEN

California surf culture has been such an inescapable force of Americana for most of us—it's hard to recall a time when this iconic West Coast lifestyle was in its raw and rebelliousstage.
With that, a pair of iconic feet, the first ever board shorts, and a phenomenon was born. Hang Ten founded the first surf clothing brand. But we didn't just make clothes. We understood exactlyhow action sports, culture, and fashion are all part of the same animal.
Enter 1960. A young surfer named Duke Boyd asks seamstress Doris Boeck to stitch together a pair of nylon trunks tough enoughto handle the waves. She sews a pair of little feet on the shorts—a subtle homage to surfing's greatest skill. Word of the world's first "board shorts" makes its way up the California coast, and withit, a scrappy little start-up called Hang Ten.
Established by surfers for surfers, Hang Ten had natural insight into its core audience, since all it had to do was look in the mirror. But rather thanlapse into smug self-satisfaction, the brand instead rode the edge of the emerging culture into public consciousness. In the process, Hang Ten set the stage for how to combine action sports with itsall-encompassing lifestyle.
From the beginning, Hang Ten led the mission of delivering extreme sports from the fringes into the American mainstream. In everything from surfing and skating toskiing, snowboarding and motocross, Hang Ten was the first to sponsor events and turn kids into athletes, establish major competitions and get them showcased in magazines and TV shows around the world.Moreover, Hang Ten defined an entire genre of fashion all its own, sparking the popularity of the first board short, cords and, yarn-dyed tees thereby setting the standard for casual SoCal fashion.Today, one can cross all seven continents and see evidence of Hang Ten's influential footprints, whether it's in these iconic fashion trends followed by innovators and imitators alike, or in the mass...