50 Fun Facts About Streetwear and Hypebeast Culture

Which sandwich cookie did Supreme release in its signature red, with the Supreme logo printed on each one?

Oreo cookies got the Supreme treatment in 2020, when maker Nabisco baked a red Double Stuf edition. It showed how the skate label could turn almost any everyday object into a collectible.

Which film inspired the name of BAPE, the Japanese streetwear label founded in Tokyo's backstreets in 1993?

Planet of the Apes supplied the simian theme. The label's full name refers to a Japanese phrase about an ape bathing in lukewarm water, an image of complacent overindulgence.

On which handmade products did Shawn Stussy first scrawl the signature that became the Stüssy logo?

Surfboards came first: Shawn Stussy shaped them in California, then put the same signature on T-shirts he sold from his car around Laguna Beach. The scrawl was modelled on his uncle Jan's signature.

Which teen comedy made Vans checkerboard slip-ons a national craze after Sean Penn's surfer character wore them?

Fast Times at Ridgemont High put the shoes on slacker Jeff Spicoli in 1982. The checkerboard itself came from skateboarders, whom Vans noticed drawing the pattern on their own shoes.

Which hip-hop trio's 1986 song about their sneakers won music's first endorsement deal with a sportswear company?

Run-DMC told a Madison Square Garden crowd to hold their Adidas gear in the air while a company executive watched. The deal that followed became the model for brand partnerships across hip-hop.

Which 1976 film gave the hooded sweatshirt such a prominent screen appearance that the garment's popularity soared?

Rocky made the hoodie part of its underdog boxer's training kit and gave the garment a hero. Hooded sweatshirts had started out as workwear for people in cold New York warehouses.

Which rapper's 'Satan Shoes', modified Nike Air Max 97s said to contain a drop of human blood, got MSCHF sued?

Lil Nas X and the Brooklyn collective MSCHF made 666 pairs at $1,018 each to accompany a music video. Nike sued for trademark infringement, and the settlement let buyers return their pairs for a refund.

Which delivery company's logo T-shirt did Vetements send out in a Paris show for Spring/Summer 2016?

DHL's uniform tee was shown in a Chinese restaurant in the Belleville district of Paris, where Vetements staged the collection. The label's name is simply French for clothes.

Which 1989 film sequel featured the self-lacing Nike Mag sneakers that Nike finally sold as replicas in 2011?

Back to the Future Part II put the shoes on Marty McFly in an imagined 2015. Nike auctioned 1,500 replica pairs on eBay in 2011, with the proceeds going to Parkinson's disease research.

Which outdoor brand, whose logo depicts Yosemite's Half Dome, had the Grateful Dead play at its first store opening?

The North Face opened on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco in 1966 as a climbing shop. By the late 1990s its technical outerwear had been taken up by rappers in New York City.

Which Off-White founder, a trained architect, became known for putting words in quotation marks on clothes and sneakers?

Virgil Abloh earned a master's degree in architecture in Chicago before founding the Milan label in 2013. He described its name as the grey area between black and white.

Which rapper left Nike in 2013, complaining it would not pay royalties on his sneaker designs, and joined Adidas?

Kanye West walked away after the 'Red October' Air Yeezy 2 and launched his Adidas Yeezy line in February 2015. Adidas ended the partnership in October 2022.

Which musician co-founded the label Billionaire Boys Club in 2003 with the Japanese designer behind BAPE?

Pharrell Williams launched the brand with his manager and a Japanese graphic designer known as Sk8thing. Its skate-minded offshoot, Ice Cream, followed a year later with a sneaker line made under licence by Reebok.

Which French luxury house partnered with Supreme in 2017 and sold the collection through pop-up shops around the world?

Louis Vuitton showed the collection on its Paris runway in January 2017, then sold it through pop-up shops in cities from Sydney to Los Angeles.

Which salesman's signature on the ankle patch made Converse All Stars the first celebrity-endorsed athletic shoe?

Chuck Taylor was a semi-professional player who joined Converse as a salesman in 1921. He asked for a redesign with more support and flexibility, and the improved shoe ended up carrying his name.

Which New Hampshire company's waterproof 'Yellow Boot', launched in 1973, became a staple for New York rappers?

Timberland was the boot before it was the company: the Abington Shoe Company made it for harsh New England winters and renamed itself after its hit product in 1978.

Which American tennis player's name replaced Frenchman Robert Haillet's on an Adidas leather tennis shoe in 1978?

