Welham Girls' School

"What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language." —Miuccia Prada

 

Attire and Body Language are the most important aspects of non-verbal form of communication. A norm has dictated a specific set of ways to communicate through Body Language, Attire or Fashion is something that is ever changing and differs on what perception one wants to portray to the world. Since the Early 20th Century we can notice a change in fashion trends at the turn of each decade. During the former part of the 19th Century needs called for more tactile and practical clothing, which has now turned into a mélange of comfort and luxury wear also known as Luxury Streetwear.

 

Streetwear is a style of casual clothing which evolved from The Surf-Skate and Hip- Hop culture from the West and East cost of USA and originated from singular people selling out of the back of their trucks and garages. The foremost reason that streetwear was able to gain such traction is mostly because of kids growing up during the 90’s and Nike’s dominance in the market. Famous icons like Michael Jordan would don their products during games which skyrocketed their popularity and created “hype” or demand.

 

A few key players moved in to grab the opportunity and establish themselves in this space which are now valued in millions. Two of the most well known brands are Stussy and Supreme.

 

Supreme was established by James Jebbia who was a manager of Stussy in the early 90’s but went on to open his own skateboard shop in 1994. Originally there was only one store in New York but owing to its popularity it expanded to the West Coast in Los Angeles (2004) and then almost after a decade went international by opening stores in London, Paris and locations through Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka). In 2017 they opened another store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn followed by their 12th and latest store in San Francisco in 2019. In 2017, the Carlyle Group bought 50% stake of Supreme for $500 million which brought its valuation to 1 Billion Dollars.

 

When James Jebbia first opened the store, he saw that the skaters, who were his primary target audience, were mixing up high as well as low end fashion brands like Gucci and Louis Vitton along with Levi’s and Carhartt, he realised that people who liked the hip-hop and skate culture were willing to pay for luxury brands so, he combined the two.

 

Supreme owes its popularity to its “drop culture”; a drop is a limited release of merchandise which works as a great marketing strategy since, people are desirous of possessing things not available to everyone. As a matter of pride, they wish to have the most unique and rarest of everything and are willing to pay a few more bucks to acquire it. Due to this their products are sold within a week of its release. Supreme’s model can be called an exception to the law of demand and supply. Even though the supply is limited/fixed they are able to increase the price which people are will to pay for it.

 

Since the supply is so limited in the market there exists a secondary market which deals in these limited items. The Supreme falsification is so much so that there is a specific term coined for the same called the ‘Supremium’. One of the examples of such resellers is a $300 Supreme North Face Jacket which resells for around $1,600. One of the biggest resellers of Supreme products is a website called StockX which makes about $150 million in sales per year only by reselling Supreme products. It is said that the $60 t-shirt is selling for $700 on the secondary market. One of the recent Supreme t-shirt which is designed by the well known artist Takashi Murakami raised around $1 million for the Covid-19 relief.

 

Streetwear, in today’s world has been one of the defining factors of the fashion industry be it the printed t-shirts, skateboards or even sneakers, Streetwear has changed the definition of clothing world wide. Although speculations of the Streetwear industry coming to an end in 2020 had been made, yet this industry is ever growing and ever changing. The boundaries between fashion, luxury and art are slowly blurring and that is the sole purpose of Streetwear.

 

Anushka Khetawat

PreSC C