When Did Streetwear Get So Grown-Up?
“Streetwear” outfits used to be so simple. A decade or so ago, they were supremely low-key: A graphic T-shirt matched to statement sneakers, with pants as pure afterthought. Visibly branded gear was crucial — logos demonstrated IYKYK exclusivity, signifying the wearer’s connection to some arcane subculture. Subtext? Everything. Outfit composition? Irrelevant!
Now, everything is flipped. Streetwear has evolved into something more… urbane. Though the clothes that now represent streetwear as a genre aren’t entirely divorced from their no-brainer roots, they’ve nevertheless aesthetically matured. Let’s call it “grown-up streetwear.”
Previously, streetwear would absorb and recontextualize the world into a personalized mélange of references, something the late Virgil Abloh aptly compared to sampling but with logos in place of DJ tags. The signature products were intentionally insular, even incomprehensible to outsiders, whereas fans found them punkish, puckish, and wildly collectible. Consider the Supreme brick, Anti Social Social Club’s USPS uniforms, and Abloh’s He-Man toys.
Grown-up streetwear, meanwhile, is very much outside-in. While the world’s biggest streetwear brands — your Supremes, your Stüssys, your Kiths — once existed in their own fiefdoms, inviting in select objects and ideas that they would bend to their will, external influences have jostled them out of their comfort zones.
Said external influences look a lot like the various craft-conscious casual-luxury labels that’ve quietly become internationally omnipresent: Our Legacy, MFPen, Studio Nicholson, and AURALEE. All established and comfortably working in their own lane for years, these labels enjoyed a boost in post-pandemic visibility that aligned with renewed interest in auteurish, minimalist designers like Phoebe Philo and Peter Do. Ditto for moments like the “quiet luxury” boom of 2023, representative of both a faddish fling with dressing like Kendall Roy and a more entrenched perception of good taste derived from stylistic restraint.
These brands eschew logo tees and printed sweatpants for something I previously termed “real clothes,” going beyond the cliche of “classics with a twist” by infusing menswear staples with gently exaggerated silhouettes, eco-conscious craft, and materials sourced from the world’s finest mills. Slowly, these makers’ generous Egyptian cotton shirting, Armani-inspired overcoats, waist-length Harrington jackets, and pleated slacks have become ubiquitous in menswear, hitting a level of hype not so far removed from the streetwear drops of old. AURALEE, founded in 2015, was still a niche Japanese line just a few years ago. Now, it’s sold by over 100 stores outside its home country. MFPEN, a Danish imprint specializing in an austerely cool form of normcore, is in the same debonair boat.
Streetwear is taking note, rejecting logomania in favor of considered clothes that reach into the once aloof domain of “designer” brands. Supreme, a foundational figure if there ever was one, has met the times with impressively slick grown-up streetwear. Beyond its attention-snatching accessories and occasional headline fodder, Supreme is quietly turning out excellent patchwork cardigans, faded selvedge truckers, box-cut shirting, and pants that’re somehow both statement and subtle. These items may not set the company’s rabid, resale-obsessed fanbase on fire but it’s nevertheless satisfyingly smart stuff, cannily balancing “designer” intent and streetwear attitude.
Other formerly graphic-first brands like Aimé Leon Dore, Noah, Carhartt WIP, and Only NY have shifted to specialize in collections of comparative understatement. They’re as likely to turn out Italian-made footwear and leather chore coats as they are branded hoodies. After upgrading its signature Mercer joggers into $200 statement slacks, Kith collaborated with AURALEE to create what is effectively an AURALEE capsule — $400 wool shirts, mohair polo sweaters, and peak-lapel overcoats — with Kith branding. Former Supreme superfan Tyler the Creator is quietly fleshing out his own luxury line from its origins as a maker of scents and suitcases to seasonal capsules of patient opulence. And Shawn Stussy recently relaunched S/DOUBLE, his prescient post-streetwear line from the late aughts.
Speaking of Stussy, the eponymous label he founded (and is not currently affiliated with) is a perfect bellwether for streetwear’s gradual maturation. Whereas Stüssy was once synonymous with basic skatecore — printed hoodies, tees, a jort or two — its contemporary output comprises seriously smart ready-to-wear. The feel and fabrication of a Stüssy T-shirt is now as critical, if not moreso, than its branding. Extant logos are minimized, almost bashfully, playing second fiddle to design-first products like louche wool blazers, washed-out denim jackets, and loose, faded jeans.
The current iteration of Stüssy is clearly shaped by Our Legacy, a longtime Stüssy collaborator and arguably grown-up streetwear’s most important player. Working in a similar vein to luxury brands like The Row and Lemaire, Our Legacy has mastered what recent investor LVMH recently deemed “quiet cool” with intentionally un-tailored jackets, lived-in denim truckers, and quietly ingenious deep-dyed jeans.
And that should sound familiar because it’s the sort of stuff that Stüssy has been putting out for several seasons, though Stüssy tends to put a more skate or workwear spin on things. Consider Stüssy’s utilitarian, buffalo-check take on the fully lined overshirt against OL’s sleek Japanese cotton-lined flannel or its wide zippered cardigan to OL’s shorter double-zippered iteration. But though the influence that labels like OL have imparted upon Stüssy is visible in complementary garments, it’s also abstractly present in the streetwear label’s selection of suave, unbranded staples. Especially here, a throughline is legible from crisply mature (and saleable) labels like OL to Stüssy’s approachable offering, which is now advanced enough to be “fashion” but still grounded enough to welcome newcomers.
This is grown-up streetwear, emphasizing style (personal taste) over fashion (trend), or at least taking on the appearance of such. It’s all about big-picture styling, with smart, singular items blending into a sophisticated whole. This is best demonstrated by how the brands present themselves: Stüssy leans into louche, lived-in campaigns while Aimé Leon Dore, an early forebear of the grown-up streetwear look, doubles down on its Ralph Lauren-indebted lookbooks, where the entire point is to judge a book by its handsome cover.
Though grown-up streetwear may reflect what some could consider an aesthetic upgrade, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s also something being lost here. Back when streetwear clothing design was less concerned with the trappings of fashion, it was also more evocative. Those clothes didn’t comprise “looks” as much as they functioned as clear tribal signifiers, intuitively linking the likeminded. In the greater flattening of everything engendered by social media, those kinds of deeper meanings have been subsumed by a surface-level veneer of “cool.” As such, grown-up streetwear is primarily skin-deep, having swapped cultural nuance for fancy facade. These are clothes that, or better or worse, simply look good.
