here's how virgil gets it all wrong.

Virgil Abloh during the Off White show as part of Paris Fashion Week in 2018.
Photo credit: FashionStock.com/Shutterstock.com

There’s a scene in Do The Right Thing that I think about often. In it, Buggin’ Out is bumped into by a blasé cyclist. Originally unfazed, Buggin’ Out soon realizes the man had scuffed his brand new Jordans and in his frustration goes to confront him. What ensues is an argument exploring the film’s themes of racial tensions, class, and cultural insensitivity. That’s not the reason I remember the scene— at least not right away. It’s always been about the Jordans. 

That was 1989. Thirty years ago exactly. Streetwear has existed well before it entered the mainstream imagination, and it will continue to exist once it exits. This is why when Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton and founder of Off-White, Virgil Abloh claimed that streetwear will simply die within the next decade, it severely misses the mark. It’s never been about the t-shirts, hoodies, or sneakers, as Abloh puts it. To reduce it to these definitions erases its ethos — its history. ”Prada sneakers are streetwear, Prada loafers are not.” Such lines are arbitrary and only further muddle our perceptions of apparel. Streetwear, point-blank, has simply been about re-contextualizing fashion for the streets. It does not exist as a subset of clothing— it is youth culture expressed with clothing, unique to its own microcosm.

via Dazed

The study of streetwear as one between youth and apparel is a documented phenomenon, explored by cultural theorists and fashion consultants alike. Mayan Rajendran elaborates this phenomenon in “The Development Of Streetwear And The Role Of New York City, London, And Supreme NY:”

“The understanding of youth culture and identity within the subculture that is now known as streetwear explains that the emergence of the genre, like other forms of youth signifiers, is a reflection of group identification as well the development of societal boundaries.”

Streetwear exists in the same social context that fashion does at large and is subject to the same realities. Designer and critic, Recho Omondi has asserted this on her podcast, The Cutting Room Floor, stating, "Fashion isn’t about apparel, fashion is social and political commentary translated through apparel." Commodification will never take that away— no matter how many tees are screen printed or sneakers are sold. Maybe you could argue that streetwear’s newfound audience will simply leave, finding the newest trend to appropriate. This is not an invalid argument. But this new market has hardly sustained it, much less contributed to it. Assumptions like these also homogenize streetwear, ignoring its variations and idiosyncrasies. Timbs and Dickies in New York are just as much streetwear as Cortezes and jeans in Los Angeles, each existing within their own social and historical contexts.

Quoting MAEKAN’s Eugene Kan, “For some, sneakers and T-shirts are one aspect of [streetwear] while to others leather jackets and Dr. Marten boots are a quintessential part of their streetwear uniform. But one thing I think we should agree upon is that cultural aspects are a big driver of regional definitions of streetwear. What happens on a ground level in Hong Kong and its cultural and societal contexts are going to make up that region's definition versus the happenings of say London, Vancouver, Shanghai, and New York."

Neither high fashion nor fast fashion’s appropriation of streetwear marks its beginning nor end, simply because they never got it right. And that’s fine because neither of those institutions dictates its validity or authenticity. The streets will always reinvent, in this decade and the next. From Willi Smith to Daymond John to Bobby Hundreds to Faraz Zaidi, the culture will always breathe and continue to change and grow. You can’t kill the culture, especially not from the outside. As for the future of streetwear in the next ten years, I’m as Abloh says, “excited to see what we do in this next chapter because the strides we made in the last ten years are too insane.”

“There exists so many pockets of cultures and spheres of influence that defining streetwear will rarely elicit the same answer from any one person … they all operate on different platforms within the streets and for them, the context will always be different. I would never go as far as to superimpose streetwear’s definition onto somebody else.” - Eugene Kan