Is steetwear over ?

4 min readJan 15, 2023

In 2019, VA (Virgil Abloh) declared to Dazed “streetwear is definitely gonna die”. 4 years later, hoodies and sneakers seem to be disappearing from the catwalks, and the sneaker market is growing much slower than before. Does this mean that streetwear is coming to an end? That’s the question Lauren Sherman and Daniel-Yaw Miller ask in the business of fashion podcast “Is Luxury’s Streetwear Obsession Over?” What emerges from this interview is that streetwear is not coming to an end, but it is undergoing profound changes.

In this article, I explain what changes are at work, before linking this evolution to the marketing theory of the product life cycle.

The end of streetwear: Why ?

At the beginning of the podcast, the journalists note that the latest season of fashion week features fewer streetwear looks than previous seasons. On the contrary, oxford shirts seem to be favoured by male consumers. This change in taste reflects a growing disinterest in the streetwear aesthetic among men.

Part of this disinterest can be explained by the distance of the brands from their community of origin (in particular the brands Bape and Stussy) and by the prominence of the commercial logic of streetwear products. By deduction, streetwear would therefore no longer be ‘street’.

Nevertheless, the two journalists go on to note that streetwear, without completely disappearing, has been integrated into the wardrobe of brands. Moreover, new labels, more connected to the streetwear community, are emerging.

Streetwear will remain : How ?

Aimé Léon dore, is an American brand created in 2015 that reflects this metamorphosis. Aimé Leon Dore’s lookbooks regularly, if not systematically, combine casual pieces with chic ones.

One example is the “Life In the Balance” ad campaign, where sneakers and jogging suits are worn alongside trenchcoats. In short, this trend towards the disappearance of streetwear is merging with the return of preppy style.

If a part of the streetwear community chooses to turn to a more mature style, the other part prefers to consume new brands closer to it. Indeed, for a few years now, we have seen the emergence of labels that develop thanks to their online community, such as Corteiz, or Daily Paper, which was originally a blog. Thus, we are witnessing a generation of streetwear 2.0 brands. In a broader sense, we can consider these brands as Digital Native Vertical Brands (or DNVB) insofar as they were born on the internet and started to sell through this medium.

These new streetwear trends can be understood through the concept of product life cycle.

Maturation of streetwear due to an ageing of the customer base, but a renewal possible thanks to internet

Product life cycle

In marketing, there are different stages in the life of a product, these are related to the different stages of its market penetration. First, we have the product introduction to the market, where sales grow relatively slowly as the innovation begins to spread. Then, once the product is better known, it enters a growth phase where sales increase substantially. After this, there is the maturity phase, where the product ceases to be an innovation and sales stagnate over time. Finally, when the product is overtaken by new innovations, it enters a phase of decline where sales decrease over time. This representation of the life cycle can be repeated at the level of a market.

Life cycle of the streetwear market

If we assume that streetwear started to exist in the fashion industry in the 90’s with the emergence of Supreme, Stussy or Fubu, we can assume a correlation between the ageing of these brands, and the ageing of the first generation of streetwear fans, which should be around 40 years old in the year 2023. Thus, there is no doubt that this style tends to age with its original target group, which is maturing and wishes to change its style.

Nevertheless, the emergence of digital communities has allowed this market to regain interest among the new generations. This revival is embodied in brands such as Corteiz or Daily Paper.