What Even Is Women’s
Street-
wear ???
From word of mouth to scrolling on Instagram, women’s streetwear has grown into an enormous movement. But now that everyday pieces like gold hoops, baby tees, and baggy jeans have become classic, and almost nostalgic, what does women’s streetwear look like in 2024 ?
90s hip hop fashion legends, like April Walker or Misa Hylton, and women’s streetwear designers shaping today’s culture, like Melody Ehsani or Beth Birkett (Bephie), have two things in common.
Their dedication to community and to preservation… And that’s exactly what streetwear is.
Let me explain what I mean —
The designers we now view as legends came to be by shifting the landscape and creating a platform for women of color to be seen, represented, and feel at home in every version of themselves. They created trends by taking pride in their values and their culture, sharing their own version of what femininity looked like.
In the Netflix series Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip Hop, innovators like Missy Elliot, Roxanne Shanté, Kimora Lee Simmons, Lil Kim, Queen Latifah, and many more designers and artists alike are celebrated for inspiring a new conversation in women’s fashion. They set the tone and opened the world to the many versions of empowerment, whether fitted or oversized.
The empowerment women feel when our clothes fit our identity is what makes women’s streetwear unmatched. Whether we recreate an outfit we liked, or design a completely new concept, women’s streetwear reimagines preservation with every outfit.
We create new intersections of identity with every fit.
We represent a new message with every fit.
There are no limits to what being authentic can look like when culture is the blueprint.
Street style in 2024 captures the timeless aura of culture in women’s fashion through the ways in which we recreate essential streetwear pieces. From Aleali May’s Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG Shadow to Raven Tracy’s Basic Tracksuit, we constantly see the inspiration of the original trendsetters recreate themselves in ways that represent the current young identities.
Elevating and expanding the definition of women’s streetwear ultimately sets the tone for how the world views both women and the perspectives their style represents. Whether in a music video, a red carpet appearance, or nowadays a simple Instagram post, women’s streetwear makes space for women to be comfortable simply being themselves.
The evolution of women’s streetwear clothing is nothing, and would be nothing, without the women who bodied it from the 80s to 2024. And the only way to preserve their style and innovation is to continue speaking on their pure brilliance and dedication to representing the culture.
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