What Is the Last Streetwear Collaboration You Legitimately Enjoyed?
What was the last truly meaningful collaboration you can remember in streetwear? The last one you saw that stuck with you for weeks, that made you dive deeper into one of the brands, even if you didn’t end up purchasing it in the end. Streetwear has become so deeply invested in collaborations that each one has essentially become reduced to white noise. A Bathing Ape has watered down their brand value and reduced it to nothing more than a collaborative-driven brand. Supreme has put out some recently that should be interesting in theory (My Bloody Valentine, the Velvet Underground, GZA, Ghostface Killah, etc) but even with those, I remember the partnership rather than any specific garment. Nike and Converse seem to have a new collaboration every week, and the only ones that come to mind (Travis Scott, JW Anderson) do so because of hype or controversy rather than interesting design. To me, the last collaboration that really transcended both brands in terms of uniqueness and memorability is the Sean Wotherspoon Nike Air Max 97. Wotherspoon was a huge figure in the secondary market and indisputably drove a lot of the hype around vintage graphic t-shirts and retro Jordans. But at the same time, Nike giving him a shoe meant they were essentially buying into their own hype, creating a situation akin to Roadrunner running off a cliff but being fine until he looks down. Streetwear collaborations were already extremely saturated, but it was that point where they officially reached oversaturation.
This week alone we’ve gotten so many mediocre collaborations that are here today, forgotten about tomorrow. WTAPS released a line with Champion that is advertised as possessing a unique cut and silhouette, because when I think of Champion, I think of unique cut-and-sew pieces. Noah came through with a set of jackets in collaboration with Barbour, reminding us once again that they’re both the brand for people who thought Supreme was profound two seasons ago, while also simultaneously being two seasons behind Supreme design-wise. Kaws and Supreme made a box logo hoodie together, which remarkably is only reselling in the low $300s, which is a sentence that would’ve sounded impossible three years ago. BAPE announced another collection with Pokemon, and it follows the same formula as every other BAPE collaboration, just substituting in Pokemon. And most egregious of all, Nike collaborated with Comme Des Garcons Play in a design I can only assume took 15 seconds to make. It’s nothing more than leveraging the respective clout of both brands with no thought towards originality or design.
One Hit Wonders:
Kith announced a new collection, and it’s only interesting enough to make this meme.
Last week we wrote how we stan Heitor Da Silva, and within days, Palace officially turned him pro, making the Disco--theque cosign roughly equivalent in power to a Drake cosign, give or take a couple million dollars.
Streetwear seems to be pushing itself towards alcohol (Palace collabing with Stella Artois, Travis Scott’s Cacti drink) so I will be pitching this site to investors as a place to sell fake IDs because I believe that streetwear (and by extension, officially branded alcoholic beverages) should be for everyone. And when the cops come for me, I’ll have to explain the concept of a deadstock drink, meaning that no one who used my fake IDs actually drank them because that would ruin their resale value.
Song of the Week: Dave — “100M’s”
“Only got 10 people that I love, look I don’t want 100 friends” is something I say to myself when checking the page views on this website, even though 100 friends might mean 100 more views. Ah, well.
With Love as always,
Daniel Moran