This study is to investigate the interrelation between the obsession with materialism in the millennial society and why owning luxury item gives them the satisfaction of possession in their daily life. The study focuses on the highly influential streetwear brand Supreme and history of streetwear culture and how it evolves from the perspective of art and what influenced the changes in the movement. The study aims to provide an understanding of how the materialism grows in a youth and why they are putting off on buying homes and not investing in relationship or experience as well. The study highlights how the materialism behaviour of the youth are going to change the images of streetwear and the creative process in the fashion industry. Lastly, the study is to convey a message to the society about the effect of materialism on the youth and how it is going to shape the future of fashion culture.
Streetwear
fashion is a street movement born in the late 1970s in Los Angeles, California
by the surf culture. It is defined as casual and comfortable clothing. By
today’s definition, Streetwear is a fashion style inspired by what is happening
or current ongoing scene on the streets. It is getting more diverse as
sportswear brands also play the role in the streetwear scene. Sportswear brands
sneakers have made sportswear have set the brand a footwear benchmark in the
streetwear style. It is heavily influenced by the music and skateboarding
style, which is the main interest of the youth in this generation. In this era,
streetwear fashion is no longer a stranger in the fashion industry.
Streetwear
brands got influenced by certain aesthetic such as skateboarding, hip-hop music
and lifestyle. Streetwear apparels graphics are usually referring to the pop
culture of the following generation. Youth sort of find them nostalgic and this
make them appreciate it not on the fact that it has good graphics but it is
because it creates a nostalgic moment that the youth are able to relate to.
Design in streetwear staples such as photography, photo collage, illustration,
and typography. It has the concept as fast fashion brands but streetwear brands
have an iconic identity in the fashion scene. Modern streetwear culture is not
just on the clothing line. Streetwear brands start creating more diverse
products from electric guitar to ashtray instead of just clothing to delve into
the lifestyle of the youth.
There’s
no doubt that streetwear brands have a great impact on the streetwear culture
and fashion realm. Mass media plays the role in making streetwear brand popular
through entertainment. The youth have the easy access to the advertising and
commercial with the social media nowadays. With the appearance in popular
movies and music, youth are exposed to the streetwear brands easily too. It has
become the uniform of the famous artists in the media. Celebrities also start
wearing certain streetwear brand instead of luxury brands. Living in the era
where the youth is driven by possession of goods, the inflate demand of
streetwear has become higher than ever since due to the limited quantity of
clothing released to the public. Few streetwear brands start to issue raffle
ticket at the entrance of their stores in order to be fair to the consumers. The
outcome of this is the huge increase in the streetwear brands value in the
marketplace. This led to the birth of reselling in the streetwear fashion
culture. People start queueing up outside the store a day or two before the
release date of certain collection in order to purchase an item and resell it
with a hefty amount of price to the one who wants it. Police are on the scene
to prevent riots from happening. The reselling culture encourages youth to
spend tons of money on streetwear brands to look cool in the scene. This
spreads out to the whole world and soon after that streetwear becomes a huge
image in the fashion scene. Youth starts paying attention to the fashion
industry. With the huge crowds of millennials in the modern streetwear scene,
luxury brands are collaborating with streetwear brand in order to reach out to
the millennials. This transforms the streetwear culture from classic streetwear
to luxury streetwear. From the youth point of view, it is easier to own luxury
designer brands too. From this, it also feeds the materialism more into the
youth. Thus the materialism starts to grow inside the youth circle and soon the
culture grows wider.
The
materialism of the youth has been seeded since the young age. Children are
expecting an expensive birthday gift and Christmas present. Exposed to the
modern TV commercials, the youth have been taught that money is the power and
without money, there will be no happiness. encourages youth to steal and
commits violence.
Possessing
valuable items has been perceived as being more famous and reputable. That’s how most of the youth nowadays make
friends. They often think that making friends with the wealthy ones alleviates
their reputation and fame in their social circle. This led to youth starts to
categorize their friend and putting people in the box in their social circle.
By this, the demand for luxury and valuable items increased rapidly. This
initiates the youth to use violence in their desire of owning luxury items.
Those violence includes robbing, stealing, and even killing. Due to the
obsession towards luxury items, teenagers are often being killed over a pair of
sneakers and sometimes got seriously injured.
