Bobby Hundreds Explains Why Streetwear Is A Culture, Not Just Product

Almost six years ago, I wrote a Complex list entitled “The 50 Greatest Streetwear Brands of All Time.” My curation, exclusion, and ranking of streetwear brands generated critique and commentary (that’s the point, after all). The hardest part of my streetwear list, though, wasn’t the selection, and it certainly wasn’t the writing. It was the prompt: how do we define “streetwear?” I started with this: “Every line on this list, with a few exceptions, has built their brand off T-shirts, not catering specifically to just an urban or skate audience, and initializing their distribution through selective channels. Sales distro and image are what ultimately constitute a brand as streetwear, not the art or design.” In a way, I still stand by that definition. Design-wise, streetwear boils down to baseball caps, sneakers, hoodies, and most of all, tees. “Streetwear to me is young T-shirt brands,” Diamond Supply co-founder Nick Tershay tells me. According to Tommy Hilfiger, it’s sportswear and military. “The aesthetic has to be a bit sporty, a bit athletic,” he says. It’s skate and hip-hop, but it’s not exclusively any one of these things. “I felt like certain brands got it, but they kind of gravitated towards skaters too much,” ASAP Rocky tells me. “Or certain brands got it, but they gravitated toward graffiti and art shit too much.” Read more at Complex.