CAMELLA EHLKE

When Camella Ehlke founded her clothing label Triple Five Soul in 1989 out of a beat-up storefront in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the term streetwear didn’t really exist—and at the time, it certainly wasn’t a global $185-billion industry. The designer started sewing pieces made from dead stock fabrics, blending the colorful styles of New York hip-hop and California surf into one covetable downtown look. Her streetwise clothes were embraced by rappers, DJs, skaters, artists, and the like. Before long, Triple Five Soul was stocked across the globe, and the label was selling millions of dollars of clothes a year.