What’s all the Hype about?
If a young man wearing a three quarter length BAPE shirt, skinny jeans, a snapback and limited edited Nike sneakers walks down the street you can sure as hell bet there’s at least one question springing to mind — what da fuq is that? And to this question one finds the response — well duh? It’s a hypebeast! But to me and to many of us mere mortals, what is a hypebeast?
The term has proliferated in recent years as a rising identity within society. To be a hypebeast, according to Chelsea Agno in her article Hypebeasts — A Culture Manufactured Online, the identity and self worth of a hypebeast is discerned by their outward appearance. Hypebeasts are highly critical about what they look like, what they wear, the brands they wear, and where they shop. They use exclusive products to shape and create an identity that is considered cool and dominant, with the aspiration of becoming influential within the hypebeast community.
To be hype, involves buying a product that is either trendy or highly sought after at that moment in time, purely for credit and recognition from their peers. And with their die-hard nature for attaining ‘what is hype’ many of the sneakerheads within the hypebeast culture can be found camping out on the street for days to get first crack at prestigious products like the Air Jordan XI Gamma Blue sneakers, which triggered riots last year when it hit stores.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxH-P5Unq8[/embed]
But within all this chaos, why do hypebeasts feel the need to be so ‘hype’?
Despite its growth in popularity in recent years, now having over 2.9 million photographs on Instagram with the hashtag “hypebeast,” the sneaker culture is in by no means new. According to Allyssia Alleyne in her article High-tops and high fashion, when the first sneakers debuted in the 1800’s, they were considered as a luxury item due to the high price of rubber and the working class’s lack of leisure time. Following the devastation of World War I, governments had to confront more than just the colossal loss of life, as the war had demonstrated how physically unprepared their populations were for battle, prompting a large-scale push for fitness. This sparked the mass production of sneakers as more and more people in the working class started to buy running shoes for fitness purposes, losing it’s previous connotations as a luxury good. But by the 80’s and 90’s black athletes and musicians started to embrace the shoes. In his article, Hugh Hart asserts that with basketball genius Michael Jordan and rappers like Run DMC leading the way, sneakers came to represent fresh concepts of achievement. In other words, when rap stars and high-achieving athletes wear sneakers, they set the tone for why certain sneakers are more desirable than others and find their way into the wardrobe in a more meaningful way than some pair of basic sandshoes shoes you wear to wash the car on a Sunday.
This aligns closely to what Marx terms ‘commodity fetishism,’ which according to sociological cinema, is the process of ascribing ‘magic qualities to an object, whereby the human labour required to make that object is lost once the object is associated with monetary value for exchange. Under capitalism, once the object emerges as a commodity that has been exchanged for monetary value for equivalent universal exchange, it is fetishised, in that consumers come to believe that the object has value in and of itself. The object’s value comes from the commodity, rather than the human labour that produced it.
The hypebeast culture encompasses commodity fetishism through their love of sneakers, which have ascribed ‘magic’ qualities via endorsement from celebrities such as Pharrell, A$AP Rocky and Kanye West, who recently has released his Yeezy Red Octobers, which sold out in only 11 minutes.
The latest instalment of this sneaker trend has seen the comeback of the Adidas Stan Smith, which have been photographed on celebrities such as Rita Ora, A$AP Rocky, Ellen DeGeneres, and even David Beckham. Aligning with the hypebeast sneaker culture and commodity fetishism, the Stan Smith was the first leather tennis shoe ever made, and became very successful over the years, especially in the 90s. Today however, the shoes are seen as fashion sneakers, which were mentioned in a Jay-Z song in 2001, and have sold more than 30 million pairs within the last four decades.