The rise
of materialism in the youth has a serious impact on the society. The market in
the streetwear fashion industry are increasing exponentially and has become
wider than ever. Several job opportunities have been provided to the industry.
However, the tradeoffs of this are people are becoming obsessed with an item
and start to neglect the appreciation of people around them. Everyone is
investing in greater happiness by spending money on objects that make them feel
better emotionally. The future of materialistic youth is beyond the imagination
right now as it keeps evolving from generation to generation.
Like the
culture itself, the definition of streetwear has been circulating and changing
forever in the streetwear culture. Aaron Levant, the founder of the streetwear
show called Agenda, said that you know a streetwear when you see it by
yourself. Streetwear is all about the free spirits and their aspiration in the
street culture. The design aesthetics are a mixture of New York skate culture,
fashion, music and art. To put it in a simple word, streetwear is a reflection
of what is the identity of the youth of today. In today’s streetwear, there’s
no longer a specific look for streetwear fashion. The separation of streetwear
style ranges from urban goths to the skate and surfer initiates the marketer to
expand their brand to further subcultures. One of the most well-known is
hip-hop. The aesthetics of streetwear are always present in the hip-hop culture
and entertainment and portrayed massively through mass media. The influence of
streetwear starts to blend into the designer brand. Virgil Abloh starts to showcase
his streetwear influenced collection in his own brand, Off-White to reach out
the teenager market. Streetwear has grown into a really massive culture and is
no stranger to most of the teenagers these days. There are thousands of
streetwear brands saturating in the current market to prevent the culture from
diminishing. Among the brands that are really appealing to the teenagers and
young consumers on the social media are highly reputable streetwear labels such
as Supreme and Stussy. The success of the brand is credited to their own
independently running store and the capabilities in marketing their products
through e-commerce. Arguably, Supreme is most likely be the one brand that is
able to cover the whole facts of streetwear fashion due to their rich history,
controversial design and huge impact in the streetwear culture.
Often
being labelled as a cult brand in the streetwear fashion, Supreme doesn’t need
an introduction when it comes to the streetwear culture. Originated from New
York, Supreme is a well-known streetwear brand and a staple in the streetwear
fashion culture. Supreme started out as a small skateboard shop in 1994 and has
rapidly grown into a legendary streetwear cult status. Supreme was founded by
the James Jebbia who served as the store manager at both Union and Stussy in
New York back in 1994. Due to Stussy was becoming a bigger and more available
brand, James Jebbia decided to leave the company and opened a store dedicated
to skating, which he first had the idea when he was so really into the
skateboarding culture, the designs and the philosophy of skateboarding.
Realizing that there was not a demanding skateboard market in downtown New
York, he was driven to open the first good skate shop to fill the gap. The
public relation of James Jebbia is one of the keys to why he is able to create
a successful brand too. Having friends in the skateboarding scene since the
early, James Jebbia knew the way on how skateboard market was operated, this
was another factor that motivated him to open a skate store. By doing this,
James Jebbia fulfilled the needs of the youth in the streetwear culture at the
time where youth are deeply rooted in the arts and anarchistic behaviour.
Supreme has allocated itself in the streetwear market for its timeless style
and authenticity value in the streetwear culture. The store has become the holy grail of the
youth streetwear culture.
The
success of the brand is highly by interpreting a mix of the city’s symbolic
icon covering fashion music, celebrity and politics in their design for their
clothing, shoes and skateboards. The design element is what they transpire and
reflect on daily fashion style for young teenagers. Products including jackets,
shoes, shirt, skateboard and accessories are designed to appeal the youth
generation especially the one who are into the hip-hop and skateboarding
culture. To give an example, the status symbol of Supreme is so impactful that
even the ‘box logo tee’ which is a simple white tee with the Supreme logo on it
are extremely valuable and usually sold out instantly when they are released.
The collection offered by Supreme has a wide variety of selection. By doing
this, Supreme is able to ensure everyone can find an item they want.
Alternatively, this strategy of creating varieties of products also maintain
the identity of Supreme and to ensures brand logo are able to be seen
everywhere so it helps to build the brand reputation without spending a dime on
advertising campaign.
Because
of social media, the streetwear culture will never fade away due to most of the
consumers are the young teenager who is attracted to the screen. Related to
that, the mysterious successful brand Supreme never really rely on the
advertisement campaign to become this popular. It always abstained print
advertisement and physical advertisement. In this digital age, Supreme utilizes
the social media platform to reach out to their consumer instead of using
common marketing strategy done by the other fashion brands. Supreme has never
made any appearance in the fashion show to reach out their consumer. The
controversial brand and their brand logo itself are mostly circulating on
social media and the word-of-mouth of teenagers through the street scene.
