Home, Wherever They Go

Discovering a new brand that intersects Asian DJ culture, textile innovation and matcha pop-ups, while also building a stronger local fashion community, is a surprising find for a midwestern hub like Oklahoma City.

Founded in 2024 by best friends Ignatius “Iggy” Tran and Kenny Hua, H1LL HOUSE is, in their words, a “clothing brand built around the idea that home is not a place, it is a feeling you carry with you.”

They’ve carried this feeling across the globe to cities in Japan, Vietnam and South Korea, while continuing to host a series of local pop-ups in Oklahoma City and Dallas. “Whether we’re in America or Asia, we make friends everywhere and try to make it feel like it’s home wherever we go.”

This “feeling of home” is a reflection of their lives in OKC, which is a laid-back pace of life that matches the rhythm of the city’s heartbeat. This chill lifestyle may seem simple, but it is one that allows you to build intentionally and create long-lasting relationships with the people around you. 

As said in the “About Us” section of their website, they “found ‘home’ in conversations with new friends, in late night parties, in quiet café moments, in street food stands and in the shared interests that bring people together.”

“At the end of the day, we’re an Asian American streetwear brand,” says Tran, “and we want people to recognize that we’re Vietnamese and are rooted in those values.” 

Born in New Jersey, Tran moved with his family to Oklahoma City at a young enough age so OKC is all he has considered home, while Hua was born and raised in OKC—besides a short stint in Ada where his parents owned and operated a nail salon for several years. 

“We think it’s cool that we’re from OKC,” says Tran. “We like to represent where we’re from all the time. We love the OKC Thunder, and overall, we really love the pace of life here.”

Hua, a seasoned photographer, first traveled to Seoul in 2023 to shoot the annual Waterbomb music festival. His very first day in Korea turned out to be unforgettable—while backstage, he met headlining artist Jay Park, who was one of the few people there who also spoke English.

“That first trip to Korea was probably one of the craziest first trips ever,” recalls Hua. “I met Jay Park on my very first day in Korea, and I was like, ‘Dude, I love Korea, and Korea loves me.’”

This gateway into the DJ and music scene in Asia sparked a sense of belonging that became a key tenet of their brand. “It’s like the connection between the two cultures,” says Hua. “Being able to connect through entertainment, our hobbies and things that we all enjoy is really what it is about: just two communities coming together and getting people to understand the other side.”

Shortly after Hua’s first trip, the two went back to Korea together. “We didn’t have our brand the first time we came to Korea, and at that time being in Asia was a new taste of life for us,” says Tran. “We got to see a music scene that you don’t see in Oklahoma. That’s something we really appreciated because we were hearing music that we listened to in our free time that you would never hear played in Oklahoma, or even the U.S.; we found a whole other sense of community that we’ve never felt before.”

They began to search for an outlet to share this feeling with their community at home, and their clothing brand started taking shape. “I was really fascinated with Korea’s fashion scene for a long time, before I even knew that I wanted to make clothes—and I love how Japan’s fashion scene is so individualistic.”

Hua had always been into fashion and reselling clothes. “It got to the point where I thought I should just make my own clothes and sell them rather than reselling other people’s clothes,” he laughs. 

Being a part of the local fashion community and creative class, their skillsets have quietly prepared them to launch a brand at the caliber of start-ups you see coming out of much larger cities with bigger teams and budgets.

“It all started because it was like I was a photographer first, before this whole designing thing,” Hua explains. “I'm more of a graphic designer than a fashion designer, because my specialty is more in the visual arts such as photos, videos, media, digital media. Iggy has the vision for the brand as a whole.”

Tran agrees and emphasizes, “It’s almost collaborative on every front. We listen to each other. That’s a part of having a brand and a co-founder—we bounce ideas off each other and take in feedback because we’re working toward the same thing and we want this to be our career.

“Our main focus has been Asia, so that’s why we’re always out in Seoul and Tokyo. We’ve been able to build really good relationships with our friends that live out there because we want to see this brand as something that can bring a community together.” 

That first trip to Korea together also inspired the name H1ll House.

“We would always be having our taxi take us back to Hill House Street where we were staying,” Tran says while pulling up a photo on his phone of the street located in Namsan, a popular tourist area near the Seoul Tower. “It was months, almost half a year later, when we finally were like, ‘Oh my gosh, Hill House! That would make the perfect name.’”

A skyline silhouette of this house-lined hill became the “City Tee” from their first collection. “That was the first piece we ever dropped—that cityscape. So that’s our staple piece, but if you weren’t there at the beginning, you probably wouldn’t know that was the first one.

“We want to bring that same vibe everywhere with our brand, and we just want to make people feel connected with our brand and the clothes they wear.”

“Home is not a place. It is a feeling you carry with you.”
–Iggy Tran & Kenny Hua

Since that first collection, they have designed the Lunar New Year Celebration t-shirt with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2025 and 2026, have had their pieces worn by popular DJs including DJ Lex and ended up in an unboxing video by Jason Nguyen (Jason the Ween on YouTube and Twitch).

“Being in the right room at the right time is crucial. That’s why we try to be out there [in Asia] so much. There are so many connections, whether it’s with models or DJs, or just the community as a whole,” says Tran. “They see that we have real love for each other’s culture. We want to create something authentic all the time, and I think if you want to make a connection with anyone, you’ve got to be yourself and just come authentic, and someone’s going to resonate with that.”

One example of this, and how all roads somehow do lead back to Oklahoma: During the first pop-up they had at a coffee shop in Seoul in September of 2025, their very first customer was a middle-aged Korean woman who was passing by and stopped in to see what was going on inside. Finding out Tran and Hua were from Oklahoma was the perfect ice-breaker, because it turned out that she is an alumna from the University of Oklahoma, as is Tran. 

“She was so sweet,” says Hua. “After we spoke, she left for a while but came back with cash exchanged into USD for us.” Just like their tagline, home really is wherever you go.

Traveling between Asia and America leaves them appreciating the connections to home even more. “I love coming back to OKC,” says Tran. “I miss it whenever I leave. I have everything here … I definitely have everything here.”

Stay connected with H1ll House on Instagram @h1llhouseclothing or online at h1llhouse.com.