The writing has been on the wall for streetwear. And the late Virgil Abloh, forever prescient, was the first to sound the warning bell: “[Streetwear is] gonna die, you know?” he proclaimed in 2019, a bold statement from the designer who brought premium streetwear to the masses.
A year previous, Abloh had subtly hinted at his dwindling optimism for the scene. At his debut collection as creative director of Louis Vuitton men’s — a history-defining moment — a dictionary was handed to guests with this definition of streetwear: “A predictable clothing genre in a renegade designer’s debut collection as part of the fashion establishment…” This statement was him officially drawing the line: he has now moved on and, in his own words, joined the fashion establishment.
But Abloh’s statement was indicative of more than just his personal design pivot. This was a turning point: streetwear, as a whole, was becoming part of the fashion establishment. Until it wasn’t.
Streetwear Is Dead, declared Vanessa Friedman in the New York Times in 2022, confirming Abloh’s prediction from three years prior. And a year later, this very magazine reported that Supreme, undoubtedly streetwear’s most prominent brand, was also dead.
So… RIP streetwear?
“The media changes its vocabulary so fast. It will say streetwear is dead, but streetwear is not a trend,” says Christopher Morency, a fashion journalist and consultant. “Streetwear is something that will always stay around. It's a mentality, a mindset, a behavior. I feel like it's become a dirty word because the media and luxury [market] have treated it as a trend as opposed to a long-term mentality.”
The ethos behind streetwear, naturally, stems from its founding years. And as with all subcultures, it’s difficult to put your finger on its true beginnings. Some facts are generally accepted, though: it was born from an amalgamation of skateboarding, hip-hop, graffiti, and surf culture between LA and New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s. The loose-fitting, graphic-heavy, casual clothes worn by these groups eventually got squeezed together and branded under the label of streetwear.
“It was sort of a rebellion when it all started to come up. That whole part of the industry had a punk, rebellious attitude toward everything that is mainstream,” says Klaus Nolde, co-founder of SÄCK & NOLDE, a company established in the ‘90s by distributing pioneering American brands like Freshjive and Stüssy to Europe. “It was a subculture that said: We're doing our own thing. We don't need the high street brands or the big designers.”
How various American countercultural scenes, largely oblivious of each other's existence, came to light the spark for an almost $200 billion industry is a story that’s already been covered extensively — so I’ll spare you a lengthy history lesson. What’s important is that it has become an almost $200 billion industry.
As the money in streetwear increased, more eyes started focusing on this once-underground sect of fashion: Louis Vuitton collaborated with Supreme, 17 years after sending lawyers to the New York-based streetwear label’s door over a copyright infringement, Dior (under the direction of Kim Jones, who also masterminded the LV x Supreme collab) brought Shawn Stussy out of retirement, and most recently Gucci linked up with Palace.
Beyond flash-in-the-pan collaborations, influential figures from streetwear started being poached by luxury brands. Virgil’s Louis Vuitton appointment was the biggest, but his contemporaries and close friends were also getting snapped up: Matthew Williams went to Givenchy (where, through a collaboration with CHITO, he brought graffiti culture to a former Parisian couturier) and Heron Preston took up a role at Calvin Klein.
High fashion and streetwear, once polar opposites who sneered at each other's existence, were now entirely intertwined. Streetwear became more expensive, more popular, and more diluted than ever before. But all things that come up must come down.
Highsnobiety interviewed 1,000 members of our community and asked: “Are you more excited about streetwear and streetwear brands than you were two or three years ago?” The response: A resounding “No”. Of our respondents, 56% felt less excited about streetwear when compared to a few years ago (a number that jumps to 62% among Gen Z) and it ranked 10th in our audience's list of interests (below topics such as art, fitness, and architecture and design).
Is this a cause for concern? Not according to Jehu-cal Emmanuel Enemokwu, founder of the London-based brand Jehucal: “I don't think it's a bad thing that it's not popular anymore,” he says. “Streetwear became almost like a rich man's fetish.” Kelly Acheampong, who runs the streetwear platform Undiscovered, echoes this sentiment: “Was streetwear even meant to be this big? Was it meant to be globalized to this level? I don't think it was.”
Our research confirms that streetwear is now moving out of the spotlight, presenting an opportunity for it to readjust. And it’s already starting to go back to its roots.
