What is Streetwear?

Given this weekend we have just had I think it is undeniable to say that spring is here. I woke up this morning to the birds chirping outside! I haven’t heard birds chirping outside my window of third floor supplemental since last August! With warmer weather comes a change of style, shorts are brought out, shades turn to pastels, layering no longer becomes a necessity. I could indeed write about the topic of fashion in warmer weather but I have already done a blog post about spring fashion so instead I will try and explain to you a kind of clothing that is called streetwear. Mainly because as our blogging weeks come to a close I am running out of ideas and streetwear is the fashion I feel most strongly about.

I was surprised to find that the word streetwear actually is defined on Wikipedia. But then again it is Wikipedia and anyone can post via the internet there. Wikipedia has it defined as “a distinctive style of street fashion. Rooted in West Coast surf and skate culture, it has grown to encompass elements of hip hop fashion, Japanese street fashion, and modern Haute culture fashion.” I would say that this definition is pretty spot on even though streetwear is constantly evolving because it is based on current popular culture and what is coming from the streets. Streetwear is clothing made for casual wear in urban environments although there are some celebs like Pharrell Williams and Kanye West who go so far as to wear it on the red carpet. To express my photos this week I have chosen a model who is not only highly attractive but who has deep streetwear roots and has modeled for some of the biggest brands out there.

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Many times streetwear will be easy to identify. Streetwear pieces often feature bold graphic prints containing the companies logo or name plastered somewhere on the shirt, hat, jeans etc. Even though streetwear is all about power to the people and freedom of expression streetwear does come at a price. It may cost you a hefty sum to buy that new jacket that Supreme dropped or in this most recent case pair of shoes (Nike Supreme Foamposites which sold out in 10 seconds and are now being resold for around $700.)

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Streetwear is a hard topic to write about because it is so broad. Most fashion blogs like Hypebeast and Highsnobiety cover it merely by keeping up with current collections, looks, and projects being done by big name streetwear companies like Supreme, Stussy, and Bape. I could have taken that route and showed you upcoming collections every week and what limited edition pieces would be dropping soon but instead I took a more personal approach. With this blog and through my photos and writing I tried to give you all insight into the fashion that I know and love and I hope you have all enjoyed.

Sneaker Events

Many of you are probably unaware but in the world of sneakers there are giant conventions which are held for shoeheads to buy, trade, sell, and interact with others who are just as involved in the sneaker culture as they are. With this past weekend being SneakerCon DC and Sneaker Social at Gillette Stadium in Boston, I will be writing about these events and talking about my personal experiences attending them.

I remember my first sneaker event like it was yesterday. It was back in 2011 at the end of the school year. I took the train into DC with two of my friends who also happened to be shoeheads at the time. We got off at Union Station and walked about 15 minutes to the Atlas, a medium sized performing arts center, in NorthWest DC. As we approached the venue there was a line around the block. You could tell what the line was for by looking down at everyone’s feet. There were Air Jordan’s, Nike SB’s, Yeezy’s, running shoes, the list goes on and on. Any type of shoe you could imagine, someone was wearing it. I specifically remember it starting to drizzle while we were waiting in line. Other shoeheads were not very happy about this as who likes to get their nice clean shoes wet with dirty rain water? Although I wasn’t wearing any suede or nubuck shoes that day and didn’t mind much. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the front of the line and once we did we payed our $15 fee and were in.

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Walking in felt incredible. The lobby of the Atlas led us down a wide hallway and into a large set of double doors which revealed a large flat open space that was packed with people. It was like being a kid in a candy store, there were shoes everywhere. There was a giant Adidas sneaker in the center of the room for people to autograph since Adidas was sponsoring the event. Tables were set up all around the perimeter of the room for the big vendors to sell their shoes at. You have to pay extra for a table, about $100, to have the luxury of not standing the whole event and so you can better display your shoes for sale. The floor area was very crowded with people holding their shoes in the air to try and catch the eye of someone who would want to buy them. It was like a giant open air market. People were talking all around me, discussing new releases and bargaining for better prices on the shoes they were trying to buy. I opened my backpack and took out my camera and started taking photos of everything. I walked around looking for shoes I recognized and went up to people asking price, size, condition, etc. searching for a pair I might want to purchase. Usually at these sneaker events is where you find amazing deals. There are stories of kids walking in with $200 and leaving six hours later with $1000 worth of shoes just from playing their cards right by making good buys, trades, and sales with their original $200.

