Luxury retail platform Farfetch’s opening event for London Fashion Week Men Spring 2024 was not at one of the city’s elaborate townhouses or Michelin-star restaurants. It was held at BaySixty6 Skate Park in Ladbroke Grove.
Eating tacos and watching skaters compete, the fashion crowd joined skate fans to celebrate the launch of LA skater Tobey McIntosh’s Crenshaw Skate Club (CSC) capsule for Farfetch BEAT.
“The collection features cut and sew garments with graphics from some of our first collections. This was done to symbolize that CSC is growing and expanding as a brand, but we will never forget our roots,” McIntosh says in an exclusive interview with Jing Daily. “I started [the brand] to empower intercity skaters like myself, and it has matured with me. This capsule is designed to represent the same community in London."
For McIntosh, the founder, who started CSC aged 14 as a way to make clothes for his friends and ultimately skate for the rest of his life, the luxury collaboration champions skate culture while providing more exposure for his platform. On the other end, Farfetch is simultaneously able to connect with the community-led skater crowd organically — Farfetch-owned Browns buying director Ida Petersson also has a personal affinity to skateboarding — while tapping the scene’s rising trend of co-branded drops.
Since the disruptive Louis Vuitton x Supreme debut collection six years ago, high-end labels have been craving a slice of skateboard brands and rolling out collaborations to show affinity to the subculture.
Last year alone, Palace x Gucci, Stüssy x Dries Van Noten, and Dior x ERL presented skate shoes at a Venice Beach show with American skateboarder Tony Hawk sat front row. Skaters are the protagonists of the moment, with fashion capitalizing on the movement to reach young demographics all over the world.
South London-based skateboarding and apparel company Yardsale is a successful case in point, consciously steering clear of pointless co-branded collections. Meeting the needs of its growing Asian fanbase, the brand's about to embark on an East Asia pop-up tour, and has released product lines with Vans, Sergio Tacchini, and Dickies.
“Skating in general is usually at the forefront of fashion and has consistently set trends in mainstream fashion,” says Yardsale founder Daniel Kreitem. “So, most brands want a piece of that. But a lot of fashion brands tend to collab with the wrong skate brands. I don’t know who is calling the shots in these big companies, but I’ve seen some pretty well-known fashion brands doing really simple basic collabs with some of the worst skate brands out there.”
Skateboard labels are often founded by riders, like Kreitem, who simply start out designing clothes for their friends to wear and sponsoring skaters to represent their company. Therefore, luxury collaborations may not resonate because that core, defining element of what makes a skate brand so successful is only half present; Palace x Gucci, for example, was more directed at luxury fashion consumers than skaters.
Yardsale’s 2022 collection with Italian tennis-wear brand Sergio Tacchini demonstrates how companies from these two arenas can collaborate well.
“We were given complete freedom to do what we wanted with the whole project,” explains Kreitem. “So, we decided to go crazy with the marketing and make a legitimate scene from a movie. We were also lucky enough to have 'Said' from the famous Parisian film La Haine, which the commercial was based on. We were really happy with the outcome because the video and aesthetic of the collaboration made sense for both brands. It wasn't just two brand logos locked together and printed on a T-shirt.”
Providing brands active in the skating space with creative freedom is the key for luxury to produce authentic collections. Meaningful storytelling is crucial because skaters can spot insincerity, and appropriating the skating aesthetic alone will not produce sustainable results for fashion houses.
McIntosh believes that collaboration should be seen as a vehicle to spread a brand message. “Through collaborations I have been able to work with brands that I wore while growing up, such as Union LA and Icecream and even my favorite basketball team (LA Clippers),” he says. “These are all people and companies that I had dreamed of working with ever since I was a kid, and being able to use partnerships with brands to uplift my community is important to me.”
That notion of supporting fellow riders illustrates a key aspect of global skate culture. In China, Avenue & Son is one brand that incorporates collaboration as part of its strategy, yet from a place of authenticity — Shanghai founder Xie Wenkai (aka Boss) founded the brand because he wanted to be a skateboarder forever.
Skating in the early 2000s, Xie was sponsored as a professional by Nike between 2007 and 2015, and started Avenue & Son in 2014, opening a store and sponsoring his friends. “Being a skateboard brand, collaborations are definitely important to me. We let more people know about Avenue & Son through them,” Xie tells Jing Daily, referencing drops with the likes of global names such as Adidas, Salomon, artist Zinan Lam, and G-Shock. "But they really need to express meaning. Brands have to match the same values.”
Unlike some other subcultures, the beauty of skateboarding is that it has the same fundamental spirit in each country. As McIntosh puts it, “Skating connects people beyond geography.” Connecting London’s Kreitem, Shanghai’s Xie, and LA’s McIntosh is the fact that their brands all grew organically from being immersed in each city’s skate scenes — prospective collaborators need to carefully consider this element.
Luxury fashion brands wanting to simply attract cool kids with sexy graphics and logos should not see skaters as an easy access channel. Such an approach runs the risk of immediately diminishing a brand’s reputation within streetwear, with those within the space able to instantly spot something inauthentic.
“Streetwear became a major trend over the last few years, driven by luxury brands tapping into this community through collaborations,” says McIntosh. “Skatewear has become a core subculture within that.”
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