Hardwired Weekly β The underground streetwear intelligence brief from Hardlife Apparel Company. Every Thursday. Free.
I’ve watched skateboarding go from outlaw subculture to Olympic event in my lifetime.
In the 80s it was banned in cities across America. In 2021 it was on live television in Tokyo, watched by hundreds of millions of people. That’s not a small shift. That’s a complete reversal of how the mainstream sees something.
What happened to skate culture when that happened? Some of it got preserved. A lot of it got packaged and sold back to kids who never stood on a board.
Brands from Tokyo to Paris to SΓ£o Paulo are now building on skate aesthetics. Some of them are legitimate β built by people who grew up in that world, who carry the culture because they lived it. Most of them are wearing it like a costume.
The tell is always the same: when it gets hard, the costume brands pivot. They chase the next trend. The real ones don’t move. They couldn’t if they tried β the culture is structural, not decorative.
HRDLF has been asked to pivot more times than I can count. Different aesthetics. Different markets. Different “opportunities.” The answer has always been the same. We are what we are. Philadelphia. Skate DNA. Independent since 2006.
The world came to skate culture. We were already here.
β Brooks
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