Anders Bekeken

The three-part docuseries chronicles the meteoric rise and violent fall of the company behind those trucker hats that were ubiquitous in the early 2000s. Hulu’s The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For is a docuseries about a once-inescapable fad, a show that feels bound by two ubiquitous trends of the moment: 2000s nostalgia and true crime. But it fails to divine what should be the big takeaway of any look back at a what-were-we-thinking craze — that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s a good look.

Directed by Andrew Renzi, the three-episode miniseries chronicles the rise and fall of the company behind the trucker hats that seemed glued to the heads of every celebrity at the turn of the century. It’s a saga that goes well beyond the usual bloodless corporate intrigue — as promised in the opening minutes, the story leads to a co-founder being tried for first-degree murder. And it’s one that seems full of turmoil from the get-go, with three men, in three separate interviews, trying to claim credit for “creating” Von Dutch. In the decade or so between the brand’s inception and its implosion, the documentary offers tales of drugs, gangs, shady contracts and threats of physical violence over shady contracts.