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Streetwear is Dead; Long Live Streetwear
Collaborations, Drops, Hype: How streetwear conquered high fashion and managed to make itself irrelevant in the process.
By Ali Khan
In December 2020, in an interview with Dazed magazine, Virgil Abloh proclaimed that “streetwear is dead”. Although this statement came as a shock to most, it is not surprising given the cyclical nature of fashion trends. For fashion insiders, it was more ironic than shocking that it was coming from him. After all, Virgil Abloh and company (A Bathing Ape, Mastermind, Alyx) are as much responsible for the death of this current cycle of streetwear trend as they were for popularizing it.
Whether it was the collaborations that were merely cut and paste logos of the collaborating brand; exclusive drops that were so frequent that they went against the value of being exclusive or elusive; or an embrace of social media influencers leading to substituting substance with hype — the need for constant growth and bigger profits diluted the DNA of streetwear to such an extent that it not only damaged the long-term authenticity of these ‘hype’ brands but also accelerated the trend into mainstream culture — a place where fashion typically goes to die.
With globalization and the rapid use of social media amid the ongoing communication revolution, the current trend of streetwear has indeed influenced high fashion more so than ever before. However, it is not a new phenomenon. Streetwear has been influencing high-end fashion for decades. Whether it was Pierre Cardin opting to do ready to wear in the 60’s, Vivienne Westwood putting punk on the runway in the 70’s or Versace showing denim jeans as high fashion in the 80’s, the influence of street on designers has been strong and consistent.
Even though the restraint and deconstructed anti-fashion period of the 90’s fashion, the two most influential designers of that decade (Prada and Helmut Lang) still further solidified the permanence of street values into high fashion by incorporating them into their brand’s design DNA. However, till this point, even with all the street influence, high fashion was unmistakably high fashion. The designer brands at large could never be mistaken for a streetwear brand.
The current iteration of street influence and its mixing with high fashion can be traced back to the establishment of labels like ‘A Bathing Ape’ and ‘Mastermind’ coming out of Japan in the ’90s. These brands started with a basic objective: bring high-end fabrication and construction quality to a market that usually lacks both to meet a certain price point. This strategy immediately elevated these brands into designer price points, putting them wrongly into the high fashion universe. Thus, the current cycle of streetwear influence on fashion had officially begun, blurring the lines between street and high fashion and giving birth to categories like ‘Luxury Streetwear’. The last decade has seen this phenomenon handled masterfully at times (Demna Gvasalia, Kim Jones (somewhat), Hiroshi Fujiwara) and disastrously at other times (Amiri, Matthew M. Williams at Givenchy).
I’d also like to add that amongst the scores of designers who have masterfully contributed to this phenomenon if there was one person who can be credited as the leader — it would be Shayne Oliver and his genre-breaking collections at ‘Hood By Air’. But to label Shayne Oliver as a ‘streetwear designer’ is inaccurate. Too often, Shayne Oliver, along with Demna Gvasalia are mistakenly labelled as such. They have strong roots in streetwear, and they are skilled designers. Their street influence comes not from hype culture but their own lived experience, examined, integrated, and expressed as a clear creative direction. Even to a half-trained eye, what they present on the runway is anything but streetwear as defined by mainstream consumers or corporations. The unwarranted abuse they sometimes face for expressing that authenticity in their clothes further points to a dying corporate agenda that is so closed off to anything new. It makes sense that there is an overreliance on hype and never-ending collaborations to keep the power and profits firmly in the grips of the owners of these establishments. To create another label to describe their position is to discredit their authority as designers and ‘the street’ as a legitimate source of inspiration for high fashion.
It makes sense that there is an overreliance on hype and never-ending collaborations to keep the power and profits firmly in the grips of the owners of these establishments.
The peak of this trend can arguably be identified as the Supreme and Louis Vuitton (LV) collaboration for LV’s Fall 2017 Menswear collection. Deemed as the most sought-after collection by streetwear aficionados and having an obnoxiously high resale value, the collection was thought to be a risky move for a luxury brand like LV to associate itself with a streetwear brand. Interestingly, however, while LV reaped the rewards of the collection by buying some much-needed street cred and ‘cool’, it was Supreme that was criticized by its core customer and accused of selling out.
