During London Fashion Week, rapper-turned-designer Skepta presented his second major collection for his brand, MAINS. Inspired by young Skepta's early encounters with fashion, the collection featured ties, boxy suiting, letterman jackets, and Packer leather shoes on the runway. "I want to bring back getting dressed up," Skepta told Vogue Runway after the show, and that's exactly what we saw.

The show was a testament to how far the brand has come, how streetwear has changed, and how its customer has evolved. When MAINS launched in 2017 (the same year Heron Preston founded his namesake label, Off-White released 'The Ten' with Nike, and Supreme collaborated with Louis Vuitton), it did so with a collection of tracksuits, t-shirts, caps, and bags that sold out via the then-disruptive 'drop' distribution model. Today, however, the brand's collections look different and attract a more discerning customer: one who still wears hoodies, but with loafers, or carries a Bottega bag... but with a vintage baseball cap.

Elsewhere, Off-White, the label founded by the late Virgil Abloh that once generated $300 million annually from its graphic-heavy streetwear products, has shifted focus under its new creative director, Ib Kamara. Last week, at its Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear show, there were wrap skirts, plunging necklines, tight plaid pants, and tooth-like bead details on vests and belts. It felt like closure from the last streetwear bastion—prompting the Wall Street Journal to ask, 'Is streetwear finally over?.' But streetwear is never over, it's just evolving.

The changing nature of streetwear is no surprise. In December 2019, the late Virgil Abloh predicted the demise of it's current iteration during a conversation with Dazed:

He was right. A global pandemic spent wearing sweatpants and tees, every luxury house jumping on streetwear as a trend, questions around sustainability and global consumption, and a resurgence of formal dressing were enough to cause streetwear's 2010s aesthetic to recede. Supreme’s recent sale to EssilorLuxottica, amidst waning revenues (down 7% from the previous year in 2023), is proof of a changing streetwear landscape and marks a new phase for a brand that Highsnobiety once deemed "the most re-sellable in the world."

But even with the likes of Supreme on the back foot, ‘streetwear’ isn't dead; it just looks different.

Today, a new customer is defining ‘streetwear.’ More savvy and knowledgeable, these individuals still buy streetwear but combine it with unique luxury and vintage products they curate to exhibit individuality and cultural understanding. Opposed to blind consumption and affected by economic issues, they value originality and participation over ‘clout,’ bringing streetwear closer to a more expansive definition: what is worn on the street.
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So, how have we arrived here?

1. Originality Is Impacting Loyalty

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In a BoF article titled "How the Streetwear Customer Is Evolving," Lei Takanashi explains that people are still buying streetwear; however, they are "no longer a monolithic, head-to-toe brand loyalist." At some point, the customer realised that when everyone buys Supreme and Palace, they all end up with the same items, flattening the sense of status. Homogenised by the nature of the brands they bought into, streetwear customers are now looking to reclaim their own unique style.

Tightening wallets can have a positive effect of heightening creativity - where restrictions force us to look deeper at, and do more with, what is available to us. When money is tight, customers become more inventive. Instead of impulse buying new clothes, the new streetwear customer turns to cheaper vintage items to signal taste. As Ana Andjelic, author of The Sociology of Business, explains: "Modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having the taste to know what to buy."

During periods of economic downturns, keeping up with streetwear's reliance on rampant consumerism becomes more difficult. Where status in streetwear was once achieved through clout (hence the birth of the term "flexing"), today’s customer is poorer. In a 2017 article from The Guardian titled "How streetwear restyled the world – from hip-hop to Supreme and Palace", a young Gully Guy Leo "claims to have spent more than £9,000" on streetwear. Fast forward to 2024 and it seems that general spending on apparel is in decline; in Mckinsey's '2024 State of Fashion' report they record that consumers intend to reduce their net spending on apparel by 29% in Europe and 25% in the US.

2. The Power of Curation

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The search for individuality has diluted blind brand loyalty, shifting taste from a matter of ownership to one of skilled curation. Today’s customers have more choices. As Alex Ropes of The Basement explained to Vogue, "We’ve entered a time in streetwear where that pound a consumer might have spent in one or three places before could now be spent in one of 30 places." Where Palace and Supreme once held a monopoly, next-generation brands like Corteiz have overtaken them and, in the case of more premium brands like Alyx, undercut their prices. While an Off-White T-shirt retails for £400, a Corteiz one is around £35, bringing streetwear back to its democratic roots.

