Why Are TikTokers Hating on Streetwear?

“Why can’t you just go get a big hoodie at Gap?,” said influencer Audrey Peters in a now-deleted TikTok. “The only thing, and I mean the only thing, that Demna has done in the fashion community, in my eyes, is normalize wearing sweatshirts and calling it fashion.” Demna is on thin ice after the Balenciaga ad campaign controversy. Still, comments that reduce his work bridging street style with high fashion to a generalized “laziness” have sparked major discourse within TikTok’s fashion community. This debate isn’t about any brand or designer in particular—it's about the meaning of streetwear.

Creators like Marlee Loiben are responding to Peters’ comments: “To narrow streetwear down to $900 hoodies would be the equivalent of me narrowing Miu Miu down to the $450 underwear you [Audrey Peters] own from them.” Sure, streetwear can be expensive, but much like the case of its luxury fashion counterparts, high price tags don’t invalidate artistry.

According to Loiben, streetwear is community-based. Attacking streetwear invalidates numerous communities, including the “hip-hop scenes of New York, the surf-skate and graffiti culture of Los Angeles, and the nightlife of Japan.” Bred from opposing social norms, streetwear is not a trend, “it’s a cultural phenomenon.” The style of dress originated as a form of creative expression for outcasts who had no other choice but to invent their own definition of fashion. Daniel Day, better known as Dapper Dan, is credited as being the first to do so in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

The hip-hop fashion legend remixed pre-existing designer items and reinvented their iconography at his 125th Street Harlem shop. Some might chalk up Day’s liberal use of designer logos to a series of knockoffs, but the practice represented so much more. Day’s surrounding community, largely people of color, lacked access to designer brands because they could not afford designer prices. Knockoffs were a way to participate in luxury fashion without paying the high price tag. Day provided the Harlem community with the chance to partake in their own iteration of high fashion, laying down the foundation for streetwear as we know it today. 

Loiben's TikTok continues, “Streetwear is about personal style, which is something that most fashion influencers know nothing about… Unlike most fashion genres, the growth of streetwear was not pushed by brands, rather, by consumers.”

Peters would likely disagree. She remarks in a different TikTok, “The Dior Saddle Bag is absolutely hideous, let’s be honest. Let me know why I would give up my firstborn child to have it… It’s because of Dior’s genius marketing team. Does anyone else remember when this bag launched you couldn't scroll through any social media platform, specifically Instagram, without seeing this bag every 10 seconds… This bag was shoved down my throat, and it fucking worked.”

Creators like The Vintage Bea have weighed in, emphasizing the interconnected, rather than hierarchical, relationship between the consumer, streetwear, and high fashion. She explains that in 2000, when John Galliano initially released the ‘70s-inspired Saddle Bag, it was met with public criticism. Dior eventually discontinued the bag in 2006. So why did Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior’s creative director, reissue it in 2018? According to The Vintage Bea, it was the streets that ignited renewed interest in the piece. “The vintage girlies and the streetwear girlies started really looking for the Saddle Bags and they became very popular.”