Stan Smith agreed to the deal so he could earn royalties on his name. For several years the tongue of the shoe showed his portrait with the word Haillet still printed above it.

Which Nike basketball shoe, designed by Bruce Kilgore in 1982, was so common in Harlem that it was nicknamed 'Uptowns'?

Air Force 1 was the first basketball shoe to use Nike's Air technology. Nike discontinued it in 1984, only to see it become a streetwear fixture with barely a change to the design.

Which Harlem designer dressed 1980s rappers in bootleg luxury logos, then became an official Gucci partner in 2017?

Dapper Dan often kept his 125th Street boutique open around the clock, until legal action by Fendi shut it in 1992. One of the lawyers involved, Sonia Sotomayor, later joined the US Supreme Court.

Which American label's shirt sold out across New York the day after Snoop Dogg wore it on Saturday Night Live?

Tommy Hilfiger had courted hip-hop, with rappers such as Coolio attending his runway shows. The preppy label's roomy cuts and oversized logos made it a 1990s favourite with rap artists.

Which American artist's bold text-on-red artworks inspired the design of the Supreme box logo in 1994?

Barbara Kruger's style reached the label through a book of her work that inspired its founder. The logo sets white Futura Heavy Oblique type on a red box, much like the captions in her photo collages.

In which Tokyo district's backstreets did the founders of BAPE and Undercover open their shop Nowhere in 1993?

Harajuku's quieter side streets, known as Ura-Harajuku, became the home of Japanese streetwear in the 1990s. The network of lanes runs off the grand boulevard Omotesando.

Which former graffiti artist, born Brian Donnelly, has designed an Air Jordan 4 and a Sesame Street line for Uniqlo?

KAWS picked the name as a teenager simply because he liked how the letters looked together; the word means nothing. His best-known character, Companion, dates from 1999.

Which wrestler stares out of the Obey logo, which Shepard Fairey developed from a 1989 student sticker?

André the Giant starred in the original sticker, made while Fairey was at art school in Providence. Skaters and graffiti writers spread it across American cities before he reworked the image in 1996.

Which British brand, founded in Cumbria in 1938, made the bucket hat that became LL Cool J's signature?

Kangol added its kangaroo logo in 1983 because Americans kept asking where to buy the kangaroo hat. None has ever been made in Australia; the firm began with hats for workers, golfers and soldiers.

Which sportswear brand made the first hoodies in the 1930s, selling them to labourers in freezing upstate New York?

Champion produced them in Rochester for people working in freezing temperatures. The hood itself echoes the short hooded cloaks worn in Normandy and England as far back as the 12th century.

Which Detroit-founded workwear maker licensed a European line called Work in Progress that became a streetwear label?

Carhartt granted the licence in 1994 to a Swiss couple who specialised in denim. Their WIP line took a brand founded in 1889 for manual labourers and sold it alongside the likes of Stüssy.

Which Detroit resale marketplace, launched in 2016, grew out of a rare-sneaker website called Campless?

StockX began when Dan Gilbert bought Campless and brought its founder, Josh Luber, to downtown Detroit as chief executive. Luber had explained the sneaker resale market in a TED Talk.

Which label did Daymond John start in 1992 by mortgaging his home for $100,000 and turning half of it into a factory?

FUBU broke into the mainstream in 1997, when LL Cool J wore one of its hats in a commercial for a rival, Gap. The resulting fuss turned into a publicity boost for both companies.

The outdoor-gear fashion trend 'gorpcore', named in 2017, borrows its name from hikers' slang for which snack?

Trail mix is known as gorp to many hikers and campers, a word often explained as good old raisins and peanuts. A writer for The Cut coined gorpcore for the craze for fleeces, puffers and hiking boots.

Which retail term for unsold, warehoused goods do sneaker collectors use for a pair never worn, tried on or re-laced?

Deadstock pairs sit at the opposite end of the scale from beaters, the collector's word for sneakers worn despite creases, scuffs and stains.

Which word do sneaker collectors use for the one pair they want above all others?

Grail is short for holy grail, the prize the knights of the Round Table went looking for. The choice is personal, so one collector's dream pair can leave another cold.

Which Buffalo company makes the 59Fifty fitted cap and became Major League Baseball's exclusive cap supplier in 1993?

New Era began in 1920, when Ehrhardt Koch borrowed $5,000 from his aunt to start a cap company. The 59Fifty, a modernised version of its fitted pro cap, followed in 1954.

Which skateboarding magazine, founded in 1981 to promote Independent trucks, names a Skater of the Year?