However, one of the most recognizable advertisement every done by them will be
the New York poster advertisement campaign. With the poster of their photo tees
filled up on the wall of their flagship stores and the landmark around the
city, the poster signifies that there’s a new collection of the season arriving
soon. It may seem like a very cliché advertising campaign, the advertisement
stunt is so covetable that people often rip it down from the wall and take it
with them. The level of obsession is so high that even the advertisement
material of the brand has a value on its own. One good approach done by Supreme
is the physical store is not only open for shopping, they’re an epicentre of
the skate scene in the city. Teenagers come around and hangout at the spot.
This brings the community together to push the streetwear culture.
The
celebrity culture is also one of the sole reason why Supreme is wildly popular
among the youth generation. Celebrities such as musicians started wearing
Supreme either they got sponsored or they bought it. This genius idea of
promoting the brand through entertainment by Supreme implies that the brand is
widely exposed through mass media. Supreme knows how to boost their popularity
in this generation where youth mostly spent their time on their electronics.
The marketing strategy of Supreme plays the role of growing more materialistic
teenager. There’s no mass production for every Supreme garment and having only
limited quantities of their products, Supreme products are so exclusive and
rare. The huge demand for the products makes teenagers start to queue up
overnight in front of the store before the release date in order to get some
items. Lines snaked around the block around the store by teenagers ready to
spend all their savings on the clothing and make profits from it by reselling
them to those who didn’t get anything from the releases. With teenagers so
obsessed with the brand, they are willing to pay the extra amount of money to
fulfil their desire. This determines that the flourishing second market of
Supreme products also contributes to promoting materialism in the youth
generation. Violence and crime occur when some people didn’t get anything from
the releases, they decided to rob or steal from others. This pushes the company
to increase the security at the store and ensure there are no riots happening
when the youthful crowd are lining up.
Supreme
also reaches out several brands to have a collaboration to get exposed more to
all age groups. A further instance of this is, the collaboration of Supreme and
Louis Vuitton is the most controversial and most prominent collaboration done
by Supreme to date. Able to collaborate with the biggest luxury label in the
world, Supreme has become well-known among the older generation too. It breaks
the barrier between streetwear fashion and high luxury fashion. The
collaboration is a great opportunity for Louis Vuitton to get exposed to the
streetwear scene and able to up its cool factor among the youth culture.
Technically, the blends between streetwear and luxury brands exist in this
collaboration, providing teenagers with the satisfaction of owning luxury and
cultural element in it. To support this statement, Juliet B. Schor explains
that the brand teenagers want aren’t just any brands. Instead, they crave
luxury brands and high-end items. To point to evidence, parents and buyers
reported a change as girls aged six to ten became more label conscious. With
the amount of youth surrounding the crowds in the queue on other streetwear
stores such as Bape and Palace Skateboards, it can be seen that Juliet B.
Schor’s statement is true.
In
conclusion, streetwear culture has been for ages and it evolves in a unique
way. By now when you’re reading this, the definition of streetwear today might
not be the same one tomorrow. The brand is able to grow exponentially are due
to the consumption behaviour of the teenagers who are bonded to a specific
brand. Knowing this, in order to make more profits from the teenager high
consumption behaviour, the brand continues to make products to expand the
culture and appeal the teenager to follow the brand. The portrayal of celebrities
in the streetwear brand amplifies the influences of the culture and with this,
the underground subcultures are now easily accessible to the public.
The
modern teenagers are essentially taught to treat money and consumption as the
way to live a lavish life. In order to understand how materialism was
introduced to a teenager, we need to start by observing the basics of
psychology and behaviour of a human behaviour. The patterns in consumer buying
behaviour can be identified when we understood the human behaviour. It seems
that the patterns are highly influenced by one’s motivation. Thus, the
marketers take advantages of this factor to and infuse it into their
advertising campaign. The marketers know how to motivate and create an urgency
to persuade the teenagers. The emotion felt by a teenager when checking out
products are the main causes of what they will buy. Teenagers somehow are
emotionally attached and obsessed with a product as if all these products have
certain personalities that are conveyed through visual and image. The fact that
marketers stated that emotions do drive up their sales, the marketers then
invest in creative and persuasive advertisement campaign in a way to evoke the
emotions of a teenager. To point an evidence, teenagers do have a choice to
purchase an identical item that is cheaper and still work the same way.
