How Modern Fashion and Hype Are Unlike Anything Seen Before

The slow and awkward evolution of fashion and hype has been a staple of our pop culture as far as we can remember. Just about every person has an opinion on whether something looks nice or not. The idea that it could be related to the generational gap whether you find something good looking or not makes sense due to it’s largely based on trends.

Thinking about how quickly clothing goes in-and-out of style is shocking; one day  everyone is wearing it and the next is just you. What comes to mind is the early 70’s; you had tie dyed everything, bell bottoms and everything was embroidered. Fast forward 10 years, and you wouldn’t see someone wearing that unless they ran out of clean clothes. This trend has been a part of every decade before and after the 70s. As decades change, so do companies and fashion. It just so happens our decade screams abstract and power.

“Fashion’s value comes in many forms. It can be both armor and disarming, giving the wearer power in various forms. It can commend or detract, engage or make invisible,” UWM Art and Design professor Nathaniel Stern said.

With this being said, today’s fashion can be summed up as simplistic and interesting rather than complicated. This decade has sole responsibility for the evolution of hype and fashion. Every decade before the 10’s and 20’s had both hype and fashion, but it wasn’t until recently that the fire ignited, but who lit the match?

In order to answer that question you have to know some background information. Supreme was a skate shop that also happened to sell clothes in lower Manhattan. it was opened back in 1994 and since then its slowly been inching its way to the nucleus of all streetwear and hype.

Supreme was attributed with the highest market resale of the 10’s, according to TheRealReal, which doesn’t come as a surprise. Hype was blown off the charts when 16’ rolled around and the resale website Stockx was created. It only amplified the lust for high end hyped, low quantity items

Supreme’s genius business model has only opened the door for other brands to make money because if it ain’t broke and it makes you a whole lot of money, don’t fix it. That’s the saying right? Supreme’s business method has their loyal following of resellers selling hoodies for thousands, shirts and accessories for hundreds.

Now you can sit there and think that Supreme has definitely not changed the retail industry and literally doused the flame of hype with gasoline. Until another company has its followers reselling bricks for hundreds, I will not be changing my mind… and, yes, you heard that right, bricks.

This slow evolution of what streetwear and hype mean to us and how they are used has been put to the test by Supreme and countless other brands because clothes have finally become more than just what you wear to work, now it can be considered art and means more than the materials put into it. To a designer, this can only bring good things.

“Fashion is just something that I naturally gained an attraction for, I fell in love with servicing others with my art and clothing being the medium… I’m just a designer or artist no box, streetwear has a story usually inspired from the streets, what I’m going to do with my brand is to tell my story through products. It will make sense soon,” Chicago-based designer Ron Louis said.