HISTORY OF STYLE: STREET KINGS

Our Resident Fashion Historian Heads Back To The Roots Of Street Style
By Daisy Woodward

The rebellious late 70s/early 80s era gave birth to a new found do-it-yourself attitude and an irreverence for the mainstream, propagated by emerging music styles such as punk rock and later hip hop. It was at this time that street style arose – a broad term that describes the sartorial assimilation of various urban influences.

Street style's roots can be traced back to Los Angeles and the early surf and skate scene. It was here that surfer and board-maker Shawn Stussy began designing homemade caps and t-shirts and selling them from the boot of his car at Laguna Beach. Roaring trade led to the start up of the Stussy brand, the first of its kind to take streetwear from the underground to the overground, pioneering the graphic t-shirt – one of the style's most definitive pieces – and popularising cargo trousers, chain wallets and over-sized shirts. Stussy played a major role in the creation of a new clothing aesthetic that took the influences of the current edgier music genres and merged them with the graphic qualities of street art, as well as elements of pop art and New York neo-expressionism. All this was then applied to a style which borrowed not only from the surfer and skater looks but also from functional military and workwear. And there you have it: the (somewhat convoluted) beginnings of modern street style.

A major factor within street style's history is its connection to the hip hop scene and the image that sprung up around it. The trend owes much to early hip hop bands such as Public Enemy and Run-DMC with their respective penchants for gold chains, baggy jeans, trilbies, tracksuits, snapback caps, and of course trainers (Run-DMC went as far as to write "My Adidas" in honour of their Adidas Superstars). Similarly, the Brooklyn-based Beastie Boys, in their 1988 Licensed To Ill era, inspired a new wave of skater-street-style – baseball jackets and caps, hoodies, logo-ed t-shirts and Mike D's huge gold VW necklace. Here we should also note the important integration of sportswear into the street style look (one of its key facets) that took off at this time, with companies such as Vans mass marketing to the growing skater population and basketball-loving hip-hop artists advocating sneakers and brands such as Nike and Converse.

By the 90s the close association with the increasingly profitable hip hop lifestyle and a massive wave of interest and co-option from Japan, had cranked street style up a notch and turned it into vast industry with new labels appearing by the score. Among the most enduring and interesting brands to appear at the time was Japanese company A Bathing Ape (AKA BAPE) who fostered a DIY-meets-luxury aesthetic – they have never held a sale or advertised their products, which are purchasable only in BAPE stores and are displayed on conveyor belts (sneakers), in vending machines (t-shirts) or in glass cabinets (their unique, highly sought after camouflage range). Osaka-based Evisu, famed for their original denim designs, was also established at this time as were street-art t-shirt brands Fuct and Obey, and Beastie-boy-backed XLarge whose clothes (fittingly) blend skate, hip hop and art references.

The turn of the century saw many hip hop artists turning their hands to street style fashion, like Sean Combs with his 1998 Sean John label and Jay-Z with Rocawear in 1999. Then in 2005 modern day master of the trend, Pharrell Williams, launched his vastly popular luxury lines, Billionaire Boys Club (in collaboration with BAPE founder Nigo) and Ice Cream, which cross streetwear with designerwear. Despite the increase in luxury-branded street wear products, however, smaller grassroots companies have continued to emerge and flourish – true to the original street style ethos – and retro trainers and apparel are in increasing demand for their authenticity and heritage. Thus contemporary street style is a hard thing to define – its appeal is now wide reaching and mainstream, touching mums and pop stars alike – and yet for many it retains elements of its hardcore, subculture roots. As Josh Sims, author of Cult Streetwear, succinctly explains: "Streetwear, borrowing from the templates of workwear and sportswear but then running with the idea, built itself from the ground up [and] in doing so became both a major business and a cultish, cultural force in its own right."

Daisy Woodward is the fashion historian at Topman GENERATION and a contributing writer at AnOtherMag.com