Christian Audigier

Christian Audigier was born in Avignon in 1958 and entered the fashion industry at fifteen, eventually moving to Los Angeles where his guerrilla marketing instincts found their fullest expression. He became the architect of two early-2000s cultural phenomena: the Von Dutch trucker hat craze, which he popularised through celebrity seeding, and the Ed Hardy apparel line, built on the tattoo art of Don Ed Hardy and which grew into a global brand before Audigier sold it to Iconix in 2011. The fragrance line bearing his name launched in 2009, adding a personal label to the portfolio he had already established with Ed Hardy perfumes. The Audigier aesthetic — rhinestone-encrusted excess, Gothic script, the intersection of Americana and Hollywood glam — translated into bold, maximalist orientals and fresh-spicy masculines that appealed to the same demographic drawn to his clothing. Audigier was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome in 2015 and died in July of that year at fifty-seven. The fragrance brand that bears his name continues to trade on the nostalgic appeal of early-2000s streetwear culture, occupying a bittersweet corner of the accessible mass market — a monument to a very specific moment in celebrity fashion.