Streetwear Is Dead
The New York Times
Long live fashion. They are actually one and the same.
In late 2019, Virgil Abloh, the boundary-smashing designer who died last year, gave an interview to Dazed in which he declared the end of streetwear.
“I would definitely say it’s gonna die, you know? Like, its time will be up,” he said, immediately engendering a mass freak-out, not just in fashion but among pretty much anyone who had seen him as the prophet of a new contemporary dress code, one that smashed the rules of the old establishment, finding power in sweatshirts and sneakers rather than suits. Suddenly he was changing his mind?
Mr. Abloh ended up walking his statement back a bit — he told Vogue he wasn’t saying streetwear would be gone, gone; it always comes back — but two years after he made his prediction, there’s little question he was right. “Streetwear” is indeed dead.