For years, Supreme had been able to create a mystique and maintain a cult following of die-hard customers through a carefully controlled business plan that actually borrowed key principles of the luxury business model: scarcity, exclusivity, and elusiveness, all the while selling at a relatively accessible price point to maintain its loyal core customers. The LV collaboration brought to Supreme throngs of new customers that were rich, susceptible to hype, and desperate to be fashionable. To its credit, Supreme, for the three years since the collaboration (till its recent acquisition by VF Corp.), stuck to its decades-old strategy, overcoming any temptation to expand rapidly and hence still commanded the loyalty of its core customer. Over time it will be interesting to see how Supreme evolves under its new owners — although judging from the current expansion plans, it seems ready to settle in alongside other big VF Corp brands living off their heritage.
Within the design houses, around this time, another clear shift was taking place. The emphasis on calling the design head ‘creative director’ and not a designer (as it was traditionally known) became common practice. This was not a coincidence and directly corresponded to the misguided hiring of ‘streetwear designers’ atop luxury brands. Matthew M Williams at Givenchy, Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton are a few examples whose collections, despite having found a new audience, have alienated a significant chunk of core customers while failing to bring anything new to the fashion conversation. Their lack of understanding of what luxury and high fashion is has been obvious and the limits in the skills and vocabulary of these designers have been well documented in the various independent reviews. This is especially visible in womenswear, which is generally more intricate and complex in its cut and fit and is not limited to classic staple pieces as menswear does. It has undoubtedly played a role in accelerating the demise of the streetwear trend from high fashion itself.
The above-mentioned acquisition of Supreme by VF Corp, as well as the acquisition of Stone Island by Moncler further point to the end of this era. The message is clear: The streetwear wave that these (and countless other brands) were riding is dwindling, and it’s time to find an investor with deep pockets to manage these brands for the future. And although these brands will survive and grow, they will now take their place as institutions of mainstream style within the sphere of fashion pop culture. Their days of influencing fashion are over. The same could not be said for the hundreds of other streetwear brands that have popped up in the last decade with very little authentic heritage to call its own: Palm Angels, Heron Preston, Ambush to name a few. Think Miss Sixty, Energie from the 90’s — brands specifically established to cash in on a growing trend and immediately feel out of place once the trend is dead — a common occurrence in fashion that happens every decade.
Furthermore, the first signs of fatigue of the ‘cut and paste’ collaborations are starting to show. The hottest of these collaborations still sell out in hours (Sacai X Nike, Casablanca X New Balance), but others now linger in the retail oblivion for months, even going on discounts like the seasonal collections (Kim Jones X Nike 2021; Kim Jones X Converse 2021) — making it clear that name and logo branding is no longer enough to carry the lazy design efforts that have become the hallmark of streetwear as it stands now.
Streetwear by nature is anti-fashion, and the word itself vaguely describes a newly developing culture through an interaction of artists with diverse backgrounds, talents, and visions.
So yes, streetwear, as Virgil knows it and has come to influence, might be dying but streetwear in its authenticity will live on. Streetwear by nature is anti-fashion, and the word itself vaguely describes a newly developing culture through an interaction of artists with diverse backgrounds, talents, and visions. It is not meant to become an institution and is not comfortable in the spotlight. So, as words like ‘sneakerhead’ and ‘oversize hoodie’ now become part of the mainstream vocabulary permanently, there is one thing we can be sure of about high fashion: it does not like the mainstream. The fashion-forward crowd and the early adopters have long moved on from streetwear seasons ago. The next decade, like all the previous ones, will be defined by a new group of designers, and those designers can be anywhere in the world right now, most probably struggling to stay afloat, unknown to the mainstream till the tide of trend turns in their favor. Streetwear hence will not die, it will merely reinvent again for and through a new generation of youth, cleansing itself of the old and irrelevant and authentically catering to the subcultures that it belongs to without the pretensions of high fashion.
