What is Streetwear?

by Enzo Iglesias

Why do people spend hundreds of dollars on clothes, or even thousands of dollars? Well first of all, normal clothes are not that expensive. The reason why people spend money on clothes, is mostly for the brand, but some people do like the clothes they buy for the designs not just for the hype that is around the brand. I’ll give you some examples of hype brands and why people are going crazy for them.

I’ll start from the bottom, the ‘’lowkey hyped’’ brands. COMME des GARÇONS, Anti Social Social Club and PALACE, these are three brands that pretty much everyone recognises because of their classic designs. The heart with the eyes, the script of Anti Social Social Club (ASSC) and the triangle with the word ‘’PALACE’’ written on every side of it. Then we’ve got the hyped brands that every teenager knows, or even older people. I’ll get to explain this soon. So we got Supreme, Bape and Off-White. Those brands are also recognisable by their iconic designs, but Supreme does pretty much everything and has way more designs than Bape and Off-White. When I say everything I mean like Supreme have done a Thermos, a ladder, an axe, multiple plates, a razor and even a inflatable boat, all of this with the Supreme box logo of course. While Bape’s designs are pretty much the camo with the ape head, the ape head itself and the A Bathing Ape script, which is the original name of the brand but people shortcut it to Bape. Now for the Off-White designs, I’ll talk about the t-shirts and hoodies because the brand itself is kind of a fashion brand, but what people mostly wear from this brand are the tees and hoodies. So, their designs, from what I know and own, is pretty much putting artwork from famous artists onto the cloth, then add the words MIRROR MIRROR/ TEMPERATURE/ SEEING THINGS/ OFF at the bottom of the shirt on both sides. Their special touch and what people recognise the brand to, is the back and the sleeves of the cloth. They add either the cross with arrows or the stripes with the word WHITE. Also, something else Off-White does, is putting words between quotation marks.

Now that you know these brands and their designs, I’m going to explain why people are going crazy for them, the prices, the resell and most importantly the term people use to qualify people that buy all this crazy expensive stuff. But before that, I’ll explain what I meant earlier when I said ‘’older people’’. So originally, Supreme was a skateboard brand which was founded in 1994 so that means that people around 30-40 years old now know Supreme because, back in the days, they were skating or they just saw that brand back then, so they kind of know that Supreme is a streetwear brand. The reason why I brought that point to the table is because my dad knows Supreme, but he doesn’t understand why I would pay 100$ for a t-shirt.

But I want you to understand why I would do that, so I’m going to explain the prices and the resell of those tees and accessories and all the other stuff these brand makes. As a starter, Supreme is not that expensive. I mean yes it is but the average price for a t-shirt is around 50$ US, and with all the taxes, duties and shipping it’s now around 120$ CAD (taxes, duties and shipping is maybe 2 times cheaper in US). But the thing that is great with hyped brands is that you can resell clothes and stuff, so the tee shirt you bought for 120$ could go around 150$ and even more because Supreme and every other brands only makes a limited quantity of their product. Then when the product goes deadstock you can resell it at a higher price you bought it, which is nice for the seller, but sometimes, and it’s the case with the box logo tees, sweatshirts and hoodies, the resell price is 6 to 7 times higher than the retail one. That’s where it gets interesting right? But you gotta be quick because for box logos a.k.a BOGOs, it takes around 2 minutes before they go deadstock, or even less. Now that’s for Supreme, Bape and Off-White are a totally different thing. It’s the same system, like people resell when it’s deadstock, but the retail price is way much higher than Supreme. Average retail price for a Bape shirt is 140$ US and 390$ US for a hoodie. While Off-White is more like 400$ US for a t-shirt. All of those prices with taxes and duties included. So you can see that Off-White is way more expensive than Supreme and Bape and to be honest I think it’s excessive. The interesting part of streetwear brands and sneakers, is that you never really lose money out of buying expensive clothes of shoes. Let me prove my point. I bought a tee shirt for 70$ that I’ve worn and washed several times, and a pair of shoes for 100$ (they were 135$ off) which I never wore, and exchange all of this plus 20$ for a shirt that was 280$. So basically I bought the shirt for 190$, nice deal uh? And eventually when I’ll stop wearing this shirt, I will probably sell it or trade it. So yeah I understand most people find that stupid to buy expensive clothes, but as I said you never really lose money. But that’s my point of view (and the one of a lot of people too).

Why do people buy Supreme, Bape, Off-White and other streetwear brands? Why those brands specifically and not another one that is cheaper? ‘Cause money’s appealing baby. Just kidding I’m not a gold digger. Well Bape and Supreme have been in the streetwear game for a long time, considering Bape is celebrating his 25th anniversary this year, so that has for effect that they are the 2 most common and known hyped brands. The fact that multiple celebrities wore those brands and/or have done collaborations with them have popularized them a lot too. And finally there’s hip-hop. Again with celebrities, but this time it’s in the songs they write, some of these new rappers says for example: flexin’ in Supreme, so people just make the connection that their idols or people they like wear those brands, and so wearing Supreme or Bape makes you cool or whatever.

Now that’s something else that I need to explain to you. Hypebeast. A hypebeast is a person who follows a trend to be cool or in style, who wears what is hyped up. Well the name talks for itself, I don’t think you need any more explanation on what is a hypebeast. It’s someone that wears expensive AND hype brands to ‘’flex’’ on instagram and have more likes and followers. The term ‘’flexing’’ might be defined by showing off what you own.

I’ve talked about pretty much everything that’s important at this point, except for one thing. Collaborations, or let’s just call it collabs. I’ve mentioned collabs 172 words ago from here, but haven’t really talked about it. Basically, a collaboration is 2 brands at least that produce something, in this case shoes, clothes or accessories. When a hyped streetwear brand, like Off-White, links up with Nike for example, the original/retail price of the shoes stays the same as if it were a normal shoe, but when these goes deadstock, the price is skyrocketing, literally, it can go up to 10 times the original price. Of course the shoe has the same shape of its original model, but the brand, in this case Off-White, changes the look of the shoes and add his details so we can recognize it as an Off-White collab. For example the Air Jordan 1’s Chicago x Off-White were 190$ US at retail, now the price is around 2933$ US. That’s 15 times its original price, it’s crazy! Imagine buying this shoe and selling it afterward, that’s 2743$ in your pocket. The problem with all those expensive clothes and shoes, is that some people counterfeit them, and there are sites that actually sell those as real pairs for ‘’retail price’’ or even higher, imagine paying 700$ for a pair of shoe and you don’t even get the real deal. The worst is that there are sites that actually sell really good looking counterfeit and you can’t even tell if it’s fake unless you take a closer look at the tags and materials. But there are actually ways to distinguish counterfeits from real, so for someone that pays a lot for his clothes and shoes, he better learn how to recognize real from fake. There are also people that knows the stuff they buy is fake but still wears it and ‘’flex’’ with it on the gram. The last sentence basically meant, people that show off and pretend their stuff is real when it isn’t on instagram, which is kind of sad.

Alright so to wrap this up, I’d say buy whatever you want, you do what you want with your money right? I hope you learned a lot about the streetwear culture and that next time you see someone with some expensive clothes or shoes, you don’t think he wasted his money in something that cost 10$ to made. Just respect his choice because he didn't waste his money, he still has it, but in a different way.