However, they rather choose to purchase the item with a brand that has a
personality that ‘communicates’ to them, relating to their emotion with
decision making. Thus, it is never about a good decision when it comes to
deciding which item to get, rather, it is about how the teenagers feel about
what they see, touch and smell that decides what they buy. It clearly means
that the emotions of teenagers contribute materialism and buying powers into
their consumption habit.
The
pressure of being cool has been around for decades. The definition of cool is
always hard to pin down because the today’s cool might not be cool tomorrow.
The trend of cool is constantly changing from a different aspect. Cool cats and
hipsters were the cool categories back in the fifties. In those days, the teen
defines cool by many acceptable personal styles. The definition of cool has
been fitted into the modern era. Cool is defined as something every product is
trying to be and what every teenager needs to have to fit into the streetwear
society. The marketing strategy of defining cool as the key to social success
has elevated the teenagers’ level of materialism. A report has been done by
branding expert Martin Lindstrom stating that the attraction of the brands has
taken over the functionality of the product of the brand. Teenagers often spend
so much more money on purchasing a more luxury brand because owning an
expensive item is the theme of cool.
In the
book Born to Buy by Juliet B. Schor, she stated that the teenager in this
generation demands particular brands when they’re asked. The brand-conscious
behaviour in this generation of teenagers is what encourages materialism to an
individual. Teenagers want to be socially accepted in the cool peers to feel
superior in popularity and determine who belongs in the cool category. Being so
concerned about their appearance, teenagers are bonded to a specific brand as
they have a clear preference for them and they know which brands are recognized
as the ‘cool brands’ in the culture. In order to stay feel superior in the
culture, the teenager then starts to covet and pay attention to the advertisement
of a brand. As a result, brand starts to portray superiority in the marketing
industry, it basically conveys the idea of having something that others do not
is cool. It can be seen that this is true. To give an example, relating back to
the exclusivity and flourishing second market of Supreme clothing, teenagers
willing to spend the extra money to purchase the exclusive item so that they
own something that the others do not, thus it makes them feel superior.
Streetwear
fashion brand and social media shares a very extraordinary bond. They both
depend on each other to able to reach out the consumer. The enormous number of
consumers using social media is impossible to be exactly listed. For example,
Instagram tends to have more users in the age group of the youth. It turns out
that social media play a very big role in manipulating a teenagers behaviour in
consumerism. The key of why teenager turns to social media is to seek the
latest information on a brand. By this, they get a recommendation on a
potential purchase. Teenagers are widely influenced by social media when
deciding which item they should buy. The word ‘hype’, which is used to define a
high demand clothing are what drives a teenager to spend more time on social
media to look for the product they want. This is because the purchase decision
of everyone on social media is influenced by the fashion blogs and fashionista.
In the streetwear fashion culture language, a fashionista who collects hype
products is called as an ‘hypebeast’. Teenagers often look up on them through
social media for inspiration on several product categories such as apparel and
accessories. This is one of the factors that increase the demand of a specific
clothing. Relating social media and fashion, the teenagers are classified as
fashion followers, which is known as those who go for a specific fashion trend.
The youth don’t have the luxurious time and money to spend on fashion pursuits,
which draw them to feel insecure about their fashion taste. Therefore, the
majority of the youth look up to fashion influencer in the social media to
imitate the trend they are setting. Teenager do this because by owning a piece
of clothing that is widely trending and exposed in the social media, the
teenager feels great for getting all the attention and keeping up with the pace
in the streetwear culture.
The mass
media can be classified as the most significant platform for young modern
teenagers to portray their lifestyles in an individualized perspective of view.
Mass media has always been emphasizing the concept of youth representing a
meaningful and influential phase in a person’s life actively. However, the
appearance of youth as a symbol and victim as well as threat to the society
contradicted the media action. Boëthius
stated that popular culture portrayed in the media has always been a threat to
the teenagers and the threat has been expressed very clearly through a process
which the media overemphasize the criminal behaviour of young teenagers for its
own good, called as ‘moral panics’. Osgerby (1998b) argues that the economic
boost of the 1980s teenagers were rarely symbolized as an icon of ‘consumer
empowerment’ when there’s a statement pointing out that the teenager’s use of
the media is encouraging their consumer lifestyle.
