ALL CULTURES HAVE BEEN MINGLED forever. -V. S. NAIPAUL
culture
cult
WHAT IS streetwear?
Streetwear refers to a distinctive style of street fashion, which has its roots skate culture, but also encompasses elements of hip-hop fashion, modern high fashion and haute couture. Streetwear blends a diverse mix of styles: casual sportswear, military pieces, Americana of the sort Tommy Hilfiger designs, hip-hop and “urban wear” influences. It’s really important to acknowledge that streetwear is a byproduct of
wider subcultural movements. Streetwear is about culture. It’s not about clothing. It’s about peoples stories. It’s a lifestyle. It’s how the people feel. It’s how we live. It’s what we listen to. It’s what we eat. It’s how we spend our money. In other words, in the concert tour of life, streetwear is the merch. Everybody has something to express, and doing it through the use of clothing has never been easier.
URBAN BEGINNINGS OF streetwear. This is where streetwear started to morph and blend into something “new-age”. You see a lot of musicians and such making use of sportsrelated clothing and jerseys . You’d see many clothing companies trying to create football jerseys of their own, except instead of using an official NFL logo, they’d use their own brands logo. Streetwear brands started to adapt in the 2000’s, as they started producing fitted caps and even baggier jeans. Songs like “Air Force Ones” by Nelly were essentially commercials for streetwear to the public. As always, to make anything go stratospheric, the A-list needs to be involved, and streetwear is no different. From Kanye West and his Yeezy line to Rihanna’s Fenty x Puma collections plus various celebrities becoming the faces sportswear brands, celebrities have been heavily advocating this sense of style both on and off the runway, as well as on and off duty.
The whole point of a community is that you give and take from each other, and that’s how you create things that are totally new.
“F-U, Be you.”
“For Us, By Us This is where streetwear started to thrive much more than usual, because the music started coinciding with it. When you blended hip-hop with streetwear there was literally a super-drug created, and that super-drug was a lifestyle that everybody wanted to live. The music scene that hip-hop was building allowed the clothes to resonate within communities. Rappers started to become clothing moguls, a trend that you see continuing today; and everybody else just wanted a piece of the pie. By the mid-1980s, Nike
dominated the urban streetwear sneaker market, and other clothing brands such as Champion, FUBU and Timberland also became closely associated with the scene. Streetwear fashion is usually thought of as being the movement of the people. It is something that has no strict rules, and is always changing and evolving according to the people. Streetwear was a way for people to express themselves, creating their own styles in order to stand out from the monotony of the mainstream.
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the NEW- AGE luxury
The rise of streetwear has come along with a shift in what younger generations think of as luxury and status symbols. It’s even been noted that high-end fashion brands are “investing in luxury streetwear” to attract younger shoppers. For those young shoppers, a brand like Supreme can have just as much cachet as Louis Vuitton.
BIG DEMANDS IN THE BIG CAT WORLD
COOL CATS & KITTENS
Streetwear might have taken the fashion world by storm but these big cats are taking over high-end fashion. Italian luxury brand Gucci stepped into the wild side with its springsummer 2017 campaign. Photographed by Glen Luchford, the models are wearing embellished gowns, casual t-shirts, and tailored pantsuits. The real shining stars of the campaign are the beautiful big cats who
were brought in to help bring the Italian label’s intricate collection to life. Shot in Rome, the 25-image campaign takes it to the streets — including famous landmarks like the newly restored Trevi Fountain — to depict the daily lives of the artists, intellectuals, creatives, and outsider characters that call the city home.
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BIG CAT BEHAVIO SURFING HAND IN
OR AND G GO N HAND. Aggro Vibes in Lineups and Fighting for Waves? Turns Out It’s All Big Cat Energy.
KEEP it MOV MOV MOV
VING VING VING For over 30 years, doctors have been studying exercise physiology in African lions, mountain lions and human athletes. Mountain lions have been put on treadmills with strapped heart-rate monitors onto big-wave surfers at Mavericks. The main reason to study exercise physiology in big cats is to better understand how much energy they have to expend to live in their environments. The other reason is so humans can learn from nature’s elite athletes. “The big difference between wild animals and humans is that they’re out there exercising for hours at a time, from the day they’re born to the day they die,”
THINK LIKE a big cat Looking at heart rates in humans, doctors have been struck by the influence of psychological factors, as seen most dramatically in the bigwave surfers. Their prolonged heart rates ~90 percent of maximum based on treadmill tests~ are induced by adrenaline, not exercise. Just sitting on the beach before surfers enter the water cause their heart rates to reach almost 180 beats per minute.� In comparison to big-wave surfers doctors have examined the heart rate and lungs of cheetahs. The cheetah’s defining trait is their lightning speed. No other land creature can match her their raw pace
and explosive power, they most certainly are sprinters, not endurance runners. Their whole hunting technique is built upon short sprints that take their prey by surprise. Their perfectly evolved physiology combined with the challenges of their habitat allows them to have lung-busting runs. Doctors have examined their respiratory system in order to perfect better breathing techniques for athletes. Studies have shown that surfers expand their bellies and pull air into the bottom of the lungs in order to increase lung capacity for surfing.
“It’s A Catwa Know How”
alk, When You
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Design by Londyn Adams Spring 2020