What's in a name? More specifically, what's in a clothing brand's name? Answer: everything and nothing. In this business, actual people's names — Gucci, Levi's, Chanel, Calvin Klein — and assumed names — Nike, Patagonia, Skims, GAP — mingle in a stew of assumed heritage and intent, simultaneously striving to be equated with proprietary product while also eagerly attributable to any ol' thing. Supreme usually means "hoodie" but could also mean "brick." These names thus become vacant, generalized, untethered to a singular object or idea or person for the sake of selling more stuff.
Not in the case of Heron Preston.
Heron Preston is a person, a 42-year-old designer, DJ, artist, father, world-class conversationalist, and a veritable streetwear lifer who got his start geeking out with Virgil Abloh over pioneering blog The Brilliance!. But over the past decade, "Heron Preston" came to mean an all-encompassing luxury label that sold everything from sneakers to sweats to shoulder bags printed with the NASA logo. It even had a flagship store in Hong Kong.
Preston was its face but often only its face, one man in the middle of a company owned by another company itself owned by another company. Was he named for the brand or was it named for him?
In July 2025, eight years after the Heron Preston line launched under the New Guards Group umbrella and following a prolonged legal tussle, Preston finally acquired the rights to his eponymous label. And, in December, Heron Preston was born anew. The brand, that is. But also the man.
This is not the same Heron Preston that was once turning out so many hats printed with "style" in Cyrillic letters and tees printed with illustrations of birds — they were herons, get it? — and yet, in many ways, it is. One of the first items that Preston's new label released was a hoodie printed with that original bird design accompanied a new phrase on its sleeve: "A desire to establish as unique and independent." The operative word here is "independent."
It's surprisingly rare that a designer successfully starts fresh having departed the label that made him famous and even rarer that a designer reclaims the label that he himself made famous. And, in Preston's case, that the label shares his name makes the situation that much more uncommon. But with grassroots support and an effervescent self-starting drive, Heron Preston is back. Both of them. Highsnobiety met up with the gregarious designer at his New York studio to get a fuller picture of Heron Preston's rebirth.
What was your plan for when you finally reclaimed your brand?
What would I do? I would tear it down. I wasn't happy for many years. It was always my wish that I could get my brand back and control it myself. My brand [was like] a house that had people coming in and out leaving behind a bad energy. So I was like, "Man, when I get the brand back, I want to start over."
Can you talk about about the process of getting the brand back?
[Over the past few years] I found the strength to get up every day, tackling those things that I didn't want to tackle, like advisor calls, calls with investment bankers, finding the right lawyer. I had to do, like, 1,000 different calls all saying the same thing. I'm so happy that I got out of it.
Did you ever consider moving on from the Heron Preston brand and starting something new?
When something's your name, there's emotional attachment. If the brand had been called, you know, "Water," it'd be different. But I am Heron Preston, so it's like this double consciousness of taking back the brand and also taking back a bit of myself.
It's crazy that other people can own your name. I thought that's what you're supposed to do to become a successful designer. "Oh, someone else should own your name, and they can run it and you just focus on creativity." I learned the hard way, but I learned.
What'd you learn?
It's bigger than product. This is personal. There's a real person here, you know, it's not a board or shareholders. It's a family-owned business. I'm just trying to build my own world and take care of my fam, and have fun, and connect with my friends again. I miss my friends. I miss my friends so much.
For three years, I wasn't going to fashion week, I wasn't going to events. I wasn't showing my face. There were moments when I was depressed, moments when I was embarrassed. "What am I gonna tell people? I'm under NDAs and confidentiality agreements. What do I even tell people? Where have I been? Where have you been, Heron?" I had to build back up my confidence. I had to surround myself with people who loved me.
I didn't want my story to be, "Oh, Heron? He lost his brand. He gave up. He stopped fighting. The partners took the brand." No, that's not my story.
What's your headspace right now?
There's a silent war going on. A friend of mine, a photographer, just came by, and he was like, "Man, we're not protected in the industry." Where's our protection as creatives? It's a really cutthroat business at the end of the day. I think about this a lot with athletes, where you got a kid who maybe did a year or two in college, gets drafted to the NBA, then he's making $30 million a year. There's no guidance on how to make this last forever, right?
You have a lot of wolves around you, a lot of vultures around you. You have a lot of people who want to exploit you. It's scary. People want your money, people want your light. People want to be associated but not put in real work.
On that note, how are you currently approaching that real work?
Once you lose your curiosity, it's over. That's what I'm looking to tap into when I wake up every morning. I like to stay in bed for the first hour before I even try getting on the phone. Most of the time I just lay there and just be and just exist and just let the world speak to me, maybe trying to tap into a new idea I dreamed about.
And how does this conscious approach manifest in the new Heron Preston line?
I'm not making as much stuff now. I was making way too much product. For me, less is more. It's not as loud but I'm not abandoning what I really loved about streetwear and graphics and logos. It's a grown-up twist on what I was doing in the past, because I've grown up. I've matured. I'm a father now.
The foundation [of the new collection] is a neutral color palette, like concrete or a blank canvas. A [literal] foundation. That's where I get the black, the whites, the grays. The camouflage comes from the origins of the brand but also I just got through a battle. We're even developing our own recycled jersey and fleece which really points to the new world that I've discovered, but layering that in with the old world.
This spring, I really wanna tap back into the old Heron. The old Heron is t-shirts. I was making t-shirts. I was doing graphics. I was selling t-shirts out of my bedroom.
Having made it out the other side, what's something that you'd wanna pass on to a younger creative?
We don't learn about people who operate with bad intent. That's not something we learn about in school, right? It's really hard to assess someone's character. But I don't want anyone out there to be afraid of a partnership or collaborating with someone. [Sometimes] you gotta take that leap of faith.
My advice is: if it's not feeling right, you have to walk away. You have to get out of there.
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