STREETWEAR IS TURNING TO THE MASS MARKET
©Gear Patrol
YEEZY’s Kanye West at the Gap, Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo at adidas, Aimé Leon Dore’s Teddy Santis at New Balance, Pyer Moss’ Kerby-Jean Raymond at Reebok, and now Noah’s Brendon Babenzien, at J. Crew. Not to forget the moves of Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior. Taken together, these shifts symbolize more than the latest round of designer musical chairs. The same designers that giant brands would not have considered just five years ago are now being completely relied upon to breathe new life into multi-billion dollar brands.
Through their own brands, these designers have been setting the menswear agenda for some time but their designs have been expensive and inaccessible to many. Now at the helm of high street behemoths, the new menswear guard is entering the mass market. After J Crew filed for bankruptcy protection, Gap announced the closure of hundreds of stores and other high-street institutions like Brooks Brothers shut, because they lost their relevance. They relied on nostalgia and failed to seduce clued-up, environmentally conscious younger shoppers who, for a similar price and what they perceive as better quality, could turn to Uniqlo or Everlane, a direct-to-consumer brand promising transparency with its production.
In June 2020, Gap announced its mega 10-year global partnership with Kanye West and YEEZY. The new label, titled YEEZY Gap, has big ambitions, hoping that after its first five years the sub-label will be generating USD 1 billion in annual sales, which is around 25% of the Gap‘s global sales. Recently, Brendon Babenzien — co-founder of New York-based streetwear-inspired menswear brand Noah and former Design Director at Supreme — appointments as Creative Director of J. Crew Men’s, is the latest move in the market. Babenzien’s appointment is the latest in a recent slew of hires that has seen founders of “streetwear”-inspired brands be appointed into top creative positions at mass market fashion businesses.
“[Brendon’s] unique point of view, willingness to take risks and insider status will be invaluable to J.Crew's commitment to step outside ourselves and disrupt our brand and the industry in a progressive way," said J. Crew Group CEO, Libby Wadle. The group went on to state that Babenzien will “work to redefine the brand, merging vitality and creativity of today’s style subcultures with an innovative appreciation of classic menswear.” Babenzien has a proven track record of building a loyal community around Noah, attracting top tier talent and creating unexpected collaborators, as well as authentically creating transparency about the brand’s environmental impact and driving tangible social change.
The same well-documented struggle for relevance initially swept across luxury fashion brands in 2015, when Balenciaga appointed Vetements’ co-founder Demna Gvasalia as Artistic Director of the heritage maison and fellow Kering-owned brand Gucci hired Alessandro Michele. Both Gvasalia and Michele have revitalised the brands by heavily relying on streetwear staples for sales growth. As have Off-White founder Virgil Abloh and Kim Jones who were hired by Louis Vuitton and Dior, respectively, to lead the menswear direction of the LVMH-owned houses three years later. In June 2020, around the same time as the Gap’s announcement with Yeezy, 1017ALYX9SM founder Matthew Williams had been tasked with taking his learnings in subcultural fashion circles to a luxury house by being appointed into Givenchy’s top creative position.
As with many trends, it seems that what happened in luxury five years ago is now going mass. After decades of big collaborations with top fashion designers, boutique retailers, and other creative leaders, companies like Gap and J Crew are embarking on long-term partnerships with the street culture-influenced brand founders who have been in front of their noses the whole time. Ironically, the entire ethos of the streetwear movement has been to employ vernacular, mass-market tropes into the language of luxury. So in a way these shifts are more of a return home than a radical departure. Nevertheless, in the future, when vying for the rapidly growing demographic of highly engaged young menswear consumers, the likes of Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Balenciaga would be foolish to think they are only battling each other. In the quest for buoying the new luxury consumer, the world’s biggest luxury fashion brands are about to compete with the Gap and J.Crew, as well as Nike and On Running
Although it felt fresh at the time, the problem with luxury houses hiring designers with a background rooted in sub culture was that the price points they sold products at rarely reflected the wallets of the audience whose culture was snatched. Virgil Abloh, Demna Gvasalia, and Kanye West became celebrity designers on a level never seen before, but their mass appeal did not come with mass pricing. While “luxury streetwear” set the tone for the industry to follow, when culturally credible “streetwear” designers join a more affordable, a more accessible, a more mainstream conglomerate, the luxury scene will start lose a part of its control on this younger consumer it targets. That moment has now arrived, but the question still remains: Will these designers have the same midas touch outside of the luxury space?