The Reddit Page Where Streetwear Brands Are Born

There is absolutely no good reason the words “yo pierre, you wanna come out here?” should be here pinned on the page for Reddit’s Streetwear Startup subforum. Clicking on the words leads you nowhere, and the phrase—first heard on the Jamie Foxx Show and more recently popularized by hip-hop producer Pierre Bourne—doesn’t have anything to do with the page’s function: convening an unusually friendly online community to help burgeoning streetwear designers launch their brands. But it turns out that “yo pierre” is a perfect symbol for a genre of clothing that thrives on coded imagery—ranging from Coca-Cola to Dragon Ball Z—to signal to other people you’re hip, you’re in the know, and yes, you would like to come out here. The streetwear startup aims to dissect the very concept of cool. Can the designs and signals that have catapulted brands like Supreme and Kith into the fashion stratosphere be focus group-tested until you’ve found the thing that resonates with customers? After all, if the almost-14,000 users on the page think your piece is a must-cop, it’s also possible that Miami Dolphin Jarvis Landry will too, and will then wear it on ESPN, like he did with streetwear startup success story Rude Vogue. And if this chorus of voices say fire, there’s a decent chance the streetwear press will join in, like Hypebeast did with the brand Deadnight. Read more at GQ.