Luxury brands used to borrow design inspiration from the streets. They'd watch how street kids would take luxury brands and mash them up with basic looks to create something super valid and dope. Now, luxury brands are all over the streets and streetwear has evolved into something new. So what do we call this new style? Does it even matter? For us, street style came out of a culture where no one had money to buy all the luxury gear so whatever one item we saved up to buy had to be a part of a whole look with other more affordable brands. So we rocked Gucci with Champion, Louis Vuitton with Shabazz Brothers or Fubu and we made Burberry hot all over again buy flipping their fitteds backwards and rocking' their scarves with our Nike, Hilfiger or tee shirts and color coordinating the looks with our kicks.
Now, luxury brands have entire departments figuring out 'how to be street.' Those that haven't figured it out are busy buying up streetwear brands and in the process, trying to buy themselves a street identity without really understanding the vibe or flow of the real life realities that create street culture in the first place.
Now, we're not knocking' anyone's hustle and a check from an investor ain't something to ignore but how it changes or transforms your brand and the vibe of that brand is something to be concerned about. We'll talk about this a bit more in future posts but street style and street culture is about expressing truth; its about translating a social reality through your clothes and designs and how they're worn by those who connect to and identify with that same life experience. Ain't no check big enough to buy that.