Boardroom speaks with Michael Huynh to learn how he’s changing sportswear again.
Even if you’ve never heard of Michael Huynh, you’ve certainly encountered one of his creations. Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the California-born designer and entrepreneur’s skate fashion brand Publish came up with a new kind of sweatpant. Called the jogger, Huynh pioneered a sweatpant that has since become inescapable no matter where you find yourself: at the gym, the airport, the coffee shop, the movies, a high-end restaurant. Huynh’s fingerprints have been on every day dressing since Publish was started in 2007.
These days, though, Huynh is trying to pioneer a different type of outfit. His latest venture, Students Golf, was founded in 2022 and quickly became one of the industry’s coolest brands — alongside other hybrid streetwear-sportwear operations like Metalwood and Malbon. Huynh started the brand from a sense of frustration. After medical scares forced the workaholic to pursue a leisure activity, he picked up golf, and quickly began to notice how all the cool people he played with dressed in boring ways. He explains to Boardroom via Zoom: “These were skaters, auto dudes, people like that; based on how they dressed at the club, I thought they’d be realtors, insurance brokers, or someone in finance.”
So, he set out to create a brand that married the tradition of golf with the cutting edge of modern fashion. The result is Students, one of the most exciting brands both within the sport and in menswear more generally. Sweaters, polos, hats, and pants that work on the 1st tee and a punk club, outfits that will make you the coolest dude on the course and never had an interest in pursuing a career in private equity. Students is what Michael Huynh wanted to see more of on the golf course. Ahead of the brand’s latest release, Course Studies, which is dropping on December 7, we caught up with the designer to chat about the new drop’s “technical, exploratory, and outdoorsy” vibe; the journey from the brand’s first t-shirt to their latest styles; and transitioning from a web developer to a fashion visionary.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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BOARDROOM: Where did you grow up?
Michael Huynh: I grew up in Garden Grove. I was there for 20-something years, before I moved to another city, a little closer to the beach, called Costa Mesa. Costa Mesa is a melting pot and breeding ground for artists. The community out here is really cool. A lot of skateboarders, a lot of clothing brands, a lot of upstarts. It was where most skate brands started up, on a street called Production Place. Volcom, Hurley, all these skate brands started there. I decided I needed to be closer to a city that bred creativity.
Growing up, were you into sports and fashion?
I was a nerdy web developer for a skate shop in Newport Beach called Skate Shop. I was 15 at the time, so I was working under the table as a web developer. They weren’t legally allowed to pay me, so every month I would drag a couple shopping carts into the warehouse and load up with trucks and boards. Really, really cool shit. I wasn’t really interested in clothing, though. I did web design for a while and started my own office. It was boring. I eventually designed some patterns for my uncle, who made dresses, and in doing those I learned the technicalities of how to duplicate and repeat a pattern. It was fun. After a few months, my uncle told me to start my own clothing brand. I was hesitant because I was 17, but I took a backpack to China and went to find factories. I had this dream of wanting to start a brand, but I didn’t know what the hell a tech pack was. I had a few garments I wanted to produce that were all skate-related. All the factories laughed at me.
Why?
One, because I was young, and two because I wanted to make 50 pieces. These factories had minimums that were like 1,000 pieces per style per color. All the doors were shut, but I went to Hong Kong on my way back home. I met an individual who worked at the factory and I told him what I was looking for. He laughed, and as I was walking away he asked what I was doing that night. I was like, ‘Probably heading back to the United States with this failed dream.’ He invited me to dinner and we got to know each other. I went back home, figuring I’d get back into web development, because it was easier. I got a phone call from my new friend and he asked if I wanted to work together. He started his own factory and he offered to produce my clothes. He asked for tech packs, and I had no idea what they were. They’re essentially schematics of what it takes to produce a garment. I submitted mine, and it was a clusterfuck. I booked a flight, went back to Hong Kong, lived there eight months, and I learned how to produce a tech pack and communicate with a factory. I learned how to communicate our expectations, the outcome, the end goal. If you align those in the beginning of a relationship with a factory, it can succeed.
You were originally doing skate clothing?
Yeah, I started with pants. I hated that my pants always ripped at the knee. I reinforced a few things on the pants. I learned how to make pants really well. That was my category, I felt like.
Did Publish form out of that?
Yeah. We were known for starting the jogger pants. We brought the jogger pants to the movement and made it something. We actually own the trademark. I built my business around that. I did bottoms really well and our pants and shorts category was the staple for Publish. It was a big machine, though. We had 120 people working there, we were manufacturing our own goods and then publishing other peoples’ designs, too. We worked with A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd. There were a lot of highs and lows, really good years and really bad years. It’s in those bad years that you have to figure out whether you have what it takes to bounce back. That’s the hardest part.
The stress got to be a lot. I went back to my room after a really big sales meeting, was rocking in my chair, fell over, and knocked my head. I suffered the stage before a seizure called hypertension. I was on the floor, seizing. I went to the hospital and they said I suffered a little bit of a stroke. I tried to push through, went back to the company meetings, and during another break I collapsed again. My doctor told me I would have to relax or it might happen and be permanent. I was so scared that I decided to step away for a little bit. I tried to work part time, and it was during that recovery period that I found golf. My doctor recommended I play golf and I was like, ‘Who the hell plays golf?’