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My friends and I stayed for about two and a half hours before our feet started to hurt from standing for so long. By the end of the event I had bought two pairs of shoes and sold one. I had more fun being there than actually purchasing the kicks. I have attended two other sneaker events since then and will hopefully to continue to go and support the sneaker culture, community, and economy. It is quite the experience and even if you are not as into shoes as I may be, I recommend anyone to attend and maybe learn a little more about a hobby that they could possibly be apart of.

Recommendation Report Stance

Going into group discussion my mind was set on an exploration approach to GenEds. I have had great experience with my GenEds first semester and enjoyed the thought of being able to choose to take classes that actually seemed interesting to the student. The other two approaches seemed unnecessary and unappealing to me. The themes approach seemed too specific to one single topic, thus defeating the person of GenEds all together in my opinion, and the skills approach too bland, we have been forced to focus on the main skills (reading, writing and math) throughout our whole educational careers so why would we want  to do that in college while we actually have some freedom of what we can learn about?

Coming out of group discussion I had the same opinions for the most part, with the realization that skills are necessary to a healthy education and future in the job world so should be included somewhat in the GenEd curriculum. I learned that for the most part my classmates felt the same way as I did. They all have had good experiences with Gen Eds and believe that exploration is the most important part of the GenEd process. Everyone agreed that the themes approach was too limited to one subject and didn’t make much sense. What really helped shape my opinion was our discussion of the skills option. My group talked about how basic knowledge is good because it’s applicable to many careers and how within the broad category of skills there can be many different types of skills classes one could take. For example not just a skills class tailored to reading, writing or math. A skills class about finance and taxes would help college students learn about a real world task in a classroom setting, preparing them for the future. Skills classes could also be very broad like science or specific and connected to your major for example psych students need to know how to talk to people and might want to take a public speaking course or one that helps them learn to feel more comfortable talking with others. The more my group talked about the skills option the more it seemed necessary to include it in the GenEd curriculum at some level. What I will be proposing in my recommendation report is an option based primarily off of exploration (60%) with a good amount of skills based classes included (40%) to help prepare students for the real world and life after college.

GenEd Comment

I agree with the statement above that “students’ perspectives and expectations of General Education come from their experiences” as this statement can apply to almost any subject matter. Taking GenEd classes as a freshmen I had no idea what to expect of GenEd classes and no idea which ones were said to be easy or difficult. I instead chose the GenEd classes that I thought would be interesting to me. It is inevitable that there will be easier classes than others but I believe the point of GenEds is for the experience not the credits and if the teacher cares about what they are teaching, the rigor will follow. For the students who actually want to explore different subjects outside of their major Gen.Eds are the perfect way to do so. Out of the two GenEds I took freshmen year both were plenty rigorous involving going to every single class and work outside of class about every other day. However it is a problem that these “Easy A” classes do still exist in the GenEd curriculum. For the lazy students who do only want the credit they will take the easy classes and this is not fair for the rest of us. My personal opinion is that rigor stems from the teacher wanting to teach the class and therefore teach the students. The material of any course can be rigorous subject to the fact that the professor makes it that way.

Notes Option 3: Skills

Basic knowledge is good, applicable to many careers

Necessary to know how to read and write (better than theme idea)

Badges are weird? Just another thing, no point

Taking more skills based classes is a nice break from other classes

Finance/taxes class would be nice

As well as speaking to learn how to perform well in job interview/public speaking event

Con: students only worried about checking off requirements but you are still taking the class and going to learn regardless

Few more skills classes would be nice but exploration is still very necessary

Digital communication class important in society, technology constantly growing and should be tailored towards building up online presence

No expert teachers available to teach the classes

More exploratory classes (Gen Eds) may have to be cut for the skills classes to be available

Group consensus: Exploration. Compromise between exploration and skills would be best thing, 50% exploration, 50% skills no theme!

