Street style has been around for over 70 years and has only risen in the ranks of fashion royalty in recent years. With the invention of denim by Jacob W. Davis in 1873, this strictly utilitarian fashion choice became ubiquitous with a casual, relaxed, and cool lifestyle. Luxury Next Season — a fashion stop inspired by the stylish trendsetter, brings you the history of street style and how it has become the unstoppable force it is today.
The Evolution of Street Style
Street style became a phenomenon in the early 20th century, when high culture gave way to popular culture and democratized aesthetics and fashion. This massive cultural shift accepted that food, music, art, and fashion were not only influenced by the upper classes, but the low and middle class as well. A desire to regain agency, identity, and power through the visual symbol of fashion marked the beginning of street style. For a long time, Luxury Next Season explains, high fashion was largely uninfluenced by the rise of styles and fabrics that had distinct working or lower-class roots and connotations. This was, of course, until denim came along.
Introduction of Denim
Denim was turned into a working-class symbol by giants Levi Strauss & Co. in 1873, who saw a major sales boom after they crafted posters showing denim-clad cowboys kissing cowgirls. In a country that was often riven by culture wars, jeans crossed lines of ideology, class, gender, and race. Since the Second World War, when soldiers and sailors took blue jeans to Europe and Asia, denim has carried ideas surrounding American liberty around the world — and was even banned in the Soviet Union for its association. This symbol of American fashion began to take on new materials and styles and can contemporarily be thought of as ‘street style’.
Style and Self- Identity
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