“IF YOU’RE INTO STREETWEAR TODAY, IT’S BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS INTO IT.”
If you haven’t read Bobby’s Hypebeast op-ed on the dying state of Streetwear in 2015, titled “All-Over,” you can HERE.
Us Staff members here at The Hundreds had a few impassioned conversations during the editing process of this piece. We debated about culture & art vs. commerce—how streetwear can be sustainable yet still retain its spirit. We talked about how we are beginning to value aesthetics above everything in a post-IG, post-Tumblr reblog-happy world. What it means to live in a social media era where people are about having interests, rather than actually being interested (“liking” something on Instagram or Facebook versus genuine, earnest I-read-literally-everything-I-could-about-this-level obsession). Trend-cannibalism and culture vultures. We asked if Bobby’s op-ed could read potentially too KIDS GET OFFA MY LAWN and if what’s happening to streetwear has happened to practically every previously “pure” counterculture that ever existed (diluted and homogenized for commerce, robbed of its spirit, and sold back to the masses).
ANYWAYYYYY, Bobby thought long and hard about this piece and we might be impartial, but we think he nailed it.
Fun fact about the shoot that accompanied the piece—featuring rare shirts by DQM, Freshjive, and The Hundreds: It was shot in one of our favorite thrift stores in Huntington Park, California. I (Alina) personally bought a huge mirror from there that looks like it belongs on a straight up ’90s bachelor pad waterbed (you know the kind—complete with a swap meet blanket with a huge panther on it).
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