Streetwear never started on a runway. It started on the street corners of New York, on the beaches of California, in the underground workshops of Harlem—everywhere someone decided that clothing could also be a way of saying who you are, without asking anyone for permission.
THE 70S AND 80S: THE MOLD BEFORE THE BRAND
In the late 70s and throughout the 80s, California developed an aesthetic centered around surfing and skating that would be fundamental to the birth of modern
streetwear. Shawn Stüssy, a surfboard shaper in Laguna Beach, began reproducing his signature on t-shirts, shorts, and caps, selling them alongside his boards. What began as an extension of his work ended up becoming Stüssy, one of the brands that would define the movement. Its expansion into New York and other markets helped connect surf culture with the skate, hip hop, and music scenes; the first real bridge between coasts and subcultures that had previously lived in isolation.
In New York and London, meanwhile, punk was providing its own manifesto of clothing as resistance. At the same time, hip hop was born in the Bronx, with sportswear and workwear serving as a uniform of identity. Carhartt, founded in 1889 for railroad workers, was adopted in the 80s and 90s by rappers like Tupac, Nas, Public Enemy, and Dr. Dre. Not for fashion, but because its durable fabrics and loose fit offered something traditional fashion did not: working-class authenticity. In 1994, the brand launched Carhartt WIP, a line designed specifically for that culture.
In Harlem, Dapper Dan opened his 24-hour store in 1982, reinterpreting fabrics from Gucci, MCM, and Louis Vuitton into pieces for hip hop artists, long before luxury houses wanted anything to do with the streets.
On the other side of the Pacific, a Japanese teenager named Hiroshi Fujiwara traveled to London to meet Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, absorbing punk and hip hop as a DJ. In 1987, he began writing "Last Orgy," a column that introduced those Western street cultures to Japanese readers before the internet existed. In 1990, he founded GOODENOUGH, blending the Californian attitude of Stüssy with a tougher sensibility. The starting point for Japanese streetwear.
THE 90S: COMMUNITIES ARE BORN
Union opened in 1989 and Supreme in 1994, both functioning less as stores and more as gathering spots for people with the same sensibility. BAPE, in its 2005 heyday, took scarcity to the extreme: Chris Gibbs, owner of Union LA, recalls that the brand limited the purchase of hoodies to one per person—"someone would end up crying in line." That logic of deliberate scarcity remains, even today, the unwritten manual for a good portion of streetwear.
As Bobby Hundreds, founder of The Hundreds, wrote in one of the most cited essays on the subject: real streetwear "is not about the clothes," it's about an independent attitude born outside the traditional fashion system. Designer Jerry Lorenzo (Fear of God) sums it up this way: "it's streetwear in the sense that I'm self-taught... the product is 100% a reflection of our perspective."
THE 2000S: THE EXPLOSION
Zoo York, DC Shoes, Element, FUBU, Cross Colours, Rocawear, Sean John; brands created by artists and by the culture itself, not by fashion houses that didn't want to dress them. Colette in Paris, and Opening Ceremony in New York, became the bridges between that culture and the luxury world.
THE 2010S AND BEYOND: THE LEAP TO THE AVENUE
In 2011, Tyler, The Creator appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon wearing Supreme, a moment Angelo Baque describes as the point where "my little cousins were saying, 'can you get me something from Supreme?'" — the signal that underground culture had gone mainstream.
In 2017, Supreme x Louis Vuitton, designed by Kim Jones, reversed a cease and desist order that the French house had imposed on Supreme in 2000. Toby Feltwell, co-founder of Supreme, wondered then: "if this is Vuitton now, what does it mean anymore?"
In 2018, Virgil Abloh was appointed artistic director of menswear for Louis Vuitton at age 37 — designer Salehe Bembury compared it to "watching Obama become president: someone who looks like me in a high fashion space."
Today, streetwear is not a trend — it is the dominant language of contemporary fashion. And at AVENUE, we believe in the same thing as everyone who started this: that the street has as much authority as any avenue in the world.