Your Current Outfit Probably Appropriates Black Culture
Written by Norhan Zouak
Content Warning: Racial Injustice. Mentions of Police Brutality.
Bucket hats and big gold hoop earrings.
Supreme and sneaker culture.
Oversized hoodies and Logomania.
Streetwear is anywhere and everywhere, and it has immensely shaped youth culture and the fashion industry beyond belief. A $600 t-shirt can sell just as well as a designer purse or luxury watch because both are deemed to have the same sense of prestige and social credit.
A 2019 Euromonitor report estimates the global streetwear market to be $185 billion, making up 10% of the total clothing and footwear market.
Social media plays a major role in streetwear’s popularity. In the “Streetwear Impact Report” made in partnership with Hypebeast and Strategy&—which surveyed over 40,000 consumers worldwide—96% of respondents revealed to use Instagram to gather information and news, such as brand announcements, collection launches and so on. In turn, 88% of fashion industry insiders reported that social media to be the primary source of inspiration. This grants people access to content such as culturally relevant fashions that they simply have no idea about.
As prevalent as it is, most who don this style do not acknowledge the origins of streetwear or understand how they appropriate black culture in doing so.
This is the exact style that makes black people look “gangster” and “threatening”.
This is the exact style that some businesses ban because criminals supposedly use it to conceal their identity.
This is the exact style that made Trayvon Martin look “suspicious” to George Zimmerman, which led to his unjust murder in 2012.
Streetwear came about during the 1980s in New York City after the emergence of hip-hop in the Bronx. The music largely reflected the social, economic and political climate of the time—especially Reagan’s War on Drugs that ravaged Black and Latino communities and incarcerated many minority men. “The history of what I call urban, cool, Black casual wear goes back to the history of rap music, which morphed into hip-hop music,” says FIT professor and luxury brand consultant Shawn Grain Carter. “They’re intertwined because fashion—like music—is an artistic expression of identity, so it has always been both cultural and political.”
In the 90s, hip-hop flourished and many rappers grew into cultural icons, such as 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Queen Latifa, and Notorious B.I.G. Their style began to define the decade’s fashion—from baggy pants and bold patterns to Air Jordans and starter caps. Benjamin Schneider, a senior research analyst at Euromonitor International, told Business Insider “as athletes and hip-hop artists gained influence throughout the 1990s, so did the sportswear brands they wore, increasingly bringing brands like Adidas, Champion, and Nike into the streetwear ecosystem.”
Despite its roots in Black culture, major streetwear brands—Nike, Adidas, Supreme, Bape, Off-White, Stussy, Champion—are largely white-owned and male-dominated. Of the aforementioned brands, only one has had a Black CEO: Virgil Abloh founded Off-White in 2013 and amassed massive respect and notoriety for his contributions in the fashion industry before his death in November 2021.
Mark Zuckerberg often sports a black hoodie, whether at a press conference or a board meeting for Facebook. When asked about his simple fashion sense at a public Q&A in 2014, Zuckerberg answered, “I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.” What is “silly” and “frivolous” to him is a privilege in reality. White people can casually wear a hoodie, whereas a black teenager can get gunned down simply because his hoodie makes him look suspicious. In fact, the hoodie became a symbol in the Black Lives Matter movement and is often worn at protests to honor Trayvon Martin.
The contributions of Black culture in fashion are immense, yet egregiously undermined or neglected. The very beginnings of the fashion industry in the United States were built on slave labor and systemic racism. Buying streetwear products by-and-large profits huge corporations at the expense of the very communities that created such trends. With that being said, next time you go shopping, there are a plethora of Black-owned streetwear businesses to try out and skip the big brands to help combat this major disservice.
