AGE 30

HOMETOWN San Francisco

NOW LIVES Home is a loft on Rivington Street that he sublets from the filmmaker Chiara Clemente, the daughter of the artist Francesco Clemente.

CLAIM TO FAME Mr. Preston is a founding member of Been Trill, a D.J. and art collective that releases mixtapes, hosts parties and designs a coveted streetwear line. Best-selling items include a snapback hat that features a reverse Yankees logo flanked by hashtags. Other members include Virgil Abloh, the style consigliere for Kanye West, and Matthew Williams, a former creative director for Lady Gaga. He is also a global digital producer for Nike.

BIG BREAK About five years ago, Al Moran, a founder of OHWOW, an art space and publishing company, discovered Mr. Preston’s blog, which featured candid shots of cool kids on street corners, and offered him the chance to turn it into a glossy coffee table book. “I have this long-running joke that living in downtown New York felt like high school all over again,” he said. “Taxis are like the school buses, streets are like the hallways, all these successful people around me are the teachers.”

LATEST PROJECT In 2009, Mr. Preston was tapped by Nike to be an envoy to the fashion and night-life crowd (to be “Mister New York,” as he put it). He has since gone global, helping Nike to establish street cred in places like London, with a weeklong music and art festival in Shoreditch.