“Brands can now stand out by saying: ‘Hold on! We're going to bring streetwear back to exactly what it is,’” says Acheampong. “I think Corteiz is lighting the way for that. When I look at Corteiz, it has that streetwear essence.”
Founded in 2017 by Clint Ogbenna, West-London-based Corteiz is by far the biggest of the insurgent streetwear labels. No brand has captured an audience like it, willing to show up in droves for whatever guerilla marketing activation it has next (a crossbar challenge to win sneakers? 99 pence cargos from a market stall? Trading luxury puffer jackets for Corteiz puffers? Whatever the event, Clint has established a community that will show up in force).
Seeing kids, guided by a series of cryptic Instagram stories, causing carnage while trying to get their hands on whatever Corteiz is offering, is a throwback. It’s reminiscent of the previous decade when FTP pop-ups turned into riots, back when you could still camp out in front of Supreme before drop day, back when hundreds of kids showed up to Asspizza’s Christmas giveaway leading to him being arrested — the moment before everything became so sanitized.
“It was very community-based, if you were in the streetwear world, then you were in the clique,” says Leo Mandella, better known by his Instagram persona Gullyguyleo, when discussing the streetwear scene in the mid to late 2010s, an era he refers to as the “golden years”. “Now, it’s a lot more mainstream. Big corporations and companies have jumped in with streetwear brands because they know it'll work. I don't think it has that community feel anymore. But then I went to the Basement Cup in Berlin [earlier this year], and the spark was still there. It was a very community-based event and it felt like the old days.”
These small pockets of streetwear energy still exist: Yearsoftears had people fighting in the street for clothes in London, Lostboychannel got banned from its local shopping center in Nottingham after a huge crowd showed up for a giveaway, Drama Call’s “tour of the north” packed out streets across six cities. And this is just a look at what’s happening in England.
Local scenes are building worldwide: there’s 6PM in Berlin, Judah in Melbourne, La Fam in Amsterdam, Punkandyo in Montreal… whatever city you’re in, there’s an exciting streetwear brand with its clique. I likely don’t know about it, and that’s okay: it’s made for that designer’s local community. “Corporations — rich people — took streetwear away from us. Brands are bringing its essence back by staying local,” says Acheampong.
“A lot of luxury brands appropriated what streetwear is: they took the aesthetic part of it and even some of the business model stuff around collaborations but they used it as a trend, even though it was a longer-term trend,” says Morency. “It was a bit more of a movement with people like Virgil Abloh and Demna, but luxury [fashion] never really got to the gist of what streetwear is — which is for the community, by the community. And that still rings true for streetwear today.”
Since streetwear is no longer the uniform of the masses, it has swiftly been replaced. Gorpcore, or “quiet outdoor”, depending on what trend forecaster you speak to, has largely grown out of streetwear and mostly involves wearing as much GORE-TEX as possible. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, quiet luxury, the clothing of the old and rich, is both streetwear’s antithesis and successor (70% of respondents in our study found quiet luxury aspirational). Although that’s not to say streetwear is immune from the pull of old-school refinement, the likes of Aimé Leon Dore and Noah do a great job of bridging the gap.
Luxury brands and high-street fixtures are now ransacking every last piece of the quiet luxury buzz to make a quick buck. Suddenly, the same mall brands pushing out cringe-worthy graphic tees and cargo pants only a few years ago are hell-bent on bringing fine tailoring to the masses. And even the gaudiest of high-end brands, like, say, Moschino, are joining in the act. But by and large, they are leaving streetwear alone. Streetwear has been pushed back to the periphery of the fashion industry.
There’s no saying that the current crop of grassroots brands won’t plant the seeds for luxury streetwear 2.0, and it could turn out to be a more authentic movement than the first wave of luxury streetwear has proven to be.
“I think there's still a balance that can be achieved, as much as it works for some brands to be a ‘fuck you’ to the fashion world, it shouldn’t be seen as lame when a brand wants to tap into the fashion world,” says Mandella. “If we start thinking streetwear brands need to rebel against the fashion world, I think it's silly.”
Whatever may happen in the future, it’s clear for now we’re entering an interim period where brands are going back to the culture’s roots and building hype in their local community. “It was a rebellion in the ‘90s, and now it's becoming a rebellion once more,” says Nolde, who has watched the streetwear scene grow since then.
Streetwear isn’t fashion’s flavor of the month anymore, it’s become an acquired taste. Again.
