How Forums Built the Foundation for Streetwear

books.) In the late 1990s and early 2000s, kids like me wanted streetwear because nobody else wore it. In the span of a generation, that thinking has flipped. Today, young men and women hunt for streetwear precisely because everyone else is wearing it. Like all compelling subcultures, the secret was too good to keep to ourselves. Streetwear broke t... See more

We had customers back then, but not much of a following. We printed T-shirts, but didn’t exactly have a clothing line. We did, however, have each other. And we had a mission: to design a brand themed around California culture, complemented by an online magazine that painted the backdrop for our lifestyle. Ben and I wanted to put Los Angeles back on... See more

“When you look at the history of the internet,” says Jeremy Morris, associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “a lot of the early spaces for communities also became places where people would either trade or barter.”