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An hour with Chen passes fast, listening to the multi-hyphenate ponder the mistakes and moments Clot has racked up over the past two decades – wins that include famous collaborations with Nike, Levi’s and Polo (“a ‘we made it, momma’ moment”). He jokes that his perspective has shifted now the label is approaching the US legal drinking age of 21.

It’s certainly a lifetime since the brand was launched with “75 T-shirts and a party” at a “mum and pop store on the third floor [in] Causeway Bay”, otherwise known as Chen’s inaugural Juicestore. Today, the brand sells Clot’s wares across 12 boutiques stretching between Los Angeles, Hawaii, Taiwan and across mainland China.

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Somewhere along the way, he made time for a streetwear passion project, launching the Clot brand in 2004, a year after founding both its parent company and Juice with business partner Kevin Poon in 2003. There was no plan; they went from month to month and project to project. In fact, there were no expectations at all in those first few years, he says, bar a desire to prove people wrong. “We were just young kids finding a groove in something that we liked. Innocent, passionate, ‘let’s do this’ days,” Chen reminisces.

First among the Clot naysayers included Chen’s businessman father and his entertainment boss, who treated the idea as a joke. Two decades in, it must be nice to have the last laugh. But in daddy’s defence, back then streetwear in Asia was nascent, and Chen’s success rested on a single, simple vision: to act as a bridge between East and West. “I think it’s more of a two-way highway now,” Chen quips. “Now it’s kind of managing the traffic. It’s more a curative role now.”

When we meet, Chen is wearing pieces from a new Clot collaboration with Nike created alongside Harry Wong, an aspiring designer Chen spotted when judging a competition. Despite earning Chen’s vote, Wong’s kung fu slipper-inspired take on the Air Max 270 failed to win the Nike: On Air contest in 2018. So when the US sportswear giant came knocking for a fresh Clot collab, he righted the slight, calling on Wong to collaborate on what would become the Nike x Clot Cortez, which dropped in February.

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Chen is serious about his role as a mentor – or “therapist” as he calls it – for those who have followed him over the bridge. “To be able to give our knowledge, our experience, our stories to these kids so that hopefully the next one gets to have a chance to be the next Clot or the next us – they’ve already learned from our mistakes, and they can do even better,” he adds.

Here lies another two-way exchange: Chen is absorbing influence from the next generation, too. He believes that a successful person understands that they can learn something new all the time. “If you’ve reached the limit, you might as well go [away], you know?” That includes lessons from the kids: “New words, new trends, new things kids are doing. Sometimes I’m just like, what the hell is going on here?”

After all, these organic knowledge exchanges are only natural in a global “streetwear family”, a utopian notion Chen frequently returns to. “You guys have to have a community,” he tells the next generation. “It should be fun to work with each other. It should be fun to see others succeed and it should be fun for you to beat them as well. It feels like it’s Cutthroat Island out there. I’m trying to teach them community – the collective wins, not the singularity.”

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Thankfully, the investments Chen did make have paid off. He now lives away from the Asian media glare in Los Angeles with his wife, 32-year-old Chinese supermodel and actress Qin Shupei. The couple reportedly met around 2015, starting their relationship the same year, and welcomed their first child Alaia Chen in 2017. “I think my daughter has inspired me in so many different ways, and it’s made me look at the fun in creativity instead of such seriousness.” But, adds Chen, “I’m not going to start dancing on TikTok videos, man, you know?”

The relationship sparked a wave of headlines when it broke and Chen’s movements are still closely followed by the press. (Amusingly, in 2021, he made headlines when social media users called out the streetwear mogul for “looking like an uncle”.)

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Unsurprisingly, for a man who says there is no such thing as bad publicity, Chen has few regrets: “I tend to try to live a life where I don’t look back and regret anything, just because if I did, I could find so many points and be like, ‘all this could have happened’. So I’m not that type of guy.”

So while others might approach a 20th anniversary as a moment to look back and take stock, Chen is firmly focused on the future. During Style’s chat, he let slip details of then-confidential forthcoming partnerships with The North Face and McDonald’s, before hinting at many more “surprises” to come – as if these brand monoliths weren’t enough to occupy 2023.

“I want to work with a car company. I want to work with Skittles. I want to work with Lego,” Chen says of potential future partners. “Let’s try at least, you know?”

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One plan he is unambiguous about is the need for outside investment, with active plans to find partners in the coming years. “It doesn’t mean that I’m unmotivated. It just means that I understand business and the growth of our company a little bit,” he adds. “We want to build our company to such a level so we can’t push it any more, and we need an exterior force to come and help us do that. We’ve done 20 years. What’s next?”

These plans include conquering more of China and increasing Clot’s imprint by 25 times to more than 300 stores – ambitions which can only be realised with external investment: “We can’t manage it [alone]. We don’t have that expertise, we don’t have the manpower, we don’t have the hours. But we can, right?”

His eyes light up again, with the fervour of a man with a plan. “I’m still a big kid,” he laughs, admitting that he is more excited than his daughter when they visit Toys ’R’ Us. “I feel like a lot of the creators around me have already reached that level where it’s like a job, and I haven’t reached that point yet.”