maj wrote:I hate literally everything about it
021 Antoine wrote:maj wrote:I hate literally everything about it
But do you still buy streetwear items or have you completely abandoned it from your wardrobe?
021 Antoine wrote:But do you still buy streetwear items or have you completely abandoned it from your wardrobe?
popcorn wrote:021 Antoine wrote:maj wrote:I hate literally everything about it
But do you still buy streetwear items or have you completely abandoned it from your wardrobe?
Don't you want more nuance than this? You might image a "streetwear item" as being a $70 Nike running shoe, a $190 high-level Nike account shoe (vapormax, premium editions of air maxes), or an off-white Nike shoe that's almost exclusively available for resale at 3-6x the MSRP ($600 - $1200). You might consider a $12 pacsun graphic tee streetwear, or consider a $100 tee shirt a threshold. Or consider the retail vs. resale dynamic, because "purchasing" a supreme tee shirt can cost you $50 or $1000.
Shouldn't you probe for income level before asking for someone's sentiments vs. purchase patterns? For vanity goods? If you just want sentiments, that's fine, but won't they be mostly negative for people who are precluded from buying?
Who cares what a random sample of people think about something? Why not try to find out why they feel that way? Why not try to understand anything?
Don't you throw your chance at negative or subversive responses by offering a chance at a book of literal Gucci advertisements?
maj wrote:021 Antoine wrote:But do you still buy streetwear items or have you completely abandoned it from your wardrobe?
i bought a cp company jacket this week. does that count?
negatives of streatware:
* queuing
* fan base
* reselling
* filled with boring people
* class tourism
* boring luxury brands creating products they previously sued people over to attach some form of cultural relevancy to their dying house
* boring lazy middle class teens with tshirt brands
* brands jacking prices up because gideon from sussex is willing to wait for it
* the idea that facebook is a meaningful resale platform
* having to buy clothes instantly
Positives of straitwhere:
* literally fucking nothing as the interesting parts of streitwhere is the cultural significance these garments have by being attatched to certain sub cultures/ activities/ people the consumer thinks they are doing/ part of by purchasing a tshirt.
the cp company jacket is v nice btw
bit boring looking
v good for making me feel like im at the rave but really all i'm doing is getting mad at some kids hitting me with lion, dokka blitz on r6 siege.
maj wrote: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.
maj wrote: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.
a) because of its commodification, de-legitimising original associations and building new, more commercial ones
CheerUpBrokeBoy wrote: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.
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.
also im over shitting on kids for engaging trends. i exhibited the same "boring" behavior in 2008 when i bought my first pair of 511s and thought that i was an indee rawker. the difference now is that our beloved special kid brands are reaching a mass audience. who cares, it was going to happen and the young people will be alright.
i cant get behind this. there was never a "real" narrative; that thing you liked when it was more localized was still just a commodity, governed by the same relations as all commodities. it was always relations between people and commodities, and these relations weren't corrupted, they followed the same progression as everything else. all commodities are socially driven, regardless of the scale. its always a narrative of decline, that's the only "authentic" narrative.
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
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"
maj wrote:to me this is reductive, while also missing what street wear/ subculture clothing is about, while everything can be reduced to soniccapitalism.jpg it misses way more interesting discussions which focus on subculture grown brands and their interaction with the marketplace. within subcultures smaller/ home grown brands inherently get popular through who runs them, how they interact with the community, the time at which they exist and their contributions to the subculture. these are narratives which drive consumption for better or worse and to dismiss them as marketing druel ignores how a lot of brands who are respected today got to where they are and why they're held so highly over brands like obey (again wear obey if you want! but from a clothing x subculture authenticity perspective its pretty wank!!).
i also find it very difficult to separate out culture from capitalism, especially when we're talking about subcultures that pivot around buying stuff
i wonder if subcultures even exist anymore? it seems to me that anything local is immediately torpedoed into the mainstream by the internet/other forms of instant communication; do subcultures have the same time to develop and define boundaries and is being "local" now just a bougie fantasy? i bet someone smart talks about this
i think this to me is what grates me most about a lot of streetwear groups in their current form (and a lot of hobbiest groups which are formed of buying stuff), the consumption of fashion and trends is primary to streetwear in many ways now as opposed to it being an extension of other activities. consuming/purchasing the look/lifestyle good is now the hobby, as opposed to an activity which informs the style decisions (somewhat broad statement but not a blanket statement, neither is it meant as "the good ol days had no consumption!")
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