Image via Complex Original
Streetwear could quite possibly be the hottest form of fashion right now. People are leaving the double-breasted blazers and hard-bottoms at home in favor of T-shirts, snapbacks, and even basketball shorts. With so many brands out there, it's hard to stake your claim—unless you know exactly how the game works.
That's right, we've boiled this shit down to a science (kind of) and know just what you need to do to make the next hyped-about label. By taking simple cues from popular streetwear brands, we put together this handy guide into fooling people your clothes are much cooler than they actually are—which is the big secret! So grab a seat and holler at your investor, here are 10 Ways to Fake It 'Til You Make It In Streetwear.
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Shoot a lookbook with scantily-clad hot girls with "big assets."
What better way to get dudes to aspire to wear your shit then to throw it on a couple of curvacious beauties they wish they could holler at? Hot chicks with an edge sell your products like hotcakes. Find a shorty or two on Instagram, then have them throw on a beanie and lose (almost) everything else. Win-win.
Use social media as your main vehicle for sales and promotion.
Social media is the perfect way to launch your streetwear brand. Reach out to #influencers to spread the word for you. Congrats, you've eliminated the need for a marketing budget! Who needs to buy ads when reblogs and regrams are free?!
Parody high fashion items.
If high fashion is the peak of Mt. Olympus, streetwear is somewhere around Zeus' big toe. What better way to pay homage to designer brands then to completely rip them off parody them? Coming up with quick quips and witty plays on the fashion houses you look up to are a quick way to show people you're in the know, but at the same time have a style all your own.
Make up some weird genre for your clothing like "internet malwear."
We say streetwear, you say "trapwear." Why follow suit with all these brands falling into a genre when you can create your own lane? Being able to say, "Nah, we don't make streetwear. We make noirwear" will probably blow people's minds and actually make you more #relevant than everyone else.
Showcase your anti-establishment because "fuck corporations."
Yeezy showed us that it is perfectly acceptable to be anti-fashion, anti-establishment and anti-everything while cursing the very corporations that help fund your entire lifestyle. The industry equivalent of the rich kid who hates his parents (but uses their money anyway), it's so easy to have a middle-finger-to-the-world attitude when you've got so many dollars cushioning your fall into reality. Besides, when people find out you're simply a poser and not "anti-" anything, you can just say you were being ironic.
Video lookbooks with flashing images that really don't show much of the collection are a plus.
Video lookbooks as your means of showcasing for your upcoming season could be a toss up. But if you keep that shit really trippy, really vague and really epilepsy-inducing, throw some ominous music in there, then hot damn! It won't matter that no one knows what the clothes look like or how they fit, because they'll be blown away by your cinematography!
Photoshop your shit on celebs and pass it off as real.
Promoting your brand by sharing a few pics of some stylish celebs rocking your shit is the kind of plug that gets your brand off the ground. But getting it on their backs is harder than it looks. Being able to Photoshop your shit on them is a whole lot easier. Find a really good graphic designer then watch the dollars roll in!
Screenprint numbers, hashtags, ellipses, etc., whatever you can get your hands on.
Sports references on your streetwear gear will most definitely get you off the bench. Keep it #trill by adding a few hashtags, money signs, and even emojis.
Rely on religious iconography. The more conflicting ideologies, the better.
No matter what you truly have faith in, your clothing doesn't have to reflect that. Christianity, Buddhism, Agnosticism; it doesn't matter because the symbols are really what counts. Upside-down crosses, Roman gladiators-turned-gods and elephants with a bunch of arms look fucking siiiiick on your T-shirts, bruh. It would be sacriligeous NOT to take advantage, right?
When in doubt, just make everything black.
The blacker the clothing, the better. If you can't design worth shit and don't know anything about color theory, this right here is your best bet. You don't need to know anything about graphic design, or any design really. Just make black clothes and sell them to hypebeasts. Congratulations! You are the next streetwear "it" brand. Take your 15 minutes in stride.
