Streetwear 1. casual clothing of a style worn especially by members of various urban youth subcultures. “she was one of the first mainstream artists to champion streetwear, wearing oversized hoodies and graphic tees” Streetwear is a massive part of my project, and culture as a whole, with most people within Gen Z and Alpha taking part in a code, group or uniform within streetwear, without realising it most of the time. As you can see by the definitions, streetwear originated from youth culture and is known for coming from some of the biggest cities in America, like New York and along the west coast in Los Angeles. Skate culture also had a big influence on streetwear as we know it now, with brands like Supreme really doubling down on hype culture in the 90’s and still today, with competition from brands like Patta, Palace and more. One of the reasons for my project is discovering what streetwear could be in the metaverse and what will that look like, I think we need to evolve from this uniform and everyone dressing in the same thing because I think we lose creativity and individuality especially through this, New Codes is the adaptation of this topic and I want to create a trend that will trickle down from the conceptual streetwear scene in to the mainstream streetwear scene. Something that has become more and more prevalent in the past couple of years, is the hype and importance of logo’s within our culture, and how a certain piece of clothing makes you look or the social/ economic status it can give you. Supreme is a brilliant example of as they release ‘box logo hoodies’ every season for years and years, and they always sell out, because of the semiotics behind owning something that is seen as a staple within the streetwear scene. Or something that has blown up in the past couple of years, Nike Dunks, with Off-White making 50 collaborative designs, Kylie Jenner wearing rare dunks or influencers pushing the general market up two fold, these have taken over in terms of a streetwear identifier that gives you a free pass in to the streetwear world today. Trends are always going to come and go within streetwear because at the moment, that’s how it works, but I think we can rethink how we consume streetwear in terms of buying/ selling and showing, which is why I think the Metaverse is a brilliant next step as it influences all three of these aspects. For instance, within the metaverse we can animate and create moving and evolving clothing to elevate fashion like we’ve never seen before, I want to experiment with this an d see how I can change streetwear into something new.
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