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by Tom Dineen
Ever since the concepts of high fashion and haute couture became prevalent within the cultural zeitgeist, they have been synonymous with ideas of beautifully elegant gowns for ladies and sharp, detailed tailoring for men, very much fitting into the brand image of sophistication and class. These ideas all changed in with the Louis Vuitton Autumn-Winter show in 2017 as the designer Kim Jones sent models swaggering down the runway in common streetwear pieces in collaboration with notoriously controversial turned mainstream skate brand from New York. Supreme.
Many people in the mainstream felt that this had seemingly come out of nowhere, with many critics citing this as the real start of the cult of ‘hype’ culture. And to be honest, it was. This collaboration embraced the mentalities of both brands, with LV monogramming the pieces in small repeat patterns, while Supreme placed their ubiquitous box logo, with design ‘borrowed’ from Barbara Kruger’s conceptual propaganda art style , over many pieces. Adding to this, in 2000, Supreme had received a cease and desist order for producing an LV inspired (read bootlegged) skate deck, box logo t-shirts and beanies meaning they were forced to issue a recall on products from the collection, to absolutely no one's surprise, no customers abided by (why would you return something the minute you found out it just got even cooler?) The irony of this collaboration did not escape the hardcore Supreme fans who had been with the brand since it’s skate conception and many viewed this as the point of selling out (actually on the 10th of November 2020 it was sold to the VF group for an insane £1.6 billion! )
Despise this, the most meteoric and contested outbreak of streetwear in high fashion caused an outcry in 2012 when the Milan based fashion house Pyrex Vision, founded by American creative Virgil Abloh, was discovered to have been selling Ralph Lauren rugby shirts with Pyrex 23 printed on the back for a premium of $550. After this controversy blew over, Virgil Abloh changed the name to OFF WHITE and defined the ethos and concept as ‘the grey area between black and white as the color off-white’ and then went on to show this streetwear predominant fashion house in places like Paris, London and New York and garnering a wide range of opinions, ranging from mainstream praise to criticism from traditionalists. The full assimilation into streetwear came with the groundbreaking collaboration with Nike labelled ‘THE TEN’ that blew apart the streetwear and fashion scene with a collection comprising of 10 different Nike silhouettes, such as Jordan 1 Highs, Air Force One’s and Blazer Mids, that had been meticulously deconstructed and redesigned by Abloh himself. Predictably prices soared from the, still pricey, $190 retail price to currently $2043 for the Jordan 1’s and $1252 for the Air Prestos meaning that the aforementioned cult of hype has already taken it’s mark.
In a twist of clever marketing, or LV’s attempt to place more fingers in streetwear pies, in 2018 they recruited the notorious $550 shirt seller, the man, the myth, the legend, Virgil Abloh. Despite the widespread jokes at his and Louis Vuittons expense, Virgil Abloh has pushed the boat out fully, joining these two cultural strands together, with relaxed clothing and silhouettes gracing the runway and a landmark shoe collaboration with Pro skater for Palace, Lucien Clarke. While talking about shoe collaborations, it would be criminal of me not to mention the culture-melting collaboration that was the Dior x Jordan One that was once again spearheaded by Kim Jones who arguably started this obsession with streetwear from the high fashion scene.
To finish my slightly pretentious (ok pretentious) deconstructing of the evolution of streetwear and high fashion i want to say that no matter what your opinion is on streetwear, high fashion or you couldn’t care less about this, I hope this article has encouraged you to take a dive into this interesting and complex corner of society.
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