Erik Dietz has spent the last decade working quietly at the intersection of fashion, music, and the arts — six years at Chrome Hearts, two as a director at Hypebeast, and a long-running role alongside the artists and creatives shaping the way this moment looks. 99bulletholes is the natural extension of that work — the name a nod to max ammo in old-school video games, the most you can carry. The format follows: a personally sourced rotation pulled from wherever it turns up, with the archive running deep on rare graphic tees, Japanese designer pieces from the Harajuku-to-Aoyama corridor, and small-batch accessories that don't surface twice. Nothing makes the cut unless Erik would wear it himself.
The ammo never runs out.
1. BUILT FOR THE ARCHIVE
Miyashita’s AW05 is the season Number (N)ine collectors keep coming back to — the moment when his music-saturated, romantically deconstructed tailoring was operating at its ceiling. The two-pocket hybrid cargo here is the same season, the same construction obsession, just a different configuration of the same idea. That’s what this section is: season-specific, construction-first Japanese fashion from the periods these designers were at their best. Undercover AW05, Undercover SS03 Scab, Raf × Sterling Ruby SS10, Issey Miyake’s 1996 parachute engineering. None of these are coming back. They were made once, for specific moments, and they stayed with whoever found them.
What was the hardest item to part with from your collection?
"The four-pocket Number (N)ine cargopants from AW05. Best configuration from the collection, and in all black."
Takahiro Miyashita's Number (N)ine ran from 1996 through its closure in 2009, and across that arc AW05 is the season most consistently cited as the brand's peak — the moment when Miyashita's romantic, music-saturated tailoring vocabulary, layered subcultural references, and obsessive construction practice arrived in their fullest form.
Whose collection would you want to own and why?
"Torn between Jun Takahashi and Travis Scott. Undercover is my favorite brand, so I know Jun's archive is insane — and Travis has been a longtime client, so I'd love to get a few pieces back (plus that Batman suit)."
Left: UNDERCOVER AW05 85 Denim Jeans
Right: UNDERCOVER X JUN TAKAHASHI Ethnic Coin Messenger Bag XL, KADOYA Hammer Leather Gloves
2. THE PIECES YOU BUILD AROUND
The accessories in a collection like this work the same way the rest of it does — they’re not picked to match, they’re picked because they carry weight on their own. The Linda Farrow × Bernhard Willhelm visors are wearable performance objects more than sunglasses. The Kadoya gloves were shaped by the hands that wore them. Objects like these end up in the best collections because the people who find them understand what they are.
A sample-run cap from Erik Dietz's 99bulletholes — an in-house piece designed under the brand mark rather than sourced into it — built on the NASCAR-meets-Daytona-Speedway template. Black cotton crown, red contrast topstitching running the seams and the brim, the unstructured fit of an early-2000s gas station souvenir.
"Shin Murayama masks rarely come up for sale — they’re typically made on commission for specific clients like A$AP Rocky and Matthew Williams. This one was built from an old UPS hat, and I was lucky enough to win it at auction directly from the artist."
This signed 2017 mask by Shin Murayama exemplifies the artist’s deeply subversive approach to fashion, anonymity, and found materials. Known for constructing intricate masks from repurposed garments and commercial objects, Murayama operates largely outside the traditional retail system, rarely offering his pieces for direct sale and instead producing highly limited works for a close network of artists, musicians, and collaborators.
3. THE SHIRTS THAT WERE THERE
The 1994 NIN long sleeve, the Björk Hyperballad tee, the Marilyn Manson Believe shirt — these are pieces from the original press, the actual tour, the moment the record came out and someone printed something to sell at the show. That specificity is what makes them hard to find and harder to let go of. 99BulletHoles has spent years tracking these down across that distinction — building an archive that covers decades of music that actually mattered, one original at a time.
Released as an early Cradle of Filth demo in the early 1990s, Total Fucking Darkness predates the band’s 1994 debut album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh and captures the rawer stage of their gothic extreme-metal sound. Its title and graphics later became part of the band’s wider visual archive, eventually resurfacing far outside metal culture through Vetements’ Autumn/Winter 2016 collection.
The 1997 long sleeve carries the reference in its original form: band merch as subcultural proof. Before luxury fashion started mining metal graphics, pieces like this already understood scale, symbolism, and shock value better than most runway collections.
A defining piece from Vetements’ Autumn/Winter 2016 collection, the Total Fucking Darkness bomber captures Demna’s early Vetements at its most confrontational. Referencing Cradle of Filth’s 1990s Total Fucking Darkness graphics, the oversized MA-1 turns underground metal imagery into luxury anti-fashion. A standout from the label’s peak era, it remains one of Vetements’ most collectible outerwear pieces.
