In the previous post, we mentioned the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Many of the stores here are the same big branded chains you can find in any shopping mall in the US, or for that matter in any major industrialized city around the developed world--Starbucks, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, etc. One shop we're surpised to see here, however, is the Von Dutch clothing/lifestyle store pictured here. Von Dutch is a name that has been around for decades, but as a name purely resurrected as licensed fashion label for t-shirts, etc., its life has been very short and very recent. Von Dutch can be partially credited for the trucker hat trend of the past three years (a trend which seems to be finally, gradually fading out). Von Dutch didn't start the trucker hat trend, but some style-conscious marketing genius quickly cottoned on to it early and commercially exploited it under the Von Dutch label. In doing so helped push the trucker hat fashion past the tipping point and into big-grid Mall-of-America mass popularity.

Typhoon Photo