Is that how you got into the game?
Shortly after, my lawyer was going to a charity golf event and he invited me. I had no interest, but he said I should go because there would be a lot of apparel guys there. We went to Roger Dunn, bought like $4,000 worth of TaylorMade M2s and I thought I could figure it out on the golf course. I embarrassed the shit out of myself, but I hit one good shot. I was like, ‘That’s what it looks like when the ball gets into the air?’ That’s when I caught the bug. Ever since, I’ve been a huge ambassador for the game.
When did Students officially start?
I started it about three and a half years ago.
What was the elevator pitch?
Students was born through my frustrations with dress codes at clubs. When I first started playing, I would go to munis and you’re able to dress casually there. You can wear t-shirts and shorts and no one will judge you. As I started playing more, it was harder to get tee times so I figured I’d just join a country club. Day 1, they gave me the manual, and I learned a collared shirt was required, and you had to tuck the shirt into your pants and you had to wear a belt. I wore Stone Island polos, mixed with my ACG cargo pants. I’d wear trail shoes. I looked the part, but I got called into the office because my pants were too baggy or my socks were showing. I was asked to dress more traditionally. I get the reason why some of the traditions exist, but I also noticed that there weren’t a lot of external sensibilities brought into the game. I felt like the guys I golfed with dressed way better outside of golf. They’d be very clean on the course, but when we met to eat outside of the club, they dressed so cool.
These were skaters, auto dudes, people like that; based on how they dressed at the club, I thought they’d be realtors, insurance brokers, or someone in finance. How come you can’t express those sensibilities on the course? Why not put on a Mercedes hat to show that you own a sick ass tuning shop? Golf does not have to be golf. You can express yourself in so many ways. My friend was asked to switch his polo at a course in the desert because it was a Fred Perry. I thought that was crazy. Do you know what Fred Perry is? They’re deep in heritage! That’s insane to me. I started Students not to break tradition, but as a way to bring different cultures into the game. You don’t have to have golf ball motifs on your golf clothes for it to be golf. I want to bring outside sensibilities and lifestyles into the game of golf.
What was the first item you produced?
Nothing golf related at all. Being in streetwear, the t-shirt is your first canvas. I needed to find a way to stand out. I didn’t want to be another golf brand, I wanted to find a different angle and have a unique point of view. Over the past three years, we’ve spent a lot of time doing lifestyle garments instead of performance stuff. We’re being strategic with that, in hopes of establishing the brand pillars and our brand DNA. Now that we’ve established this collegiate, preppy look and feel, we can put our logo on a cleaner, more athletic-leaning golf polo, and people will relate to it. This year, we’re launching a golf-focused collection called Course Studies. It’s technical, it’s exploratory. It has an outdoorsy, all-conditions vibe to it. We’re so excited about that.
As so many alternative golf brands have come into the world, what makes Students different from every other brand — even the ones that are your friends?
Our team has a lot of experience in the apparel world. I’m 41 years old. I’ve seen the cycle of streetwear come through twice. My business partner, Bryan Lowman, was at Stüssy for two decades. We’ve been very good with our messaging and our storytelling is very good. It differentiates us from other brands. It boils down to our name: We’re a Student of life, a Student of golf. There’s a collegiate element to what we’re doing, but it has to be elevated so it’s not nostalgic.
How did you assemble your team?
Being in the apparel world for so long, I thought about all the people I would like on my team. Naturally, first person up was Bryan Lowman. Once Bryan came in, we figured we needed someone to do marketing. We hired Sean Maher, who comes from the e-sports world. He’s very successful, owns his own agency, does the biggest projects in e-sports. We needed a sick photographer. I met Padron Smoker, Mark Cuevas. I just thought of the right players and the right people to bring on board. These people are full-on partners of the brand. I spent a lot of time traveling through Utah and Colorado, and there are a lot of employee-owned companies, especially in the brewery world. I was always curious about that. I saw how loyal and dedicated people were when working for those companies. I wanted to modernize the way to move about the business. How do you get people fully committed? If you give people an opportunity to become a partner, people will go to work for the brand. I wanted to share the next chapter of my journey with the right people. So far, it’s been working out for us.
How do you want someone to feel after trying on one of your pieces?
I want them to feel that they’re on a journey with us. We have scratch golfers wear our stuff, but discovery in today’s world means a whole lot. When someone discovers Students, I want them to feel like they’re part of an upstart entity. I want them to feel like they’ve been there with us since the beginning. Maybe this is someone’s first stab at golf and they’re not great yet, but through playing golf and wearing our clothes, looking better, playing better, they’re part of this journey with us. You’re a student of life and a student of the game forever. Even if you’re 85-years-old. We are 3.5 years in, we’re still very new. There’s a lot to do. Anyone that buys our stuff now, I want them to be proud that they were part of the early days. In the grand scheme of things, the elevated apparel niche is still new to golf. We just want people to feel like they belong.
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