January 19, 2017 will go down as a defining date in the history of fashion. On this day, in the garden of the Palais-Royal in Paris, street style officially entered a luxury house. The Louis Vuitton-Supreme fashion show created a surprise at Men’s Fashion Week. The biggest luxury brand in the world married the most desirable streetwear brand, for a collection of jackets, shirts, it-bags, bananas or red scarves, stamped with the famous LV monogram and the imposing Supreme logo. The master of ceremonies? Kim Jones, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton, child of street culture chosen six years earlier by Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH. A real revolution!
“I think it happened because today we all pay attention to young people and appreciate their culture. They like street style, it’s almost the only one they want to wear. Until recently , the fashion industry didn’t even look at streetwear brands, yet they have wonderful designers, sometimes much better than in some high fashion houses. Fashion is not so rigid anymore and that’s healthy!” explains Kim Jones, now artistic director of Dior Homme, during the Venice Beach presentation of “California Couture”, the spring 2023 collection which draws the portrait of a young skateboarder. It was produced with Eli Russel Linnetz, creator of ERL, a label revisiting American archetypes.
The fusion between luxury and urban culture
The story of streetwear begins in 1982, in the New York store of Dapper Dan. Between counterfeits and transformations, this self-taught fashion designer invents a fashion mixing tracksuits, T-shirts, jackets and imposing Louis Vuitton, Gucci or Fendi logos. He conquered the nascent hip-hop scene and sports stars. “With his designer pieces, Dapper Dran succeeds in merging urban culture and creation. Rappers began to wear revisited and exuberant luxury brands. This was unacceptable for Louis Vuitton, Gucci and others”, says Guillaume Le Goff, street culture expert. Fendi finally closed the store in 1992. Revenge of history, Alessandro Michele, artistic director of Gucci, paid tribute to Dapper Dan in 2017 by taking over one of his jackets, while a store opened in 2018 in partnership with the label Italian.
Dior Homme – Spring 2023 Collection
© / PDS
Shawn Stussy is considered the inventor of luxury streetwear. “When this ex-surfer launched his brand in 1984, he looked towards Chanel and Dior, elegance and French know-how. For the first time, models wore Chanel beanies on silhouettes, with sneakers”, continues Guillaume Le Goff. The success with young people is immense. “Shawn Stussy is a reference, he has influenced all generations for many years”, underlines Kim Jones, who signs a Dior Homme collection with the Californian in the fall of 2020. “We have designed a great mix of couture and sportswear by working with him. It’s an example of what I wanted to accomplish when I started at Dior. Elegance is a key element. It’s chic, unique know-how, refinement, it’s modernity. you wear masculine Dior, you can be elegant with a tailored base, or look stylish with sportswear… but with a couture finish.”
Last personality illustrating the rise of this style over the last thirty years: Nigo. Nicknamed the “Balenciaga of streetwear”, this Japanese man has been a fashion icon at the helm of Kenzo since the fall of 2021. From 1993, with his brand Bape, he infused luxury into Japanese streetwear and many Western designers came to seek the inspiration in Shibuya, the fashion district in Tokyo. Pharrell Williams or Kanye West will popularize Nigo’s pieces until Virgil Abloh, an absolute fan, offers him a capsule collection with Louis Vuitton in June 2020.
“A reality that is both economic and demographic”
“We had to wait for a new audience of consumers and a new generation of creators, and the market was ready. The leaders of luxury brands understood that they could not miss the boat!” confirms Guillaume Le Goff. “It’s both an economic and a demographic reality,” adds Vincent Grégoire, trendsetter at NellyRodi, a famous forecasting agency, also citing Demna Gvasalia (Balenciaga) and Matthew Williams (Givenchy). “As no one wants to grow old and become outdated, we must constantly capitalize on the changes brought about by youth and the behavior of buyers. However, a certain conservative standing reigned in luxury houses, while millennials and Generation X favored a casual and comfortable style. These houses have changed their point of view, and if they still offer suits, the standard has become streetwear.” With sneakers, hoodies, caps, joggings and jackets, the labels have invented cool luxury!
This movement also saw the birth of fashion houses. Casablanca will not open its first two stores in Paris and Los Angeles until 2023, but the label, sold on the web, already embodies it. “I grew up in Belleville in the 1990s. I am both a child of street culture and a child of fashion, my parents had worked in a workshop in Casablanca”, says Charaf Tajer, 37, creator of one of the most desirable brands of the moment. “I belonged to this youth who wore Lacoste tracksuits with Airmax and Cartier glasses. I had a deep love for French elegance, I appropriated the codes of luxury to imagine a silhouette. Casablanca is a neoclassical luxury mixing the codes of suits and sportswear, with lots of colorful prints. The choice of materials, the cuts, the work on the finishes bring me closer to luxury, but with the flexibility of a streetwear brand”, specifies the designer who already has collaborations with Bulgari (the mythical Serpenti bag), Audemars Piguet (the iconic Royal Oak revisited) and Globe-Trotter (a luxurious line of luggage). And to conclude: “If we change fashion, we almost change society.”