Overexposure of Streetwear and the Principle of Rarity

[021 Antoine]

Hi guys.

I'm new to this forum and asking for your help!

I'm am currently collecting surveys, about what people love, hate and what annoys on social networks.
Long story short, It's about off-white, fuckboys and triple s sneakers.

It would be amazing if you could take 5 minutes and tell me how much you agree with some statements I made (in the survey). Essentially, what you love and hate about some Streetwear topics.

This is the link to the survey:
https://goo.gl/forms/tFO6eQQvM0gwuW4o2
https://goo.gl/forms/tFO6eQQvM0gwuW4o2
https://goo.gl/forms/tFO6eQQvM0gwuW4o2

By finishing, you'll get a chance to win a new GUCCI DISTURBIA photobook (2018, Peter Schlesinger).
It would be great, if you could participate, I think for fashion-involved people, it can be quite interesting as well.

THANK YOU.

[maj]

I hate literally everything about it

[021 Antoine]

[popcorn]

[maj]

[021 Antoine]

[021 Antoine]

[maj]

anything remotely cool about a brand which peruses large scale commodification in line modern straetwaer practices (such as supreme) instantly becomes uncool due to being associated with it, while there may be some semblance of emotional/ physical connection to a brand which has expanded to such their size because of their underlying history, it inevitably becomes tarnished. Even those at the centre move on and away from the vision which is sold to the consumer.

you see this with supreme where founding members who defined the style which supreme represents in the marketplace today have left the brand to peruse new, different aesthetic avenues even if connected to a similar underlying story. any story created by "supreme" now is nothing more than a marketing tool by which ever hedge fund/ investor owns them, same with a lot of brands in the scene.

You can see this in other struatwure subcultures as well. football casuals where the people who were wearing cpcompany, adidas, stone island etc in its original fashion have moved away from it

a) because of its commodification, de-legitimising original associations and building new, more commercial ones

b) most importantly, because members themselves decide the direction of the subculture as the clothes are secondary to the actions which make it relevant. as influences within that subculture change and external pressures are in play members move with them. all these old dads lap up eg, albam, universal works etc now. yet you still have the original big house brands associated with the scene trying to sell the "classic vision" of what a casual is, one they previously tried to dissociate with.

[021 Antoine]

[maj]

brands can definitely build an "authentic" and "cool" brand identity regardless of their scale, i just don't think most brands don't bother to do it and are often tempted away by the idea of rapid expansion, or some half hearted, transparent middle ground like a collab or video, as opposed to actually contributing something other than product the the subculture they are linked to or born from.

it's easier to see this on the lower end of the spectrum where small brands in subcultures, who may look near identical, are differentiated on their perception of "authenticity or cool" due to the way they interact with that subculture, be it events, who runs it, products, or media production. it's not impossible for large companies to replicate this but often because of their size and the conditions needed to run a large company they become disconnected from the subculture to organise these projects, as well as the consumer becoming sceptical of them.

outside of streetwear brands like Patagonia do this very well , using their platform to remind their consumers of what their products are for and sponsoring projects which help these ideals in both product and other mediums. it's not a meaningful way like "yeah we're redirecting all our profits into government lobby money on environmental issues to protect the natural environments we hold dear and limiting production and resource usage", but they do enough to keep both ends of their market happy and willing to consume their product and maintain a "cool, authentic image".

[kickingthefly]

cp/stoney seems quite interesting to me because it seems a whole new generation of waifish club kids picked it up, dont know if that had much to do with marketing? before that i mainly saw it on middle aged away supporters at the emirates (ie prob "OG' casuals).
i would like to use the word rhizomatic here bc i feel no earnest teen discussion is complete without it

[maj]

Cp company's club links come largely from the acid house era where casuals started to find other pastimes to do on the weekend as opposed to football due to increasing policing, taking large quantities of drugs and going dancing was quite attractive. A lot of football wear such as best company, stone island, cpcompany etc meshed really well with the looks people were wearing to it and was naturally adopted by people outside of football and carried through the emerging dance scenes of the very late 80's 90's and early 00's. Now in the resergence of these looks and interest in this era these jackets are a big prize to lay over your vintage sweatshirt, so its quite organic all things considered although part of the large commodification of this era which is ongoing.