Money classes will help a lot for the future. Learn how to do taxes, loans, accounting, stock market

Skill classes that are specific or exploratory skill classes?

Everyone required to take Gen Eds even returning students who are grown ups

Main skill course: Public speaking, money, writing

Need broad skills and specific skills that are tailored to your major. Ex: Psych major needs to know how to talk to people

Badges are optional, don’t see what benefit of badges are, people will only do them if incentives are given out

Personal Stake

I believe that Gen Ed’s are very important in our development as a student and person in college. They allow us to take classes that we might not have ever considered taking before. This gives us the opportunity to explore new fields and help shape our future academic career.

Last semester I took both an architecture course and a immigration course, I am a psych major. When I told people I was taking these classes they asked me why and my answer was because that is just what I signed up for out of the given Gen Ed options. It turned out that I loved both of these courses, my immigration class taught me how to write a real research paper and architecture class showed me there is much more to a building. The classes showed me that there is more to college than just learning about your specific field and there are many more interesting fields to be studied. Gen Ed’s help one find out what they enjoy and maybe what they want to learn more about in the future.

Passion Blog

This week’s topic will be on the subject of the hypebeast. Hypebeast is a made up word used to describe a person who buys something not for it’s aesthetic qualities and personal liking but for the hype that surrounds the item being purchased. As defined by urban dictionary a hypebeast is “a kid that collects clothing, shoes, and accessories for the sole purpose of impressing others. Although the individual may not have a dime to their name they like to front like they are making far more then everybody else. Equipped with mommies credit card the Hype Beast will try his hardest to make sure he has every pair of Nike’s he saw Jay-Z wearing on 106 & Park.” I will now begin to discuss this terminology and the concepts surrounding it.

On about any clothing or shoe forum I have ever been on this word pops up all over the place. It is used as an insult to anyone who is thought to have bought something only for the hype that surrounds it. Basically someone who follows a trend or style only to fit in or be cool, not because they actually believe in it.Like any other offensive word it is easy to throw around. If you see someone wearing the newest Jordan’s that were released last Friday and you’re upset you didn’t have time to camp out all night to buy them you may say something along the lines of, “Joe doesn’t deserve those, he’s just a hypebeast.”

I have always had trouble grasping this word because the whole sneaker movement is based upon getting and giving props to your fellow sneaker heads for their newest kicks. Who knows if someone really likes them? The fact is that we are all influenced by hype in some way or another. Being a psych major I have learned and studied a lot about social conformity and the truth is that it is hard to go against the norm. It is much easier to buy and like a piece of clothing or pair of shoes that everyone else likes as well. That being said, I do have a mental picture of the classic representation of a hypebeast in my head and maybe the pictures below will help you understand more of what I am talking about.

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For those of you who have never heard this word before you probably think it is pretty ridiculous and I’ll admit it someone is. But for someone who is into fashion and collecting clothes, being called a hypebeast comes as the highest insult. Ironically enough the most popular fashion blog on the web is called hypebeast.com (it really is a great blog) and they are doing perfectly fine with that name as their website.

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Passion Blog Week 6

In honor of my roommate bringing back to school with him the most easter, multi-colored, seersucker, short shorts I have ever seen, this week I will be talking about spring wear. Although coming back to State College and having it be 20 degrees, this post seems a bit premature.

We are halfway through March and it still is not particularly warm. As spring creeps closer and closer it is time to put away those heavy coats and switch over to sweatshirts and light jackets. I still suggest to layer even in the springtime. It is ok to wear a cardigan or light jacket over a long sleeve t-shirt or sweater. It is spring but it is not so hot that one will overheat with a few layers.

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With Spring comes Spring colors. Unfortunately it does not always fit with the environment to wear shades of black and gray year round. Spring is where the pastels come out. Light blues, greens, oranges, maybe even…. yellows. Play around with different colors, although it is ok to wear jeans year round a nicely colored pair of shorts can either make or break an outfit. For shoes I would go with some type of sneaker, again colors will work well with the brightly colored trees surrounding you.

