What happened to fashion’s hypebeast culture?

About seven years ago, I impulse-bought a cropped gray hoodie from TNT in Toronto on deep discount. The sweatshirt was designed by Yeezy, the luxury streetwear brand founded by Kanye West in 2016 that quickly became a staple in the closets of many men in their mid-20s. It was cut far boxier than the utilitarian styles I wore from Champion and Uniqlo, which was the only visible marker that it was a piece of capital-F fashion.

After a year of wearing it, I realized the sartorial experiment had failed and I donated the hoodie to my cousin. Three years my junior, he grew up in the early 2000s idolizing a preproblematic West, whose daring outfits (pairing a leather Givenchy kilt with a hoodie and sneakers or wearing a women’s blouse by Céline) helped merge the worlds of streetwear and high fashion. This cultural convergence gave birth to the modern-day “hypebeast,” a slightly uncomplimentary term for a trend-chasing super-consumer, popularized in 2005 when Kevin Ma launched Hypebeast, a streetwear blog. My cousin wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool hypebeast, but when he wore the hoodie, it looked like a symbol of pop cultural belonging, distilling the peak streetwear era of oversized silhouettes, bold graphics and a Noah’s Ark of sneakers. On me, it had looked like a costume.

Yeezy’s global success helped propel the rise of niche streetwear brands with loyal communities around them, such as Stüssy and Supreme. West’s onetime creative accomplice, the late Virgil Abloh, founded the metatextual streetwear brand Off-White. Matthew Williams, another close collaborator of both, launched his hardware-heavy line, Alyx. Eventually, many of these names landed at establishment fashion houses (Abloh at Louis Vuitton, Williams at Givenchy), and, almost without anyone really noticing, hypebest culture was eclipsed by a cloud of TikTok aesthetics and choose-your-own-adventure dressing. Or was it?

“We’re not going to see as many Gucci logo hoodies,” says Chris Black, a brand consultant and co-host of the podcast, How Long Gone. “But the way kids would go into a record store or a skate shop, that’s what fashion is now for young men.” As streetwear became fashion and fashion became pop culture, men changed how they shopped. The hypebeast frenzy of doing anything for the latest buy – overnight, around-the-block lineups and all – is reflected in the social media circus and resale platforms that define consumption today. What was once part of a subculture is now a norm.

The continued relevance of brands such as Stüssy and Palace prove that streetwear still has a pulse. But its hold on luxury fashion has waned, forcing a kind of conscious uncoupling. Jack Stanley, a style writer who pens Heavy Weather, a Substack newsletter that studies how brands operate, distinguishes between streetwear and hypebeast cultures. The former was connected to music and art, it was “something that had started with skateboarders that become incredibly luxurious,” he says. The latter typified “a voracious appetite for new things. In hindsight, all of that” – the constant drops and endless collaborations – “got too extreme.” The move away from oversized hoodies to, say, designer Phoebe Philo’s mature minimalism or Y2K revivalism is just part of the natural, lightning speed cycle of the fashion industry (and to streetwear’s credit, Philo often releases new pieces in drop-style collections, just like her hypebeast-satisfying forbearers.)

Are former Abloh acolytes still clutching their credit cards before the next Supreme drop? Sort of. The hypebeasts I know have grown out of certain brands such as Off-White but still get excited by something rare like a Supreme x Yohji Yamamoto T-shirt. Brands like Chrome Hearts still get some love because they conjure a nostalgic feeling for the street culture and aesthetics that creative directors such as West and Abloh brought into the mainstream over the past 25 years.

“I think that streetwear, being a relatively affordable way to participate in consumerism as a young person, is kind of what will keep it alive,” Black says. Plus, he says, there’s a community element that continues to rally shoppers. That sense of belonging guarantees that floppy-haired teen boys continue to spill out of Supreme stores in New York and London.

The hypebeast culture of competitive consumerism thrived alongside the growth of the influencer economy, when real people transformed into marketing megaphones. Maybe if that business cools, the hype will die down for good.