Yoki (Jeff Yokoyama)

is a twenty-five year veteran designer and creative entrepreneur who has spent his entire career dreaming up and creating youth-focused clothing brands.

The companies he has personally hand-crafted over the years have each come to represent marked changes in his industry and clear trends in fashion. Jeff got his start in the industry as a 24 year old Southern California kid with a vision for a youth oriented surf brand that would push the boundaries of surf and fashion.

In 1980, he created Maui & Sons and began selling it directly to local surfers and kids on beaches and in schools, changing the rules of the game immediately. The operation moved from the trunk of his car into a multi-million dollar business in a matter of months.  Maui & Sons would come to be known as one of the original surf brands and an industry leader, and Jeff’s organic launch approach would become a staple practice of all action sports brands that would come after him.

In 1989 Jeff started his second clothing brand, the more rebellious and rougher feeling Pirate Surf. In typical Jeff Yokoyama style, the line was exactly on-point with the times, and the early 1990s grunge trend helped carry Pirate Surf into quick success.  Jeff would later sell the line to surf apparel giant Quiksilver, and move on to create and launch a brand called Modern Amusement in 1995.

Modern Amusement found its foothold by fusing higher end fashion into the coastal, relaxed, apparel that had been Jeff’s pedigree.  This crossover brand grew steadily and ultimately saw major international success and great industry attention and respect.

Between building and selling these many successful brands, Jeff constantly moved on to new projects, consulting and designing for the biggest names in apparel, from Quiksilver to Stussy.  Jeff’s style has always been recognizable and his design talent has remained in high demand throughout the industry and throughout the years.

In recent times he has launched yet another clothing brand, Generic Youth (GY).  An amalgam of Jeff’s past ventures, GY draws inspiration from vintage surf and high fashion while ‘greenly’ utilizing overstock fabrics and trims to create unique, one-of-a-kind garments with a personality each their own.

Through his own brands and his outside design work, Jeff Yokoyama has maintained a record of flawlessly creative ingenuity that has kept his designs relevant and groundbreaking throughout a long and continuing career.  Although there is clearly much more left to be seen from Jeff’s hand and head, he has already created a lifetime’s worth of achievements in the world of apparel.