With more choice, deciding what to buy requires greater skill. It’s become less about being able to afford something and more about mixing ‘if you know, you know’ items that express an allegiance to a particular brand or subculture. As Michael Vincent of Invincible told BoF, "Instead of having five pairs of hype sneakers, the trendy ‘it girl’ is now wearing jorts, a pair of ballet flats, and a Stüssy T-shirt."

David Marx explains the link between taste and choice in his 2022 published book Status and Culture:

This new emphasis on curation extends to other areas as well. Expertly curating a home has become another way to signal taste and connect with subcultures through the choice of products from niche brands. Diptyque candles, Margin cleansers, and TEKLA bedsheets have all become subtle signals for the new streetwear customer to convey refined taste. Case and point the recent 'airport tray aesthetic' that sees people carefully curating the contents of a tray, showcasing their shoes, scents, accessories, headphones, hats and reading material against a backdrop of polypropylene – and then photographing it to share with their followers.

3. The Case For Vintage

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In the same Dazed interview, Virgil Abloh predicted a future of "expressing your knowledge and personal style with vintage." Since then, Etsy has acquired Depop for $1.6 billion, second-hand platform Vinted reported profitability for the first time, and the global secondhand market at large is projected to reach $350 billion by 2028. He was right again.

Vintage has, and will always be, an affordable way to shop for unique items. But for the new streetwear customer, it’s also the most accessible way to say, "You don’t have this," with some vintage items surpassing the cultural value of new ones. Pre-worn products, from Manchester United shirts to caps donning the investment banking company Lehman Brothers, have all become sought after for their ability to signal an understanding of culture.

New streetwear labels have also caught the vintage bug. Palace's creative director Lev Tanju’s debut collection for FILA, dubbed FILA+, deeply references the brand’s archive and aims to revive vintage styles. Meanwhile, Our Legacy’s 'Workshop' arm regularly reworks vintage tees to create unique pieces that are in high demand.

Then there’s the high end. For those prepared to spend, curated auction houses like Pharrell’s JOOPITER provide the new streetwear customer access to highly sought-after vintage goods and collectibles—a chance to pay to prove their know-how. No longer interested in the latest sneaker, the new streetwear customer will pay 37.5x the expected price for a piece of cultural history, such as a vintage McDonald’s Hawaiian uniform shirt.

4. New Communities

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Lastly, as BoF’s Takanashi reported, "At its core, streetwear is a category that’s still defined by its connection to niche subcultures and communities. That cultural connection still exists today, just in a different form than it used to."

Where streetwear once fostered community around consumption, the new streetwear customer now seeks community in more tangible ways, connected to activities that signal their lifestyle and taste. More than just resellers, today’s streetwear customers are chefs, authors, directors, and athletes. As the strapline for UK streetwear group The Basement’s recent collaboration with Nike reads: "Real People Do Real Things."

Recently, the rising popularity of running clubs might be the best example of streetwear customers finding new communities. In London alone, those who once socialised in queues for the latest Palace collaboration now attend art clubs at Beau Beau’s, chess nights at DIJONSS, and book clubs at Reference Point. Like streetwear, legitimacy in these communities is achieved through dedication and participation. How committed are you to the community, and who do you know to prove it?
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Closing thoughts

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Streetwear's customer base has continually evolved. In the '80s, they were skaters and surfers; in the '90s and 2000s, style-conscious teens; and in the 2010s, "hypebeasts" who transformed cultural know-how into profit. Recently, streetwear's merging with luxury has created tensions with its origins—to the OGs, what was once an authentic expression for skaters has become unrecognisably gentrified.

Today, streetwear's latest customer has become definable, expertly blending vintage, luxury, and streetwear to showcase their taste and express their individuality. No longer tied to unapologetic consumption, they seek community around real places and achieve status through participation and dedication.

So ignore the false alarms—streetwear hasn't died; it's just evolved. Again.