But in recent years, streetwear’s air of secrecy has arguably been lost as its styles converged with runway fashion and spread through platforms like Instagram and Tumblr, where hashtags have all but eliminated the hunt. Now, streetwear marketing tactics—like limited quantity releases, loud collaborations, and marked-up resales—are the norm for big names like Nike and H&M. But for all the hand-wringing you could do about the selling-out of streetwear, this current state of affairs has galvanized a batch of young, self-starting designers who are placing a strong brand above all and making great clothes in the process. With irreverent, self-expressive designs buoyed by cult followings, these are labels that won’t be crossing over to runways any time soon, and that’s just the way they like it.

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“I’m the type of person that if everyone is going one direction, I just naturally have to go the other,” Post tells me. His Dertbag line, now in its fourth season, subverts New England prep by flipping crisp, private school-ready designs on their heads with tie-dye and embroidery—pieces sport names like Mint Introvert and Yellow Funeral Services. “The town where I went to school was really rich, and I definitely wasn’t,” explains the Norwalk, CT native. “So Dertbag kind of became my way of saying ‘fuck you’ to all of that while pointing out the fact that if you drive ten minutes in this direction, it feels like you’re in another country. I wanted Dertbag to sort of play with the expectation of Connecticut versus its reality.”

On the brasher end of the spectrum is the L.A. brand FTP, short for FuckThePopulation. Many influential labels have drawn on stark imagery to make statements, but few have pushed the envelope as far as FTP. Their latest collection of tees and rugbies is a series of unabashedly offensive designs—serial killer tributes and illustrations of how to use a condom—that remind passersby that it’s still possible for a brand to not give a fuck. One white tee emblazoned with the words “Terrorist Organization” even caught the attention of Homeland Security: the brand’s founder, Zac Austin Clark, says they mailed him a letter ordering him to halt production of the shirt and shut down his PayPal account. Whether his designs scan as brave or baiting, Clark insists they’re nothing more than a singular expression of his vision, a trait he sees as essential to true streetwear. “That’s what I’m always going to be about,” he says over the phone from his Skid Row office space. “Just making the shit that I want, and selling it to people who actually fuck with it.”