Thrasher was started by Fausto Vitello and Eric Swenson mainly to advertise their skateboard truck company. Its publisher also runs an indoor skate facility called Double Rock.

Which London skateboard brand, established in 2009, uses a triangular logo known as the Tri-Ferg?

Palace got its triangle from designer Fergus Purcell, nicknamed Fergadelic, which is where the Ferg comes from. Co-founder Lev Tanju began by drawing T-shirt graphics after a decade spent skating.

Which New York retailer, opened by Ronnie Fieg in 2011, serves breakfast cereal at in-store bars called Treats?

Kith opened its first shop in Brooklyn before expanding to Manhattan. The Treats menu has run to 23 varieties of breakfast cereal with toppings and a choice of milk, as well as ice cream.

Which label did Jerry Lorenzo found with no fashion training, later adding a cheaper sister line called Essentials?

Fear of God began on a budget of $14,000 after its founder, then a Los Angeles party promoter, felt something was missing from his own wardrobe. Essentials followed in 2018.

Which Adidas sneaker, launched in 1969 as a low-top basketball shoe, is nicknamed the 'shell toe' after its rubber cap?

Superstar was the first low-top basketball shoe with an all-leather upper, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wore it on court. Hip-hop and skateboarding later gave it a second life as a casual shoe.

Which rapper's 'Cactus Jack' collaborations with Jordan Brand produced versions of the Air Jordan 1, 4 and 6?

Travis Scott also uses the name for his record label, Cactus Jack Records, which he launched in 2017. His Jordan designs followed a first collaboration with Nike that same year.

Golf Wang, the label Tyler, the Creator founded in 2011, is a spoonerism on the name of which rap collective?

Odd Future's full name is Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All: swap the first letters of Wolf Gang. The brand's sneakers, made with Converse, often carry the name Golf le Fleur.

Which Japanese designer and DJ founded BAPE in 1993 and went on to launch the label Human Made in 2010?

Nigo also became the house DJ of the rap group Teriyaki Boyz when it debuted in 2005. In 2021 the Paris house Kenzo appointed him its artistic director.

Which Tokyo designer and musician, known as a godfather of Japanese street fashion, runs the label Fragment Design?

Hiroshi Fujiwara brought hip-hop records home from New York in the early 1980s and became one of Japan's first hip-hop DJs. His first brand, Good Enough, later gave way to Fragment.

On which Asian city's stock exchange did Hypebeast, begun in 2005 as Kevin Ma's sneaker blog, list its shares?

Hong Kong is where the company trades: it moved to the exchange's main board in 2019, and its HBX store there gained a cafe called Hypebeans in 2020. Time magazine named the site one of its 50 best websites in 2008.

Which designer, whose clothing label sports a rhinoceros logo, founded the magazine Complex in 2002?

Marc Ecko started out painting graffiti under the name Echo. The rhino arrived as his company pushed further into hip-hop and skater styles.

Which New York Knicks star, nicknamed Clyde, had Puma build him a suede signature basketball shoe in 1973?

Walt Frazier rejected the clunky Puma Basket and set three conditions: suede instead of leather, his nickname printed on every shoe, and a new colour for every game he played.

Which Paris building did Tinker Hatfield visit before designing the Nike Air Max 1 with its visible air unit?

Centre Pompidou wears its pipes, ducts and escalators on the outside. Hatfield, who practised as an architect before joining Nike in 1981, gave the 1987 shoe a window onto its cushioning.

Which American designer's preppy clothes were the obsession of the Lo Lifes, a Brooklyn crew formed in 1988?

Ralph Lauren's Polo label supplied the Lo in the crew's name. Members aimed to wear the brand from head to toe, and many early pieces were shoplifted from department stores.

Which Italian label, founded by Massimo Osti in 1982, is recognised by a button-on cloth badge showing a compass?

Stone Island is said to take its name from the two words that turn up most often in Joseph Conrad's sea novels. Its first fabric was modelled on stiff, resin-coated truck tarpaulin.

Which bird names the 2005 Nike SB Dunk by Staple Design whose New York release ended in a riot?

Pigeon and NYC both appear in the shoe's full name. Buyers were pulled off the shop gate and arrested, and the chaos made headlines in the New York Post.

Which collectible figure, made by Japan's Medicom Toy since 2001, comes in sizes labelled 100%, 400% and 1000%?

Bearbrick takes its name from being a bear-shaped variation on the company's earlier Kubrick figure. The standard 100% size stands seven centimetres tall, so a 1000% figure reaches 70.