4 Essential Tips For Your Street-Wear Wardrobe
While street wear draws its sensibility from a variety of different retro sub-cultures, including skate, surf, and hip hop, it continues to evolve into the modern age. These influences, as well as the persistent drive towards change, can make it difficult to pin down the essentials of a street-wear wardrobe if you're just getting started. So take a look below at four invaluable tips you'll want to keep in mind when you're building a solid foundation for your urban style.
Baggier is Better
One of the fundamental rules of street wear goes against the grain completely: form-fitting clothes are a no-go. While most everybody else is looking to wear skin-tight outfits, street-wear aficionados are hanging loose in shirts and sweaters that are a couple of sizes too big. The key here is to shop for clothes specifically designed with the street wear aesthetic in mind—meaning that while they'll be baggy, they won't be uncomfortably so.
No Shame in Sweatpants
While conventional fashion might dictate you never wear sweatpants outside the home, they're actually a proud staple of street wear. As with shirts and sweaters, bagginess is a plus, but you'll want to keep the cuffs under control by rolling them up above your ankle. Compliment a pair of dark sweatpants with a white shirt and white trainers, and you've got a sharp but casual look that looks great at pretty much any time of the year.
Contrasting Influences
When you've got the basics down, one thing you can start experimenting with is sharply contrasting different styles and influences. For example, a common stylistic element of street wear includes political messages stamped in bold typeface across a number of items. But on the other side of the spectrum, military surplus is also a huge influence. These disparate roots of street wear mean that you can combine all sorts of interesting pieces, such as a baggy camouflage jacket with a shirt that has an striking anarchist aphorism.
Printed Tees Are In
While plain, solid-colored tees are always going to give off a classic vibe, street wear takes pride in the now decades-old fashion culture that embraced printed tees. Many of these shirts come from brands that embrace their roots in the punk and graffiti subcultures, so look for tees with large, bold lettering in various fonts from companies that aren't afraid to call back to the 1980s and '90s.
For more ideas on how to perfect your street-wear style, check out companies like Infinite Society.
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