Chris Printup, Founder of Streetwear Brand Born X Raised, Dies at 42

Chris Printup, a founder of the streetwear brand Born X Raised, which became a fixture on the Los Angeles fashion scene, died on Wednesday morning at a hospital in Albuquerque. He was 42.

The cause was injuries from a car accident in Albuquerque on June 25, a representative of the brand said.

Mr. Printup, who was known as Spanto, founded Born X Raised with Alex Erdmann, who was known as 2Tone. The brand quickly drew the city’s creative class to events like the Born X Raised Sadie Hawkins Winter Formal.

“Born X Raised is like a love letter to the city that I once grew up in, that’s gone now,” Mr. Printup said in an episode of “The Canvas: Los Angeles,” a documentary series about the city’s artists. “This is me. This is who I’ll always be. And if you don’t like it, we don’t care.”

Mr. Printup was born on June 6, 1981, in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles to Butch Mudbone of the Seneca Nation and Cheryl Printup of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. He said on “The Canvas” that he experienced poverty as a child, and that he cycled in and out of juvenile detention and worked as a drug dealer. Eventually, he said, he wound up in a supermax prison, where he decided to start Born X Raised.

The label, Mr. Printup said in the documentary — part of which took place on the set of a commercial shoot — was born out of the desire to “shine a light” on the Los Angeles of his childhood, especially Venice before it was gentrified, which he described as the antithesis of Tinseltown.

“I had an idea and a feeling and an emotion and I turned it into this,” he said, adding that he had never studied clothing design or dreamed of visiting fashion events in Europe. “There was no plan, there was no business model.”

He worked for a time as a craftsman in Local 33 of the sheet metal workers’ union and started the brand, he said, as a “way to channel my frustration and anger.” In 2013, he and Mr. Erdmann, his business partner, started selling the line at Union, a Los Angeles clothing store.

Shortly after introducing the brand, Mr. Printup received a cancer diagnosis. He underwent chemotherapy and lost 100 pounds and his hair, he wrote in a post on the brand’s Instagram page in December. He worked all the way through the treatment.

“What I’m getting at is life is hard for everyone and I want anyone to know, that if you’re feeling discouraged or like life has given you too many handicaps — ITS OKAY. you’re going to be fine things will get better,” Mr. Printup said in the post, adding that he had gone into remission.

Mr. Erdmann described Mr. Printup in a phone interview as an “indefatigable” force of nature who was gregarious, and whom the people he worked with loved.

“Every second day he had breath to do things, he would,” he said.

He said that Mr. Printup had been in Albuquerque for a traditional Native American ceremony, and that his father had died just two months earlier after a similar ceremony, also in a car accident.

He said, of Born X Raised: “We’re not going to fold. We’re not going to stop telling this story. We’re just going to change how we do it, because we no longer have him.” He added that the company would probably hold an event to honor Mr. Printup.

Mr. Printup, who lived in Los Angeles, is survived by his mother; his wife, Anna Printup; a daughter, Marilyn A. Printup; two sons, David R. Garcia and Carter Printup-Specht; three stepbrothers, Cai Printup, Casey Printup and Willie Mudbone; a stepsister, Zyanya Mudbone; and his stepmother, Caroline Mudbone.

On “The Canvas,” Mr. Printup noted that had always been haunted by self-doubt, but that he had persisted through it. “When are they going to figure out that I am not good at this?” he said. “I think anybody intelligent questions themself.”

Christine Hauser contributed reporting.