How Facebook Groups Fill The Void Left By Streetwear Forums

Last October, New York City skate label Supreme issued up the latest in their series of photo T-shirts, featuring none other than Atlanta rap legend Gucci Mane, photographed by cult film director Harmony Korine. Gucci had just completed a 39-month-long stint in jail, and following his release, quickly unleashed a salvo of new trap bangers. I was pretty hyped, along with many other Guwop fans. And I really wanted that tee. Not at all a stranger to Supreme drops, I thought I had a decent chance of copping direct through Supreme’s online shop, but as the story goes for so many people these days, I just didn’t have the chops to add-to-cart quick enough. My plan B was to ask a friend who was fairly tight with the Supreme Paris crew, but no luck. Then I scrambled to get a proxy for the Japanese release, which was two days later. Again, no luck. I quickly realized there was nowhere to go but the secondary resale market. I found the Gucci Mane shirt for sale through Facebook group Supreme Talk, and although I paid about double retail for the T-shirt, the story ends well — it arrived in the mail quickly and I was happy. This is the case for so, so many sneaker and streetwear fans today, on both the buying and selling sides of the equation. Certain highly-coveted products, especially from brands like Supreme, have created huge secondary markets, giving rise to reselling websites like Grailed and Klekt, as well as burgeoning groups on social media platform Facebook, of all places. Read more at Highsnobiety.