The Interests of the Founder vs. the Audience in Building a Brand

Whose voice is more important?

Photo by Heather Sten / MAEKAN

Editor’s Note #2: This piece took so long to publish that I had to preface it with two editor’s notes lol. Been pretty sick with a stomach thing the last two weeks. This was lingering in the back of my mind I really wanted to get back into the groove before seeing it again with fresh eyes and hitting publish.

Editor’s Note #1: I’ve sat on this piece for longer than most others because I kept wanting a bit of time to poke and prod at the actual topic. It’s pretty silly to invest this much time into something that I still really believe amounts to a series of people’s perceptions and feelings, at odds with each other, but I also think that it reinfroces why brands are so powerful (and fascinating).

I recently came across an interesting conversation exploring this idea of conceptual brand ownership: who defines what a brand represents? Who holds the ultimate authority if a founder creates a brand with a specific vision but audiences and media interpret it differently? And how should founders navigate this tension?

For full context (it’ll take maybe 4 minutes tops), take a few moments to watch the initial interview snippet from the fashion podcast called The Cutting Room Floor. Then check out a follow-up from Amanda Sabrea (who I happened to catch for brunch randomly a few years ago in Vancouver) for additional perspective.

The root of the discussion is around whether Noah (a contemporary menswear¹ brand founded in New York City by former Supreme Creative Director, Brendon Babenzien and his wife Estelle Bailey-Babenzien) can be categorized as a streetwear brand² or not. Babenzien defends that any public positioning of Noah is rooted in his pedigree coming from Supreme, and not the actual reality of the brand and its vision.

Babenzien goes on to explain that the association of Noah with streetwear was based on outsider interpretation and how “streetwear” publications such as HYPEBEAST and Highsnobiety were covering it. In short, they’re wrong and he’s right to decide the ultimate positioning of the brand.

I do think there is/was an anchoring bias in the argument around Noah being a streetwear brand. Yes Babenzien’s roots are undeniably Supreme, and we cannot separate the proximity of Noah’s start in 2015 and his departure from Surpreme. By mid-2015, in my last year at HYPEBEAST³, I definitely wouldn't call HYPEBEAST a "streetwear" publication. To say that Noah was being reported by streetwear publications, I’d say is categorically false but I also wouldn’t argue with anybody on what they perceived the publication to be.

By 2015, HYPEBEAST had doubled down on high(er) fashion, and it became an amalgamation of style, menswear (street, contemporary, and high fashion), design, pop culture, all things Yeezy, and more. Now in 2025 you’re just as likely to hear about the Pope’s passing as you are what new random homeware is dropping. Somewhere in there is a sneaker drop or two. But depending on who you speak to, a 2008 HYPEBEAST reader’s interpretation (likely seen as hardcore streetwear and sneakers) would be different from a 2025 HYPEBEAST audience’s interpretation (“oh, HYPEBEAST, that Instagram account?”).

Keep all of this in mind for later.

But the real discussion emerges around what role a brand has in controlling and managing its perspective to its audience and market. Some argued that Noah's growth came on the back of its streetwear roots and Babenzien’s dismissive tone was unfairly recognizing what his past did to propel his new venture forward. Another recency bias argument was that streetwear was no longer cool, so he shut the door on that. But I’d argue in 2015 when Noah started, streetwear was still very much pumping, and we hadn’t seen many “peaks” yet (Virgil, reselling, outcome of stimi cheques). Sure for some of us, it wasn’t fulfilling anymore, myself included. That’s a personality reality different from the actual size of the market.

But maybe there’s something else more humanistic emerging from the perspective of Babenzien?

Think about the brands you actually care about, not just the ones that dominate your feed, but the ones that have longevity. If you dig under the hood, the best of them don't necessarily begin with product, marketing hacks, or whatever the latest "community-building" playbook dictates. Instead, they start with perspective. The founder's introspective, conceptual take on the world, distilled into something you can feel. Only after that's clear does the commerce trickle in, almost as an afterthought.

The hardest part of building a brand with soul comes down to defining its vision and point of view. This can't be crowdsourced, templated, or outsourced. No algorithm, no market-research panel, and sure as hell no agency can fully take on that early, scary risk. The brands that emerge off the back of a “I was designing for myself,” weirdly have a high degree of success. They combine a sense of intuition and commentary combined with taste and execution.

When I first came across Japanese brands of the Urahara movement, I was so fascinated by their methods towards brand building. Here, an island, as insular as they were, was able to create brands that were unwavering⁴ in their direction. The rigidity they held equated to an ongoing book, where each season equated to a new chapter. There was continuity and flow, because the previous chapters needed to make sense with the future work. In a pre-Internet world, the likes of NEIGHBORHOOD, WTAPS, UNDERCOVER, BAPE, and the like become globally respected without the heavy influence of their customer’s requests and shouts. Kids in Hong Kong, New York, and London were lining up for some mythical bootleg Air Force Ones from a brand with hardly any English comms. Amazing.