The
marketers of a brand are always implying the message that wealth and aspiration
to wealth are cool. This sparks the urge in a teenager to keep possessing more
item in order to fulfil their materialism and increases consumerism at the same
time. On what stated at Chapter 1.2, we can conclude that discount and low
prices are not the crux of attracting customers as well as to boost the sales.
The marketers are influencing the attitudes of consumer through design. The
function of attitudes, a theory developed by psychologist Daniel Katz, explains
to us the four classifications of what attitudes served us are utilitarian,
value-expressive, ego-defensive and knowledge. Utilitarian function of attitude
helps us to focus on a product benefits by reaching our goals. Marketers work
to change our buying attitudes with problem-solving capabilities of their products
with the utilitarian function. The value-expressive function, which is been
practiced by the teenagers in the streetwear culture, means that we are
expressing our personality and image through the products we buy and wear. The
function of value-expressive attitude has been widely used by the marketers by
assuring a more lavish and happy life when you own their products, whether its
accessories, cosmetics or clothing. The ego-defensive function, an attitude we
formed to protect us from anxieties from being judged. The concern about our
look motivates us to pay attention to our grooming and use products to impress
the public. Lastly, the knowledge function of attitudes aids us to order the
information we encounter. The new products proclaimed by marketing information
reaches us through every direction of media, including the magazine, the Web,
billboards and television. Due to the different individual way of
differentiating our values and what is important to us, the way we use our
attitudes functions are different from the others. Marketers are aware of these
and have reach out to us in various ways. There are several influences that
contribute to how we shape our attitudes like our own personality, the
experience we had, family and friends. A human personality is the psychological
characteristics of a person that routinely influence the way people respond to
their surroundings. The personal characteristics are what makes us unique and
different from others. Some of the characteristics are known as extroverts or
introverts, passive or active, leaders or followers are part of our own
personality. To support this statement that relates to my research, when
teenagers is considering a new fashion look, the one who is more of a follower
than a leader often will wait until they see others wearing the style before
they will wear it. Thus, the very own individual characteristics of each
individual influences the person’s decisions and resulting behaviour. Our
personal experience with a product also influence the kinds of attitudes we
shape. For example, a consumer always looks for the same brand again when we
experienced a great success with a certain brand. We gather information to help
us to gain experience at the same time. The media bombarded us with multiple marketing
messages to persuade us to purchase a product so we don’t really have to look
for it. The role of family and friends also affects our attitudes. In the case
of family, we are mostly influenced when we are young due to them being the
dominant figure in our lives as children. A child would tend to follow their
family decisions because they are still not exposed to the other influences.
When we talk other influences, the common one will be friends. Friends and
peers are the main influence of our attitude formation from childhood onwards.
Peers often have similar attitude towards something such as fashion, games,
food and entertainment. The influences of teenagers towards each other are
probably the most critical one. To relate my research to this statement, the
teenager in the streetwear culture often compare themselves among their peers
with their clothing apparels, their expensive items. This influences the
desperation of an individual to get what their peers have; thus it promotes
materialism in the youth.
Although
streetwear culture is not that popular in the older days, we can’t conclude
that today’s streetwear culture is the same as the previous one. The progress
of their culture is growing rapidly and new trends keep appearing every day.
The popular brand like Supreme always continue to come up with new relevant
streetwear products to persuade the youth to keep buying their product, thus
most of the youth are loyal to the brand. Brand like Supreme could always
produce more quantity of their high demand products but in order to maintain
the exclusivity of their product and always stay relevant in the culture, the
brand remains their old ways of business thus increasing the number of
resellers in the culture and this encourages teenager to spend extra money from
retail price to own the piece they want. The materialistic teenager’s
behaviours and attitude cultivated by the marketing strategy by the streetwear
brands are the reason why the culture is able to grow and last for so long. The
behaviour continues to amplify and will eventually be exposed to the future
youth generation through the same method, which is the mass media and social
influences. The advertising campaign by a brand does play a part in developing
the materialistic youth in the streetwear culture, either through print
materials or in the digital world. The portrayal of youth by the mass media
encourages the marketers to promote their brand in a way that youth will pay
more attention to them for their own good.
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