The MR PORTER guide to urban apparel, and the men who wear it.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or down a hole for the past 18 months, you’ll be familiar with streetwear. The word, anyway, though perhaps not the concept. Because streetwear is a knotty one. One of those trends that is impossible to pin down, yet as powerful and popular as it is undocumented. The sort of stuff that is designed for boys, but can only be afforded by men.

As the name suggests, it is a catch-all term for clothes worn on the street, clothes that sit outside fashion. If suits are designed for the office, streetwear has historically been for Saturdays and Sundays, or the late-night milk run.

Fashion loves a bit of dissent, though, and catching wind of this outlier “movement”, decided to co-opt streetwear. Some streetwear could now arguably be defined as smart. Not job-interview smart, but in-law-meeting smart, which is smart enough. And we are all digital nomads now, working on benches or beaches or whatever, or we at least want to appear like that, so why not wear sweatpants for that conference call?

Unlike most branches of fashion, this one is knotted with a series of sub-groups, all with their own identity, personality and mores. Read on to find which streetwear tribe you belong to.