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How rich millennials and stars like BLACKPINK are making luxury streetwear cool
- The advent of social media helped streetwear explode onto the scene – as bold logos and graphics resonated with image-obsessed consumers
K-pop girl group BLACKPINK offer image-obsessed consumers luxury fashion with a streetstyle edge. Photo: blackpinkofficial / Instagram
Two different fashion worlds have collided, and it has created a new kind of millennial uniform: luxury streetwear.
The streetwear subculture has been around for decades, originating in skate, surf and hip-hop cultures, Benjamin Schneider, a research analyst at Euromonitor International, told Business Insider. He said the most popular streetwear brands today, such as Stussy and Supreme, grew slowly throughout the eighties and nineties until they had developed cultlike followings.
“As athletes and hip-hop artists gained influence throughout the 1990s, so did the sportswear brands they wore, increasingly bringing brands like Adidas, Champion and Nike into the streetwear ecosystem,” he said.
But it wasn’t until social media that streetwear exploded onto the scene – bold logos and graphics resonated with image-obsessed consumers.
“Now that Instagram is the definitive medium for discovering fashion, traditional luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton have adopted the defining characteristics of streetwear, finding bold logos and exclusivity to be key to reaching younger generations,” Schneider said.
It’s making Gucci cool again – in 2015, the brand brought in Alessandro Michele as creative director, and he led the brand in a millennial and teen-friendly direction by helping Gucci embrace streetwear and the influence of popular culture, Business Insider previously reported. Celebrities like Lil Pump and Kylie Jenner have further popularised the brand through Instagram and music.
And it’s working: Gucci nearly doubled its sales in 2018, with consumers under 35 accounting for 55 per cent of those sales. Michael Kors, Fendi and Ralph Lauren have also partnered with streetwear brands.
Millennials have a thing for athleisure
But social media isn’t the only factor behind luxury streetwear’s skyrocketing popularity – millennials’ appetite for athleisure is also a driving force.
“They like streetwear’s casual and comfortable silhouettes like T-shirts, hoodies and sneakers, which have become increasingly accepted in work and social spaces alike in the US in the midst of a larger casualisation trend,” Schneider said.
Now that streetwear has gone high-end, millennials are gravitating towards the trend because of its effect on their perceived social status. Luxury streetwear now numbers among other purchases and symbols, like fancy prams, second passports, and “ugly” sneakers, that people use to reveal their status.
The consumers of luxury streetwear may be a niche group – but it’s a group that carries a lot of influence on social media. While the style is seen on women and men, it’s more popular among the latter, according to Schneider. The male millennial knows what the different brands represent, Schneider said, as well as when and where products will be released and how to get them.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider .