Generally, long before a clothing company makes history of its own, it channels history.

Yesteryear is a steady source of ideas and moods, and heritage brands use it as both foothold and foundation. Picking an era in the past as a lodestar is a way of planting a creative flag, and mining and recombining its DNA has been the way that plenty of companies — say, Ralph Lauren and its many tributaries — have come to occupy a place that’s steward of the past and path breaker of the new.

When we think of heritage, we tend to think of source material that’s many decades old. But what if your reference year is 1994?

Without a doubt, that is the starting point for Aimé Leon Dore, and without a doubt, Aimé Leon Dore is a heritage brand. (For a time on the company website, the additional info link went to the iTunes page for Nas’s “Illmatic.”)