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With the coming of Spring also comes Spring collections. A few well noted brands  I check out every year include the much anticipated Surpreme Spring/Summer collection as well as Stussy’s spring collection.

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Please do not forget that it is ok to mix and match brands and designers. Just because you have a vineyard vines shirt on does not mean you need to be wearing pastel shorts and boat shoes. Play around with different clothes you own to find your personal style. Remember to focus on your outfit as a whole and not just individual pieces, find a comfortable look that you are happy with.

Paper 3 Outline

I so far have come up with various ideas for my Paper 3. If I were to take the route of having to choose a topic about Penn State I would go ahead and argue on why there should be no limit to the number of A’s an english teacher can give to her class. This argument directly affects us students as we are all currently in English 15 and it would be interesting to argue our point.

Second I could rhetorically analyze a satiric work. I enjoy the Colbert Report a lot and found his interview with Caitlin Flanagan about fraternities to be hysterical.

Finally I could write about an article I read in the onion while doing our March 7 assignment. I have been reading all of the articles in the Washington Post relating to the disappearance of flight 730 and I found it very surprising that The Onion was willing to try and bring humor to such a situation. Although after reading The Onion’s article they did a great job of bringing to light the point that no one has any clue what actually happened to the plane.

March 7 Satire Assignment

http://www.theonion.com/articles/malaysian-airlines-expands-investigation-to-includ,35524/

This article written by the onion is using satire to show how little has been accomplished in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The title of the article states that the search area will be widened to also include time and space. This is obviously impossible, but the article is provoking the thought that the search for the vanished Boeing 777 has not been going so well. The location where ships and helicopters have been searching for the plane has been changed many times due to the lack of solid information on where exactly the plane ended up. The article also comments on the fact that no experts know exactly what happened to the plane. In the first paragraph, the article lists a number of proposed reasons of what really happened to the plane and then finally lists the illogical one they came up with, “representatives from the Kuala Lumpur–based carrier acknowledged they had widened their investigation into the vanished Boeing 777 aircraft today to encompass not only the possibilities of mechanical failure, pilot error, terrorist activity, or a botched hijacking, but also the overarching scope of space, time, and humankind’s place in the universe.” The article successfully uses satire to try and evoke an angry response from the reader at these so called search efforts. There were 239 passengers aboard the flight when it disappeared and that is 239 families wondering where their loved ones are.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/433407/march-03-2014/caitlin-flanagan

In the video clip above Stephen Colbert is interviewing writer Caitlin Flanagan who recently wrote an article titled “The Fraternity Problem”. Colbert was in a fraternity himself and uses satire and sarcasm to disassemble Flanagan’s argument on why fraternities are bad.

Colbert starts out by asking Flanagan questions about why she thinks fraternities are so horrible and then says the worst thing he did while pledging was “pass a grease 45 record from ass-cheek to ass-cheek”. This is something that most people would consider horrible hazing but the tone that Colbert says it in makes it seem funny and not that big of a deal at all. Colbert then uses logos and statistics that 85% of fortune 500 company owners and Supreme Court Justice’s were fraternity members. For his grand finale Colbert forces Flanagan to drink a cup of beer with him that came from a mini keg that was on the set. This is poking fun of the fact that Flanagan said one of the bad things about fraternities was the “violent hazing”. By jokingly having her chug a cup of cold beer with him Colbert is showing that it is all in good fun and fraternities cannot possibly be a problem in any way.

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I read “A modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift back in high. While reading it I was shocked and really had no idea what Swift was trying to say. The concept of eating babies is a little gross to imagine in your head, don’t you think? Through this obscure and illogical idea, Swift creates a satire that serves to criticize the current state of Ireland at the time and the people living in it.

Swift uses the appalling thought of proposing to consume babies to bring up discussion of the horrors in Irish society. Swift uses his satire to shift blame towards many people including not only the wealthy and the English but also the Irish themselves. He shocks the reader in a way that makes them think critically about the policies currently in place in Ireland.

Swift does a very good job of using such an extreme and horrible idea to his advantage, and successfully get his point across.