Streetwear Reigns Supreme
You can go to JCPenney’s or somewhere like Walmart to get a three pack of white t-shirts for no more than $19.99. But there are some people who will go out of their way and buy a plain white t-shirt sold by Kanye West for $120.
That might seem a little extreme to most but believe it or not there are many people out their who have no problem spending this kind of money on a shirt. High fashion streetwear has taken over the clothing industry.
One of the most popular and highly demanded streetwear brands in the world is Supreme. Supreme is a skating brand that started out in 1994 in New York and quickly became a success. The brand limits all their clothing to small amounts and they choose to release their clothing only on Thursday’s. People will line up hours before an expected clothing drop.
By limiting the amount of clothing they release each Thursday, the value of the brand has gone through the roof. People will do anything in order to get a piece of Supreme clothing.
There is a huge community who buys these expensive clothes. However, the people lining up to buy these clothes aren’t always getting the clothes to wear them, many are reselling the clothes online for insane amounts of money.
What causes people to dish out large amounts of money on these clothes? I spoke with Kevin Clark, a buyer of high fashion streetwear. He purchases all his clothes online from resellers and he’s bought some pretty pricey items and seen others buy even pricier things.
“I buy these clothes because they’re completely different than what you can get at the mall and I like wearing clothes that nobody else has. I really just like to stand out from everyone else.”
What’s the most expensive piece of clothing he’s ever bought?
“I just bought Yeezy Boost 350’s for $275. I’ve been trying to get these shoes for the last three years and I recently won a raffle to purchase them for retail price. You can buy them from a reseller but the lowest I’ve seen them for is $450.”
“I won’t lie there’s been times where I’ve considered spending $475 on them but I just couldn’t live with myself spending almost $500 on a pair of shoes. There’s tons of people in the streetwear world who will spend that money with out even thinking about it.”
When people in the streetwear world see something they want, they buy it. It doesn’t matter how much it’s going to cost them. These people are willing to spend extreme amounts just to have something that others don’t have.
Complex Magazine recently did a documentary on buyers and resellers of the brand Supreme. It showed people camping out 12 hours early in order to get the clothes they wanted. Resellers were paying others to stand in line for them and buy things.
They interviewed some of the biggest resellers of Supreme and found out some crazy things. The resellers were buying $45 t-shirts and then reselling them online for $150.
One of the resellers was living off of only reselling clothing. This man sold all his clothes using paypal and he would display them on Instagram. He was making six figures just from buying clothes and then selling them for a higher price online.
Why wouldn’t the buyers of these clothes just wait in line and get them themselves? Well Supreme has an extremely limited supply of each item and they never sell and item again after its initial drop.
Another reason is that there are only two Supreme stores in the United States and an online store. The online store will have the clothing up on Thursday at 9 AM and you better hope your quick with a mouse and keyboard.
I talked with Kevin Clark again about what it’s like to to try and get Supreme on the online store.
“It’s basically impossible. As soon as 9 AM hits everything is gone within two minutes. I’ve gotten lucky enough to get a few things but it’s frustrating when you see something you want and it’s sold out right away. Most the people buying online are just getting the clothes to resell them on Ebay.”
One way people sell their Supreme clothing is through the website Reddit. On Reddit there is a section for buying, selling, and trading Supreme. It’s a very popular way to sell clothes. I was able to speak with a frequent user of the website who goes by the username “jayla5”.
“This is where I get all of my Supreme clothing. Yeah you have to pay more, but it’s really the only way to get the things that sellout on the actual Supreme website.”
The Supreme community on Reddit is the without a doubt the best place to buy Supreme clothing. “Though you have to be careful that what you’re buying is authentic” says, user jayla5.
“There are tons of people trying to make money by selling fake clothing through Reddit. You have to know what separates authentic Supreme from the fake.”
Will the hype for high fashion streetwear ever die or will it continue to dominate the clothing industry? It doesn’t seem like the desire to own these expensive brands will end any time soon because as long as there are people willing to pay $500 for shoes, streetwear won’t be going away any time soon.