California Apparel News

Bryden Lando adds an artistic touch to an HX surfboard.

There is the idyllic Hawaiian resort paradise that you see in postcards and then there is the Hawaii inhabited by locals with a mischievous territorial bite.

Or as Bryden Lando puts it on an HX graphic tee stamped with a pineapple and crossbones, “Aloha Also Means Goodbye.” (Though the flick is not set in Hawaii, the spirit of Bodhi’s crew in “Point Break” came to my mind.)

Lando—a Maui native and co-founder of the L.A.-based contemporary clothing line Future Heretics—channeled the beachcomber lifestyle for his new surf-inspired sublabel, HX. The line was shown during the Sept. 10-12 run of the Class @ ASR trade show at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego.

HX’s graphic tees range from the mellow and surf-specific “Eat Pray Surf” to a city gritty vampire fanged mouth paired with the text “Teenage Lust.” Skinny jeans in bleached-out washes and colors have a fashion edge like the Future Heretics line but at a sharper $89 retail price. The sublabel has sold to stores such as Urban Outfitters.

Completing the surfer look was the debut of HX Surfboards in partnership with Damien Raquinio, a fellow Hawaiian surfer who has been shaping boards for a decade under the name Ascend Surfboards. “He just understood the way the boards were shaped and the balance of the science [of making a surfboard] and the actual surfing itself,” said Lando, who has been riding boards shaped by Raquinio for eight years. Raquinio already had a stable of sponsored riders from Hawaii and Australia, who will now be sponsored under the HX surfboard brand.

A tee from the HX label.

Board shaper Damien Raquinio with his handiwork at the trade show.