“People will look foolish in the name of “fashion”. – Oladipo Efunkoya Jr., Curator at The Blvd Experience
I’ve always been a firm believer that corporate and culture don’t mix. On one end you have corporate – a concoction of unapologetically artificial elitists, capitalists, appropriators, co-opts and opportunists who thrive off disingenuous ulterior motives. On the other end, you have the culture – this organic and authentic being that blossoms in light of a lifestyle of the have-nots, largely due to the perpetrations of corporate. The two obviously polarizing groups have very little in common yet sustain a symbiotic relationship; both need each another to propel to higher altitudes.
Wiz Khalifa echoed my sentiments in the song, “Mia Wallace,” from his album, Taylor Allderdice: “When we start out we don’t have sh*t. We really make do with what we have, and in turn, that turns into like million-dollar corporations. But what labels don’t have is that mind frame and that spark that makes that million dollars, you know what I’m saying? They know how to manifest that and make more millions off of that, but they don’t have that spark.“
Eventually the needs of corporate morph into the exploitation of culture for capital gains. Corporate’s latest dubious plot on culture? The recent “resurgence and acceptance” of streetwear by the world of high-end, luxury fashion.
A fashion blogger sent me a link to the latest Supreme x Louis Vuitton collaboration. My initial reaction was disgust, thinking to myself, “Here we go again. How many times have we seen this movie?” It was just another example of corporate pimping culture. The very same styles that were deemed “ghetto” 10-20 years ago are now the subjects of allure and high-class trends. Looks, concepts and creations of the disenfranchised are suddenly heralded by the very uppity snobs who were too good to dress in such “rags.”
Remember the controversy around the Dapper Dan puffy coat? The Harlem tailor (and the rest of the culture) looked up one day and saw a very close resemblance to his original 1989 design on the Italian runaway of a Gucci fashion show. Moncler decided to join the party by charging an arm and leg for almost the exact same design. Mission Co-opt the Culture now results in Balenciaga charging anywhere from $800 – $1000 for some of the most basic hoodies you’ve seen in your life.
The fact that luxury brands can get away with this is even more appalling. We’ve seen this with Burberry, Balenciaga and Vetements to name a few.
Instead of paying homage to the authenticity and lifestyles at the core of these streetwear brands, luxury brands co-opt the movements as their own. High-end fashion solely salivates over streetwear when there’s an opportunity to cash out.
“When the private equity firm The Carlyle Group bought a 50 percent stake in Supreme earlier this month, valuing the company at a whopping $1 billion, it was the icing on a cake that was already in the oven for a while.”
By no means am I naïve to the fact that culture will be capitalized upon, but it must benefit us more than them.
See, one of luxury brands’ most glaring flaws is their attempt to buy their cool. This notion that you can simply take a monetary route to “street cred” because you have an influx of cash to conduct trial and error experiments is quite insulting. Rather than ingratiating themselves within the culture – offering them a chance to truly grow an understanding of the history and disposition of its constituents – they buy their affiliations and collaborations with streetwear, only to jump ship after they’ve bastardized the brand.
Now these formerly sought after brands are “out of style” or “too urban,” forcing parasitic high-end brands to find the next streetwear brand to leach off of. Ultimately, this all plays into the continuous narrative of the ambivalent approach to being a minority in America.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kemji, co-founder of the digital/creative agency, KAMIZV, on this particular subject. I simply asked him one question, “What’s your unfiltered perspective on the recent mergers of streetwear and luxury brands?”
He offered a very healthy and informative response:
“There’s no formula to the culture. You can’t calculate it. That’s what’s so beautiful about it. These high-end brands don’t actually care about these streetwear brands or the culture itself. If they did, they would be a part of the culture. But they don’t want to.
Before you know it you’re buying a warehouse full of Girbaud jeans, look up, and now the culture is wearing skinny jeans. They can’t calculate culture nor do they have a finger on the pulse of it. I don’t wish badly on anyone, but I’m all about the demise of the colonizer.
Let’s delve deeper. Let’s look at Nike.
Here’s my bold prediction: By 2020 Adidas will surpass Nike. They’ve already passed Jordan inmy humble opinion. Everyone is so enamored by the finale. We forget Nike wasn’t always the juggernaut it is now. At the beginning of all this, Nike was really going after Asic post Phil Knight’s defining moment of wanting an affordable running shoe. They [Nike] accidentally got into the culture via Jordan [Michael] and rode the wave.
Jordan was the quintessential shooting guard. He wasn’t the most physically imposing guard we’ve seen. What set him apart was his killer instinct. Jordan came right at the point where marketing was coming to life. It was the good times for TV too. Look at LeBron. He became the athlete of the social media era when it was coming to life.
Nike forgot culturally how they got to where they are – and it’s this very flaw that soured the relationship with Kanye. You work with creatives, but don’t give them creative control. The one group of people you don’t want to piss off is the creative directors. They have the least quantifiable work. Everyone in marketing knows that. Don’t affect the feelings and emotions that in turn affect their work. Why would you want to disrupt that?
Adidas is a German company and from everything, we know about Germans they’re a pragmatic bunch. They saw how the Nike Empire was built by inculcating themselves into the culture in the 80s and 90s and Adidas is now looking to do the same. It’s going to be very interesting in the next couple of years to see how it all plays out. Look how Adidas has played somewhat the role of the Medici Family and given Yeezus not only the platform but also the resources of the brand and capital support for his apparel. Nike wouldn’t even give him a release date for his shoes.
Nike truly cares about fitness wear. We think buying $200 pair of shoes one or twice a month brings in revenue, and you can sell that because that 5-10% niche of your customers which are “the cools.” Here’s the dichotomy though: if you lose that niche and we all jump to Adidas, what do you think will happen?
It’s actually the people buying athletic apparel that is bringing in the money, and it’s thisvery group you’ll lose. Essentially, the smaller percentage (“the cools”) represents the larger piece of the pie, if that makes sense. Your mom, for example, wants to buy some fairly affordable running shoes and apparel. She knows Nike to be hip and cool. What happens when she asks for your opinion? You’ll say those are cool, but check out Adidas instead.
If you piss off the culture, you lose your evangelists. They’ll learn eventually. We’ve seen it time and time again. They come in, take what they want from the culture and think it’ll last forever.
All these brands are malevolent. They couldn’t buy Kanye and he called them on their bullsh*t. Now they’re trying to buy his protégés. Just look at Virgil.
Just to add insult to injury, now you walk into Aldo and see blatant knock-off Yeezy’s. The base models of the shoes are clearly bitten off Yeezy’s.
You see what’s happening with Drake and reports of him leaving Nike for Adidas. The irony is that both Drake and Kanye were in opposite positions, but came to the same conclusions – I’m not f*cking with Y’all [Nike] because I’m not getting equity (Kanye) and I’ll f*ck with Y’all, but I’m not loyal because I don’t have equity in this brand anyway (Drake).”
Abdris Elba, B.S. in Advertising – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ph.D. in Trolling is a SQL/BI developer, aspiring voiceover actor and living proof that the chicken indeed comes before the egg.