Prior to that, Babenzian spent over a decade designing for Supreme, but he wears his status as a grizzled veteran of the scene lightly. It took husband and wife duo Brendon Babenzian and Estelle Bailey-Babenzien years to refine the idea that would become Noah, the brand the two re-launched in earnest in 2015. Its Bapestas-a candy-colored riff on Nike's Air Force 1-pop up regularly on the feet of today's influencer class, and just this month Nigo debuted his first collection as artistic director of Kenzo, a long-overdue nod of recognition for a designer who remains one of his genre's most influential. By all indications, though, Bape's stock is once again on the rise. But as demand for Bape's zip-up hoodies and shark tees skyrocketed, the brand expanded into product categories at a rapid clip, saturating the market with new products until the buzz gradually died down. On red carpets and in music videos Bape's splashy camo designs became pervasive, proof of hip-hop's nascent power to make or break a brand through association alone. Founded by the Japanese designer Nigo in 1993, Bape was popularized stateside by Pharrell (who would go on to co-found Billionaire Boys Club with Nigo a decade later) and eventually artists like Lil Wayne, then at the peak of a legendary mixtape blitz. It's hard to overstate the stranglehold A Bathing Ape had on the culture in the late 2000s. But under the careful stewardship of an expert team of Stüssy enthusiasts, the brand is once again turning out clothing that feels exciting and undeniably cool, a compelling proposition that hasn't gone unnoticed- by us, or the new generation of customers flocking to its wares. In the late aughts, the brand's appeal waned slightly, a casualty of over-expansion chasing the type of mass-market dominance that's anathema to loyal customers. In its heyday, it pioneered a remarkably prescient form of cross-promotion, cultivating an international tribe of certified cool people to lend the brand an aura of cosmopolitan exclusivity. (A few years later, Jebbia would leave to open his own store, Supreme, just around the corner.) From the outset, Stüssy brought together a who's who of big-names from the world of fashion, music, and art. In 1991, Shawn Stussy, a California surfer with a distinct cursive scrawl, enlisted a young retail impresario named James Jebbia to help launch the New York branch of his fledgling skate brand. These are the 11 most important brands you should be familiar with, whether you’re on the cusp of signing up for your first raffle or simply refreshing your memory waiting on line before another big drop. And no matter what you call them, it’s impossible to deny their prime of place in the fashion psyche. Their clothes are meant to be worn and worn hard, designed for the type of easy versatility favored by the artists and athletes that are menswear's foremost avatars. What do the brands on streetwear's vanguard have in common? Often a deeply-felt appreciation for subcultural style, and strong ties to fashion-centric cities like New York, London, and Tokyo. Seasonal drops? Internet-breaking collaborations? Sky-high resale values? Countless hallmarks of the modern fashion industry have roots in the streetwear scene, even if fashion is loath to admit it. Figures once on the bleeding edge of the scene are now some of the most prominent movers and shakers in the industry, and the concepts they pioneered have become the norm. Absent a better term, streetwear seems to have stuck-and despite the absurdity of the premise, the genre has never been more influential. Couldn't all of fashion, then-save, perhaps, for the most delicate of couture creations-plausibly be considered streetwear, at least in the most literal sense of the word? Yet here we are. Do streetwear brands sell suits and ties? Actually, yes, some of them far more compelling than their runway counterparts. Do streetwear brands sell hoodies and T-shirts? Many of them do, but so do the hoariest of French maisons.
At worst, it smacks of bigotry, a convenient way to dismiss the work of nonwhite or non-classically trained designers as lesser-than.
At best, it's reductive, flattening the nuances of a diverse cohort of brands into an easy rubric. " Streetwear", a clunky catch-all term the fashion industry uses to bracket a vast spectrum of styles, has never been a comfortable descriptor.
What is a streetwear brand? If only we knew.
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