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ClearHorizon News

Was Von Dutch Expensive? – Celebrity

Author

Ethan Hayes

Updated on January 17, 2026

In 2018, Dutch News revealed that a report from Dutch republican society Republikeins Genootschap claimed the family spends €350 million (about $382 million) annually, far more than the officially reported amount of €60 million (around $65 million).

For energy drink, see Von Dutch (drink). For the artist the company is named after, see Kenny Howard. Von Dutch is an American multinational fashion brand posthumously named after Kenny Howard, a.k.a. “Von Dutch”, an American artist and pinstriper of the Kustom Kulture movement.

In February 2005, Vaughn was arrested on charges of first degree murder after he shot and killed childhood friend Mark Rivas, who he claimed attacked him with a broken bottle. He was acquitted in 2006. By the late 2000s, Von Dutch began to experience a rapid decline due to issues such as brand saturation and counterfeiting.

Four years later, in 1996, his daughters sold the name to Michael Cassel (an entrepreneur) and Robert Vaughn (a clothing designer and entrepreneur) who established Von Dutch Originals in 1999. “ [The] Von Dutch store opened on Melrose Avenue a year later,” Forbes reported.

What does “von Dutch” mean?

Von Dutch was the self-anointed nickname of one Kenny Howard. According to Steve Kafka, another famous pinstriper and artist who knew Howard during his life, it means “By German.” “‘Von’ is ‘By’ and ‘Deutsch’ is ‘German,’” Kafka says. “ [Howard] was very much enamored by German precision, which, everybody [in the auto industry] …

On the day following our phone call, the website credited “Christian Audejar” (apparently a misspelling of Christian Audigier) with creating the brand in the early 2000s. It has since been updated at least one more time: Howard, though, still remains visible on both the Von Dutch Twitter and Instagram accounts.

In the years between 2004 and 2009, Von Dutch would fall into oblivion. The flagship stores in L.A., Miami, New York and Chicago closed their doors. In 2009, Sorensen and Cassel sold the brand to the largest shoe distributor in Europe — French group Royer.

More essentially, though, Von Dutch’s secret to success is simply doing what they’ve always done: Placing their products in the hands of some of the most influential celebrities in the world, all the while airbrushing their namesake’s racist past.

In 2001, a few years after the name was purchased outright, Cassel entered a partnership with Tonny Sorensen, the company’s former CEO, who was initially hoping to produce a film about Von Dutch. Sorenson is largely credited with inventing the Von Dutch Trucker hat — the brand’s most iconic contribution to the new Kustom Kulture zeitgeist.

theless, with its image finely tuned, in 2004, the Von Dutch trucker hat cemented its place in the pantheon of early 2000s iconic apparel when it appeared in an episode of Hilton and Richie’s reality show The Simple Life.

Despite its success — and being anointed “greaser chic” — Von Dutch was primed to soon become a punchline, just as had happened to Oakleys a few years prior. “It’s gotten too popular,” Kasey Rzepecki, 16, a student at Santa Monica High School, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004. “It’s so overexposed.”.

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