And yet, lately, it feels like we're living through an era where we don't feel comfortable rewarding the risk it takes to be directional. The gravitational pull of the safe and familiar means it's rarer for brands to stick their necks out and actually lead with a strong vision. Instead, they play it safe. Brands and countless DTC startups are seemingly built on market opportunities and trends rather than distinct perspectives. The market, in return, gives us brands that feel like rehashed group projects. It’s often a little bit for everyone, and nothing deeply for anyone.

There's a Naval quote that encapsulates the relationship between business and commerce well:

To build product, "make something people want."

To create art, make something you want.

(The best do both).

I find this to be a fairly succinct way of summing up my thoughts. I felt a lot of comments in the Amanda Sabrea post suggested that Noah was perhaps alienating and excluding an audience. Frankly, if there is no art (the thing the founder wants), there is no product worth caring for, and I wholeheartedly believe that. And the whole thing stops dead in its tracks.

I think this is often the case with brands that go too product-centric. And we’ve seen it now with brands carrying one-trick pony or seasonal hero products. Let's also call out a persistent myth: the idea that a brand, in its quest to be "inclusive," must somehow tell all stories, all at once. That's not just an impossible burden; it fragments the essence of what a brand could be. You can't possibly capture the nuance and context of many lives at once, but you can (and should) tell a world-building story that’s not necessarily to appease the community or audience but rather give them something to latch onto. It’s the founder's worldview, their obsessions, their evolution.

I previously spoke about anchoring bias, and it plays a larger part than many might think. The timeframe in which you interact with a brand, and the cultural baggage you carry, will sculpt your perspective. When Babenzien explains Noah isn’t streetwear, he’s fighting against the gravitational field of his own résumé. Because he was Supreme's Creative Director, every move gets weighted with "streetwear," regardless of actual intent. The inability to pivot—or be allowed to, by your audience—traps the visions of creatives we should be celebrating. Not to mention, I get the sense that Babenzien’s Noah vision (sailing and preppy culture) was rooted in things that he decidedly wouldn’t call streetwear.

[As a total aside, I do wonder how people of different generations would classify NIGO today? Is he the founder of BAPE? The founder of HUMAN MADE? What about Pharrell? A producer? A performer? A fashion designer?]

That's the curse and blessing of brands: you can try to shape perception, but the context is always shifting. People's relationships with brands are personal. You may define your brand's values as X, but someone else will experience it as Y, shaped by the moment they stumbled across it and the stories they've heard. We all acknowledge that customer perception of a brand is up for personal determination and ever-changing. And while a brand can surely be community/customer-informed, the ultimate vision should rest with the brand’s world they’re trying to build. Turning over the keys to anybody else fundamentally alters the course of the brand.

I sometimes question whether I’m not applying enough rigor towards this discussion (although all the preceding worlds would disagree). It feels a bit like a cop out in that “hey, let’s agree to disagree, we can not like the same brands.” Fashion, interestingly enough, is subject to so much personal interpretation that anybody with the interest to dive in, can make their own judgement. Your path of interaction will always have an impact on the outcome of the brand’s success. I’ll oversimplify it into two binary outcomes. If you care, you buy, then the brand succeeds. If you don’t care, you don’t buy, and you were never arguably intended to be the target audience.

The real real shit, is that if you really launch an overly artistic vision and nobody cares (enough to cop anything), the free market takes care of the rest. You adapt, you pivot, or you bow out. That's the fair trade-off for being brave enough to put your vision out there, and one that I’d agree with as a brand, it’s easier to find the right crowd and/or a new crowd, than change the mind of somebody who doesn’t get it or doesn’t care for it.

One of the last bits to chew on is the cliché existential question: What happens when the founder's passion wanes or perhaps they're forced to create something they aren't passionate about? Does the flame go out, with or without the financials stoking the flame? Maybe the brand reinvents itself, fades away gracefully, or enters private equity purgatory. But for as long as the spark lasts, let's reward those who build something unapologetically driven by vision and not just what they think we want.

The beauty of brands is that they exist at the intersection of founder intent and audience interpretation. Neither party fully controls the narrative. While founders provide the North Star, audiences bring their own context and meaning to what they experience with the brand. This tension isn't a bug; it's the feature that keeps brands dynamic, evolving, and ultimately, alive in culture. The most resilient brands keep audiences interested and excited with meaningful things with sufficient novelty.

The best brands compound their vision, and let them come.

If you’ve made it this far and want a fantastic deep dive into Noah that has stood the test of time, head over to MAEKAN and read War Machine. Penned by the talented David Kenji Chang.

1. I’m personally calling it a contemporary menswear brand, but feel free to call it however you see fit. Clearly many see it as a streetwear brand, which is why this piece I wrote even exists in the first place.

2. In all fairness, streetwear itself doesn't even maintain a clear cut definition. It's almost impossible to properly bucket it. I've always seen it as an extension of youth culture, which means that youth-interest, and its brands could arguably earn the title of streetwear in different markets. Diesel might be big amongst the Italian youth, but certainly not streetwear in an American context. It literally is a "let's agree to disagree" topic.

3. I was at HYPEBEAST from 2007-2015, and held the role of Editorial Director in my last stint.

4. For sure, I have to acknowledge that Japanese culture’s rigidity in many places is heavily intertwined in the way they build businesses and brands. It’s a great bug/feature dichotomy.