The year is 2016. It’s a typical, dry summer day in Southern California. Emails didn’t start with, “Hope you are doing well during these especially tumultuous times...” Pokemon Go and Finding Dory reignited our childhoods. A Donald Trump presidency wasn’t on the radar. It was even still cool (but, just barely) to wear the shoes with the hearts on them from the brand you couldn’t pronounce. Times were a hell of a lot simpler.
Here I was, parking my car in Fairfax, California, waiting to get into Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo” pop-up store with Justin, one of my close friends from high school. I kid you not, the line spanned five blocks long, and the store wasn’t even set to open for another two hours. What was the store selling? Surely, it must have been a meet and greet with the blessed Yeezus himself if people were willing to wait this long? Wrong. Was it at least merchandise signed by Kanye? Wrong again. People were sweating profusely through a 98-degree heat to buy Gildan-quality clothing with Kanye’s new album name screen-printed on it for $50.
Any sensible person would turn the car around, say they gave it their best shot, and call it a day. But this was 2016! No hypebeast invested in fashion during the time was sensible when the opportunity to cop streetwear presented itself. Justin and I knew a group of teenagers that spent the night waiting in line and paid them $100 to cut right behind them. The store opened, we got in after a short 30-minute wait, and we spent around $300 on clothing we’d later flip to our friends in Singapore and Japan for close to $500 (more than enough to allow us to comfortably buy clothes for ourselves and cover our line-cutting expenses).
Waiting for these sorts of pop-ups were the norm for Justin and me that summer. We developed close relationships with buyers on Instagram that blew up our DM’s whenever Supreme or Antisocial Social Club released a new collection. I saw some of the wildest things when we camped out. 15-year-olds strapped with 5K in cash, people playing Connect 4 at 5:30 am for money to pass the time, and suburban moms begging to hand out cash to cut the line were only the tip of the iceberg. More importantly, though, I saw a glimpse firsthand what made streetwear special.
Bobby Kim (who also happened to be a law school student when he started his LA powerhouse brand) put it succinctly, “Streetwear is about people, not clothes.” For every consignment store runner strapped with 5K, there were two dozen teenagers with a wallet filled with only $35, barely enough for one item. Although they were my age, the teenagers we met had half a decade’s worth of experience on me when it came to camping out for drops like this. They were there the same reason they were in 2012—they were supporting a brand that resonated with their skating lifestyle. The friends they made the first time they sheepishly waited in line were the same ones there five years later. To this day, the people that Justin and I met due to a common interest in clothing are still some of our closest friends.
In an industry that preached that the apex of high-fashion should consist of outfits suited for a white family in Get Out, teenagers felt their existence validated when they stumbled upon streetwear brands that accepted them regardless of race or income. Often, these brands outwardly repudiated both high-fashion as a signifier of class and carceral systems of policing that decimated their loyal customers’ neighborhoods. The relationship developed was a reciprocal one; in exchange for the brand cultivating this culture and bringing people together, the individuals in the community paid patronage in the form of a $30 shirt every few months.
While streetwear was leaking into mainstream culture in 2016, the community, for the most part, still consisted of countercultural fans looking for a creative space devoid of polo shirts and Sperry’s. The years that followed, however, saw a dramatic uptick in its popularity. Uncoincidentally, this was mirrored by a vampiristic consumption of Black culture. Aspiring Instagram influencers followed the path of the Kardashian’s and went on to tan their skin, make their lips plumper, and even occasionally get dreadlocks or braids. The most significant fashion houses caught on as well, introducing streetwear onto the runway and collaborating with brands whose original ethos was a gigantic middle finger to the traditional fashion industry.
The induction of influencers seeking to ride a trend eradicated the original sense of community formerly cultivated by these brands. There was no longer value in the sense of community that Supreme and other brands created a decade ago; the value was instead a purely monetary one based on derivative resale-value and shaped by artificial scarcity. The demand for apparel from brands initially formed as a response to oppression increased exponentially, but the oppression itself was left unquestioned. The neighborhoods where these brands resided were gentrified and the lives of the people in these neighborhoods were repeatedly disregarded. Supreme opened a store in San Francisco that was more focused on catering to Stanford computer science graduates who insisted they were cool than on creating an inclusive space for teenage outcasts. The kinds of close relationships Justin and I built with our buyers in Asia were rare and no longer a necessity. With the advent of reselling platforms like StockX and Grailed, streetwear had developed its own version of Amazon Prime that allowed you to sell to people without ever speaking a word to them.
Around a week ago, I flipped on my television and watched news coverage of Flight Club in Fairfax getting broken into and looted during the George Floyd protests. As Jian DeLeon puts it, “This weekend’s lootings feel like the logical endpoint for the gentrification of street culture.” Streetwear had metamorphosized into a Frankenstein of its former self. Wealthy elites kept buying clothes in an attempt to accrue cultural capital. But, as they consumed a culture into oblivion, its original creators and supporters had been priced out, and something had to give. Consignment stores like Flight Club were a part of this problem as they had more of a desire in manufacturing hype to drive up resale value than in cultivating communities. The community fought back, reclaiming the Jordans that meant more to their childhoods than a quick $300 flip or flex on Instagram.
Streetwear, in its roots, was designed to tell stories of injustice through clothing and provide a unique space of community for those who had a disdain for authority. It is no surprise then that the speculative bubble of hype finally popped and people looted; streetwear had lost its original value proposition and became the same monster it had formerly critiqued. Supreme, for example, was no longer a hole in the wall skating brand that had small pockets of ardent supporters in Japan and LA. It is now partially owned by the same private equity conglomerate that also invests in tear gas used against protestors. The news chopper focused singularly on the looting mirrors the industry’s approach to appropriating culture—surface-level coverage that fails to appreciate Black lives or discuss the systems of capitalism and racism that facilitate their exploitation. Ironically, the visual of Flight Club burning and the looting of streetwear stores embody the original unapologetic philosophy of streetwear itself: stop the exploitation and killing of Black people and listen to what the community has to say.
It’s admittedly been quite some time since I published a piece on here. No promises on if this sort of content will continue, but please smash the heart above and subscribe if you enjoyed it! Harvard Law is remote for the fall 😔, so I’m back in Southern California these days pulling a Bobby Kim at Bodhi Parts. Reach out to christian.rome.lansang@gmail.com if you want to link up.