All Your Blog are Belong to Us
In 2006, we were already asking if the Internet destroyed streetwear
Originally published in URB No. 140
“Staying in tune to the limited edition, hyperstrike, one-off mentality that has made the street culture scene so “fresh,” Dontbelievethehypebeast.com has officially sold out. All posts have been put on ice until a later date when we can pull them out and “son” other websites. See you in line the next time some overhyped yet undoubtedly wack sneaker drops.” —Dontbelievethehypebeast.com
The fact that the revolution will not be televised is a quaint understatement. These days, for the stylish (r)evolution of luxury street brands, the hyper-collectible, snobbishly overachieving bastion of cool lies almost entirely online. Blogs are streetwear culture's life-sustaining carotid artery, supposedly allowing only the most evolved corpuscles passage into the mindshare of discerning consumers. And the vascular flow of daily updated JPEGs, sightings, and insider buzz spreads in hours and minutes. The half-life for an item from blog to “all sold-out” leaves every other medium back in the primordial goo circa 2004. Forget the sleek retail final point of sale, the blog is where the negotiation for style supremacy plays out and the deal is made.
Sites like Freshnessmag, Slamxhype, and the excellently named Highsnobiety are the judge, jury, and lord exalter of everything meaningful in modern streetwear (i.e., hip-hop- inspired fashion, skate, baller, homeboy, blah, blah, blah). If it doesn’t happen online, it doesn’t get a blip on the only radar that matters: the minds (and feet) of Millennials. It‘s a self-created and managed scene propelled by an intoxicating vapor of entrepreneurship, new manufacturing technologies, converging social castes, psychographic shifts, and the disproportionate amount of cash kids spend to look fly. Monitoring this world is like day trading for the sneaker set, who buy and sell on insider tips, diverting savings and rent money to Cartelgoods, Myshoelife, or Undefeated dot coms.
Today’s young urbanite is part of an unprecedented renaissance of high voltage creative output and control over personal expression. Instead of Hilfiger and Lauren handing down some interpretive fashion swansong to the next generation, today’s street fashionistas are spawning, consuming and hyping their peers. Influenced by and influencing everybody from Nigo (the Japanese fashion Midas and A Bathing Ape brand-father, DJ/producer and Pharrell confidante), to Lupe Fiasco, to underground mavens like Bobby Hundreds (thehundreds.com) and Rickey Kim (mrkimsays.com), style fanatics are running the game these days, putting clothing brands on the same coveted social echelon as record label cliques. Today there’s little difference between the crew from LRG or Crooks & Castles and the entourage for the Cash Money Millionaires.
Never get high on your own supply
But a reality checkup is always a good thing. For a brief minute (about a month by most estimates, which is like a year in Web time), this isolated universe of trendsetters and followers received some much-needed schooling by the secretly produced rogue site dontbelievethehypebeast.com (its name a jab at the popular hypebeast.com blog). Anonymously descending like a virtual heckler over the cliquish blog mafia’s overly precious scene, the painfully honest humor spared no one. Taken by many insiders as a fresh dose of truth, most of the threads were propped up feverishly by visitors to the site’s own boards. For a minute, the focus of the game changed.
The cutting but humorous roasts were mainly aimed at keeping the industry sober and gullible buyers wary (OK, so you paid $1000 for a pair of dayglo crocodile and rabbit fur kicks made by teenagers in Jakarta?). In its short-lived existence, it left no brand or trend free from its scathing bombardment, calling out everyone from the big boys (Adidas got clowned for what appeared to be shoe designs done “by six-year-olds”) to veteran indies (accusing Fresh Jive honcho Rick Klotz of making tees for Sketchers-wearing frat boys), to fake gangster bandanas worn by Kanye/Dipset wannabes who couldn’t find the hood if they got dropped off there by a Rafael Perez. (If you don’t know about Perez, take the bandana off).
“OK, so you paid $1000 for a pair of dayglo crocodile and rabbit fur kicks made by teenagers in Jakarta?”
The site—and hopefully this editorial—shouldn’t taste like a jug of haterade poured by some disgruntled insider (though several rumors persist about who
put the site up, including speculation that it was Complex/Ecko). But Dontbelievethehypebeast took legitimate aim at the streetwear and sneaker market's overcooked and bloated self-aggrandizing nature. And took particular umbrage with a scene so clearly in need of some self-regulating. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, as brands (and sites) get their game face on for a much-deserved take-over of the marketplace. After my visit to MAGIC and the surrounding Vegas clothing shows earlier this year—and seeing everything from tennis ball fabricated Reeboks to $400 custom denim you’re never supposed to wash —it all made me a little queasy and nostalgic for the days of airbrushed jeans and a pair of Pumas. I mean, when did the freshest kids become the class elite? Who’s now dictating the output of a scene supposedly built on spontaneity, finite resources, and inventiveness? God, I hope it’s not Nigo!
“When did the freshest kids become the class elite?”
But to be fair, I don’t want this to come off as some high-minded naïve rant about the commodification of culture and fashion (that horse is out of the barn, plus my closet is full of brand new Nike and Adidas that I won’t wear past a few scuffs). It’s just healthy (and, in this case, damn funny) when we get checked, son. Any worthwhile movement should be able to weather careful scrutiny and dust its shoulder off a bit. Dontbelievethehypebeast.com did that so excellently. Hopefully, its appearance wasn’t just a limited run.
This has been edited for clarity.
