Dripping: Why The Water Industry Is Thirsty For Hypebeasts

Thirst is a uniquely modern affliction. I’m not speaking of Merriam-Webster’s definition but of Urban Dictionary’s: “1. Too eager to get something 2. Desperate.” Thirst drives much of men’s fashion in 2019. Consider a few examples: the droves of people logging onto the SNKRS app to buy the latest-and-greatest? Thirsty. The dedicated individuals leaving comments, following accounts, haplessly tagging three friends, all to win a raffle? Thirsty! Those buoying their clout with sneakers and box-logo tees bought for way above retail on secondary sites? So thirsty. In that way, it makes sense that in 2019, water—plain old H20—would become the dominion of streetwear brands and designers. All of a sudden, Water for Fuccbois is a viable market. The big question is: when did everybody get quite so thirsty? Water should be a difficult thing to market. It’s clear and it’s tasteless, and every brand’s product is basically the same as those of all its competitors. “Clear bathtub juice,” Tracy Morgan’s character Tracy Jordan once called it on 30 Rock. That’s a reality Patricia Oliva, global brand VP for Evian, has come to grips with. “At the end, bottled water can be perceived as something that is boring,” she says. So she went about changing that. Naturally, she went to Virgil Abloh. Read more at GQ.