A day in the life of “40 oz Van” would probably kill a lesser man. From the outside looking in, Van’s life is like one long music video, full of fun, scantily clad women and enough weed to give Snoop Dogg emphysema.
When Van throws a party — as he did in Riverside Park a few years ago — so many people show up that the cops and helicopters have to be called in. There he is on his NSFW Tumblr blog, reclining in an oceanfront mansion somewhere. There he is in a nightclub. There he is with Rihanna. “You’re only young for so long,” he says. “I try to take advantage of everything.”
And taking advantage he is. The 26-year-old Van, whose real name is Joel Fuller, has improbably spun a life on the downtown party scene into a fashion empire. The baseball caps that he began manufacturing and selling last year have become one of the hottest accessories for everyone from music artists, such as Frank Ocean, Swizz Beatz and Rick Ross, to Soho skater kids.
Beyond design, one of the lid’s major selling points is Fuller himself.
“I think [customers] want a little piece of the lifestyle,” he says. “They can’t catch these flights, but they can purchase a $40 hat.”
Fuller was born in The Bronx. His family later moved to New Rochelle, where he still lives because it’s “quieter” than the city. “Culturally, I was a part of the scene below 14th Street, and you had all these kids from Parsons and other design schools,” says Fuller, a high school graduate who did not pursue further education. “I didn’t go to school for fashion, but I learned a lot by being around those fashion kids.”
He got the “Van” portion of his nickname by wearing Vans shoes as a teen. The “40 oz” part came from the popular park parties called the “40 oz Bounce,” where he’d hand out some 700 free oversized bottled beers.
While working in retail, he became interested in launching a line, but he discovered that one problem with clothing is all the different sizes he’d be required to manufacture. Generally, only the medium and large sizes sell out, leaving him stuck with boxes of XXL back stock that would have to be dumped cheaply.
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Instead, Fuller decided to focus on a one-size-fits-all product: a snapback hat, so-called because it’s got an adjustable plastic band in the rear.
“I found the fashion loophole,” he says. He designed one and began wearing it to various fashion and music events. “Everyone was asking who made my hat,” Fuller says. “I said it was one of mine. Finally, I decided to just sell it. I started promoting it on Twitter and online.”
His first release in May 2012 was a dark cap with the letters “NY” on the front in a font inspired by French brand Balmain. Many of Fuller’s designs nod to high-end labels, such as Givenchy.
“All of my friends would wear these expensive designer jeans. I wanted to figure out how to make that quality for a lower price,” he says. “I wanted to give people the choice: Should I purchase these $1,400 jeans or this $40 hat?”
He had about 12,000 of that first design manufactured at 29th Street and Sixth Avenue, then offered them for sale on his Web site for a single 12-hour period. (He uses this marketing tactic for all of his releases.)
Van sold 200 during that initial window. He packed and mailed them from his girlfriend’s basement.
Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz was the first celebrity to catch on. Cruz contacted Fuller via Twitter (where the fashion mogul now has some 36,000 followers) and said, “I gotta have one of these.” Now, six releases later, Fuller has moved his operations to Brooklyn, has an office and ten employees, and says he produces about 60,000 to 70,000 of each design. He sells about 80 percent of those online in that 12-hour window. The rest are offered to wholesalers.
He recently returned from a trip to London, where he offered a limited-edition collaboration with streetwear designer Trapstar.
So far, he’s also stayed out of legal trouble despite some of his designs borrowing liberally from the worlds of sports and fashion. His recent collaboration with fashion collective Been Trill produced a cap with a reversed Yankees logo flanked by hashtag signs on the front and an upside-down Major League Baseball logo on the back.
Fuller wouldn’t comment on copyright issues; his fans certainly don’t seem to care.
“I like a lot of his stuff because it’s local, and supporting any local movement is something I try to do whenever possible,” says Nathan DeJarlais, a 32-year-old Crown Heights resident who works in media sales.
Fuller sees his gear everywhere.
“Literally every day. It’s surreal to me,” he says. “I could walk down Broadway and Houston and I can see at least five kids wearing my hats in a matter of ten minutes.”
reed.tucker@nypost.com