As I had just mentioned in the earlier paragraph, Streetwear is a term coined by the youth, as well as designers aimed to target the youth. The term refers to a distinctive style of street fashion that is considered more laid back, urban, casual and comfortable. Although, streetwear does take trends in to count, they do not specifically aim to style themselves in a trendy manner with the general public, as street ‘fashion’ may. Street’wear’ on the other hand is often connected to represent a specific subculture (such as how: Stussy represents surfing, or Supreme represents skateboarding). Often times, many activewear and sub-cultural clothing lines meet the standards of becoming a streetwear label. The most commonly referred to brands that are significant towards the creation of the term ‘streetwear’ go towards skate, surf, punk, DIY, hip hop, activewear, sportswear, japanese street fashion and contemporary haute couture. However, many other brands not specifically made to be streetwear such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Helly Hansen, DKNY, John Elliot & Vetements, are also prone to becoming adopted in to the streetwear stem due to their consumers adapting the attitude of streetwear to the way they wear these brands, such evolving them and overall creating a new attitude towards these labels.

Hypebeast circa. 2006–08

The earliest traces of the term ‘Hypebeast’ being used are said to have come from early Niketalk forum users and sneaker enthusiasts in cities like LA and NYC during the mid 2000s. These people (often times youth), would swarm towards the most hyped up and rarest streetwear brands for the means of trading and building collections. The sarcastic comment made towards them criticized how high and mighty these youth believed they were due to the fact that they owned such pieces of clothing. Streets such as Fairfax Ave and Lafayette street contained many flagship stores, for some of the most celebrated, collectable and rare-releasing brands in the world. Names like Undefeated, Stussy, Supreme, Bape, Originalfake, Evisu, The Hundreds, Freshjive, Triple 5 Soul and BBC/ Ice Cream soon became known as large-scale brands. By 2005, Rappers had taken influence off many streetwear brands into building what had become ‘hip hop’ fashion. Celebrities like Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, DJ Clark Kent and Jermaine Dupri soon began hopping on the style wave. As well as many other celebrities such as Lana Del Rey, Karreuche Tran, Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott, Virgil Abloh, G-Eazy, Matt Harvey and Martin Garrix have been seen to support.

Just like any other style, many brands stuck, many were dropped by streetwear enthusiasts. And like said earlier, some were even adopted from various other areas such as menswear, contemporary street fashion, vintage brands and high-end fashion. The attitude and concept of being ‘hypebeast’ took a huge toll in 2010, catapulting the term into the overall mainstream in 2011. This caused many people to believe that the term hypebeast itself referred to the current state of hyped up streetwear brands and styles themselves as sense of style on its own. This is very untrue, there have been hypebeasts around long before the image of one began to boom in 2011 and they are still here today. The reason why, is due to the fact that being a hypebeast is a way to describe a specific attitude towards clothing and style, and not a distinctive style or subculture on its own.