The Gully Vibe         

                                      
Every time someone says the word fashion, the most prominent luxury brands
come to mind and various new trends. The fashion industry has been growing
immensely in the past decade. This year fashion brands have suffered a lot due to the
pandemic. Even though various brands are on the verge of bankruptcy and put up with
an enormous amount of losses, there is no stopping the creative flow. Numerous
designers have accepted the situation and made the best possible use of it. High Fashion
brand’s chic and luxurious couture has taken a back seat and let streetwear lead the
way. 
Designers have adapted to this new trend of street-level clothing. Many celebrities
are spotted sporting such outfits regularly. Fashion is intriguing to young people and
also influenced by them, mainly streetwear. Streetstyle was first seen in the early 2000s.
The pandemic allowed designers to resurface this old style with a twist. Streetwear is a
style statement yet casual and comfortable. It includes a lot of Baggy hoodies and T-
shirts, a lot of graphics and logos. This style is inspired by hip hop, skateboarding,
Japanese street fashion and social media. Initially, streetwear was a mix of casual wear
like t-shirts, baseball caps, jeans and sneakers. Now luxurious high fashion brands like
Gucci, Burberry and Hobie have adopted this style in their new collections and given it a
whole new meaning. This popular style is the way to connect with the younger audience.
Streetwear designer Heron Preston shared his notion of this style. It signifies having a
fun, specific vibe, in music and fashion, which is remixing words, culture, brands, and
coming up with our language.    
  The designers have also included masks that go with the outfits keeping the
pandemic in mind. The Street style face mask market is flourishing. Streetwear
designers came up with stylish masks for people to wear them and still maintain their
style. These masks have mostly been popular in Asian streetwear markets. Now, more
global merchandise appears to be forming. Chinese street fashion became more popular
because of the tik tok trend even though Japanese Street Fashion gave rise to this style.
These videos were seen after street style came into fashion. Chinese street style fashion
took over tik tok. This brought in a lot of attention from fashion enthusiasts all over the
world. 
Fashion being a substantial contributor to pollution and climate change, there are
a few brands that care about the environment as they care about being in style. Fashion
should be redefined into sustainable fashion with what is going on. From the
exploitation of workers to land and water pollution, all should be taken into
consideration by luxurious brands and switch to a healthier approach. Sustainable
streetwear brands are HoMie, Veja, Noah, sustainable and vegan brands like EBYAK,
Basti Basti, Stella McCartney, etc. Such brands should get more attention from all types
of consumers and help them grow.
Fresh off the Rails is a 5-day fashion week for streetwear-street style celebrating
the culture and creativity of Streetstyle fashion. In this current scenario,  Fresh Off The
Rails partnered with Fashion Week Online for its third season. The development of
technology made this impossible task possible. This year it was in the heart of
downtown Houston near the METRO rails. Designers, bloggers and influences from all
over the world can share their vision. This fashion week allows domestic as well as
international designers, photographers, models, etc. a chance to showcase their
brilliance. Fresh off The Rails has become a global platform for established streetwear
brands and new emerging creators.
Streetwear-Streetstyle is growing more than ever. In a survey conducted by
Strategy& and Hypebeast, 76% of the 763 from the fashion and retail industries said
they thought streetwear would continue to grow in the next five years. Streetwear
resurfaced after almost ten years but this time it will never go out of style.

Srushti Nimbalkar
TYBMM Journalism