IT’S THE SPRING OF 1997, NEW YORK CITY. MARCH 7 TO BE EXACT, AND A 22 YEAR-OLD JEFFREY NG, ON HIS BIRTHDAY, IS ABOUT TO WALK INTO THE TRIPLE 5 SOUL BOUTIQUE IN SOHO AND START A SERIES OF EVENTS THAT WILL CHANGE HIS LIFE. FOREVER. Sporting one of his own hand-made, silk-screened Staple t-shirts, the intrigued store manager clocks the shirt, and right there, right then, makes an order for twelve – to be sold in the boutique. The twelve shirts sell out, and the order doubles to 24. Those 24 shirts sell out, and the order increases to 36. The rest, as they like to say, is history.

Today, Staple is a full men’s clothing line, a commercially successful design agency and a retail and art space named Reed Space – after Ng’s high school art teacher. The latter notably shows exhibitions from some of today’s most celebrated artists (Faile and Parra for example) before they hit the big time – and the big money.

2005 was a fateful year for Staple. The design agency collaborated with sports giant Nike on the now infamous Pigeon Dunk, the result of which was a frenzied amalgamation of riots and hysteria on the day of the shoe’s February release. What happened that day made the front page of the next day’s New York Post, singlehandedly cementing Staple as an icon in the annals of street culture, simultaneously skyrocketing that culture into the wider, mainstream consciousness. All this, from one, single shoe – dedicated to New Yorkers and sold exclusively in the city with a run of only 150 pairs.

“People were saying, ‘Jeff, that was an amazing PR stunt you just pulled. How did you get the NYPD? How much did you have to pay the SWAT team to come out and break that shit up?’” recalls Ng. “I was like, ‘That was not a PR stunt.’ People were about to get stabbed. People had machetes and baseball bats tucked under their jackets because they knew they weren’t going to get the shoes. So they’d just wait for the kid who got one, and then get him.”

This extreme reaction from New York’s obsessive sneaker fraternity boosted both the then 30 year-old Ng and his company’s profile infinitely. Within a day, Staple HQ found three executives from Timberland walking into its offices requesting, believe it or not, an actual riot. Braying yahoos armed with machetes and baseball bats included. “It was like they were ordering a cheeseburger,” laughs Ng. “We would like a riot with French fries.”

Fourteen years after he sealed his first t-shirt order in that downtown Manhattan boutique, Jeff Ng has become one of the most consistently fascinating, inspiring and esoteric designers working anywhere in the world. And it could be argued that it’s all down to his love of one thing other than design. Music.

Born and raised in New Jersey to Chinese parents, a young Jeff Ng found himself mostly listening to popular music of the time: Culture Club, Human League, Wham and “one hit wonder bands”, infused with a touch of soul from Michael Jackson, Prince and Stevie Wonder.