As interest in the shoes dwindled in past years, Adidas’ strategic marketing has enabled the well-established sneaker label to reposition itself at the forefront of the industry, as well as define the current sneaker trend. In 2011, Adidas stopped the production of the shoes, which were declining in popularity, and in 2012, Stan Smith sneakers were starting to slowly disappear, with only a few pairs of second-hand Stan Smiths to be found online. In 2013, Adidas teamed up with a selection of exclusive retailers across the globe to offer premium and limited editions of the classic Stan Smith. The brand also produced customised Stan Smith sneakers for a small group of fashion, design and cultural leaders. By 2014, Adidas began an aggressive social media campaign, re-lauching the Stan Smith on the 50th anniversary of the shoe, as well as reintroducing the Stan Smith at the Celine show in Paris, worn by designer Phoebe Philo.
Pharrell also released his own line of hand-painted Stan Smiths in 2014 which sold out almost immediately.
It also helped immensely that the reigning fashion aesthetic of the past two years has been what the New York magazine helped dub “normcore” — an embrace of classic, inexpensive, ‘ardently ordinary’ clothes that channel IDGAF, comfort-over-style vibe. The key fundamentals of the ‘normcore’ look — light, loose jeans, crew neck sweatshirts, white socks, and plain white sneakers — have emanated out, each becoming their own mainstream fashion trends. Thanks to Adidas, Stan Smiths have emerged as THE plain white sneaker to have, forming the foundation of the whole look. Giving light to what Miranda Priestly would say in that, ‘…that sweater [hyped pair of Stan Smiths] was selected for you by the people in this room, from a pile of stuff.’
As Adidas’ appeal has been commercially manipulated, the ability of pop and sports stars to connect with the imaginations of hypebeasts, by fetishising and invoking qualities of being socially cool and dominant, ensures market after market for global consumer capitalism.
While the hypebeast culture takes pleasure from wearing the latest styles and brands, hypebeasts construct their identity to the public through the meticulous curation of style, clothing, and behaviour, signifying their investment in pop culture and urban life. In his work, Bordieu asserts that in order to understand the style one must have the cultural capital to comprehend it. In order for hypebeasts to properly represent themselves as hypebeasts, they need to have the cultural knowledge about what is hype and what is not. By actively following social trends and selectively picking out what items are representative of hypebeasts, a hypebeast identity is actively being created and maintained. Online platforms such as Hypebeast.com, which originated as simple blog, has tuned into the hypebeast culture and capitalised by curating an online store catered towards the interests of hypebeasts.
The hypebeast culture also uses platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to gain attention and approval from others. Hypebeasts take advantage of these platforms for the purposes of constructing and ‘buying’ identities, and to post in-depth reviews or product releases, which through feedback from users gives them instant gratification for their narcissistic behaviour and lavish spending habits.
Although hypebeasts choose to wear hype clothes, as well as have the ability pick and choose the styles and brands they wish to wear over others. In Hitting up the hype beasts, Nguyen asserts that people just want the recognition from their peers, not because they actually like what they’re wearing and that’s what makes hypebeast more than a thing — it’s almost like a lifestyle because they’re doing it for the wrong reasons, they’re living it not because they want to, but because they want the recognition that comes with it. And while hypebeasts use online platforms to keep up to date on pop cultural trends, many of these articles are disguised as advertisements, which hypebeasts then reiterate through these online forums and photo/video sharing platforms, essentially marketing to the masses.
In recent years the running shoe, the hype beast’s staple accessory, has evolved beyond its original use as athletic footwear to a form of cultural and symbolic capital. Within this sneaker culture, hypebeasts take advantage of brands to signal their identity to society, as well as their socioeconomic status and cultural capital about hype trends. By purchasing articles of clothing with high status values, hypebeasts wish to be recognised as being cool and dominant within society, such that they appear to be up to date with the latest pop cultural styles and trends. While this style reflects their investment and expression within urban life and popular culture, their active involvement in attaining cultural capital about hype trends emphasises the ability of big businesses to take advantage of pop cultural trends for commercial gains. However, within this world of hype, one begs to question how long this sneaker trend will hang around for; while it seems for Adidas, as Heidi Klum says — “One day you’re in, and the next day, you’re out.”
