Brands like Supreme and Stussy paved the way for designers like Vigil Abloh and Raf Simmons to create their own designer version of urban fashion. They are merging urban fashion with haute couture, making it a more premium product by using luxurious materials to create urban style garments. Now, celebrities are ditching their glamorous everyday looks in favor of premium but casual urban clothing. In fact, it's arguable that urban fashion wouldn't be where it is now if it weren't for celebrities willing to adopt this unique style.
Urban fashion is a fashion that challenges the traditional dress codes of yesteryear, replacing them with the urban style of hip hop. Urban fashion was inspired by several scenes in the fashion world, such as the hip-hop fashion of New York and the surf and skate culture of California. After its popularity in California, urban fashion spread to the West Coast, where it became one of the pillars of skate and hip-hop circles in New York. Celebrities are also the driving force behind most of these brands, but also the newly established power of social media.
Nowadays, urban clothing brands are changing their budgets to invest in promotions in which influencers from Instagram and YouTube usually participate, who wear, promote and sell their clothes. Instead, they improvise with their creativity and authenticity, which is what keeps urban fashion moving and evolving. In addition to Kanye's controversial Yeezy, other celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Beyonce have had great success with their launch in the world of urban fashion. This is a trend worth watching, because it's not Kanye, there are others who seem determined to launch their own urban clothing brands and succeed in the fashion scene.
Outerwear often includes a loose combination of garments such as hoodies, sneakers, t-shirts, hats, tracksuits and jackets. Making clothes and accessories based on the lexicon of urban fashion does not in itself turn a label into an urban clothing brand. Most of the popular urban clothing brands you see today started in the 1980s, although they only gained momentum in recent years. Urban fashion, which revolves around the youth of each generation, is a style that has been influenced by a myriad of different cultures and subcultures.
In the same way, focused on the idea of individualism, as long as a culture of self-expression is maintained in young people, no matter how far urban fashion travels, it will continue to be influenced by what is happening in the present, together with the people who make up it. Street fashion first became popular in the early 2000s thanks to skaters and their surprising influence on pop culture. While many brands have chosen to adopt the aesthetic of urban fashion rather than substance, Morency pointed out that artists such as Alyx by Matthew Williams, Martine Rose and Noah by Brendon Babenzien have managed to go beyond the visual cues of urban fashion to interact with their target communities, take a stand and defend their respective and distinctive DNA. African-Americans and Latin Americans used to wear streetwear as a symbol of their culture and origin.
Then, popular fashion re-emerged (thanks to leisure sports) and urban fashion began to be absorbed into the cycles of fashion trends. So when streetstyle became a practical and practical fashion style, it was only a matter of time before consumers would stick with it and demand it in large quantities.