Cp companys marketing department has only just clocked on to the fact people who went game in the early 80s used to wear their clothes however (now it's uncool), so I imagine in 8 years cpcompany will suddenly go "did you know people wore our clothes dancing?!".

Unlike the "switched on whizzes" at Burberry who are now creating "official versions of fakes from the 90's 00's" and publishing "market stall" look books, apparently forgetting they burned a fuck tonne of clothes recently to stop "undesirables" wearing their clothes, much like they sued and burned clothes in the 90's/00's who would of ran the market stalls they're recreating.

[INNIT]

[CheerUpBrokeBoy]

it's stupid to call a brand "inauthentic" for growing and expanding their fanbase when the singular goal of any and all companies is consistent growth. i'm not going to say "you don't hate streetwear, you hate capitalism" because that's hacky and lame, but that's about it. opinions about the authenticity of streetwear brands differ person-to-person and require a much more nuanced analysis

also "[x brand] was only good when LES skaters/gabba ravers/[cosmopolitan, subcultural young people in major urban areas]" is elitist gatekeeping. a family friend of mine likes vlone and new bape but he's a sweet kid who likes cool clothes for the same reason anyone does and the idea of talking down to him the way people on fashion forums shit on certain streetwear brands makes my skin crawl.

[bels]

[rjbman]

i mean if demand grows naturally and you don't increase production and / or prices to meet it, you're just getting more people who want your product to get stuck with resale prices, which i would consider far more upsetting than some sort of lost "inauthenticity"

[bels]

Is this streetwear capitalist realism. Become inauthentic through corporate growth strategies or stay small and benefit the reseller class.

Surely there has to be another way.

[rjbman]

on a streetwear level i'm not sure that i can think of anyone who kept their "authenticity" (keep quotesing it because i'm not sold on it as a valid concept), but patagonia + tnf have done a pretty stellar job of keeping authentic while sustaining extremely growth, would be great to hear thoughts on why that is

[sagc]

Neither of those brands were ever founded on exclusivity - they can grow as much as they want, but their vision of authenticity is tied into the actual product. As long as they keep making relatively functional outdoor gear, they're 'authentic'. Plus, they're not working in a market that really values authenticity.

Streetwear authenticity, on the other hand, seems to require the company to a) pander to a relatively small subculture and b) actively resist targeting anything outside that subculture. Growth is inauthentic when so much of 'authenticity' comes from that specificity.

[maj]

[INNIT]

[zevolution]

@INNIT

I think Paul Virilio could be your man if you want to talk about what 'local' means nowadays, but he can be just as reductive and belligerent in his theorizing as anyone else.

[maj]

[INNIT]

maybe it would be more generative to phrase it as: "do subcultures exist in the way they were previously understood, prior to the digital age, and how have they changed?"

the ability to tap into virtually any subculture at a whim and steadily appropriate it (via dress, taste, activity, etc.) seems to sower the process of localized development, like the subculture dissipates before its even had time to become cringey on its own terms. i could always buy a supreme tshirt and then skateboard or do whatever supreme is supposed to be about

[fun_yunchables]

[WussWayne]

Just the nature of the platforms people are using to find and interact with these subcultures already precludes them from diving deeper into it. It's hard to have in-depth conversations on instagram or get into something from reading a couple of seemingly regurgitated blurbs every season that name-drop an influence or two but basically just say "Yeah everything they dropped is fresh, coming out on this date" every time, not to mention there's a never-ending supply of stimuli that you even end up forgetting to chase up the name drops. Just being their authentic selves but perceived as a way "less cooler" authenticity like someone pointed above. The "shallow consumerism" could be a good thing because (a) I'm not necessarily opposed to things I like being funded and (b) it's not really a race to see who can quickly get to being "really bout dat lyf and learning the roots". The mere act of purchasing something like say some band tee or whatever means the person has a physical reminder to dive deeper because they'll see it, and they'll get other people who see it reminding them as well, even if it takes 20 years or whatever. Or they may never do it at all. All good.