Skater Fashion from Skate Parts Around the World !
It’s no secret that skateboarding is one the fashion world’s favorite subcultures. Even beyond the numerous streetwear brands that originated as skate brands (Supreme, Palace, Fucking Awesome, Stussy, and so on), the style and imagination of skaters has long occupied real estate on the cat-walk for luxury fashion brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Hermes. In my own personal fashion, one of my biggest sources of fashion inspiration is watching the skate parts that skaters release (skate parts are trick montage videos) — these videos are filled to the brim with various styles and outfits that I love to steal.
With that, here are three of my favorite skate parts from around the world; hopefully the styles and fashion displayed in them can be of some inspiration to you!
RATZ RATZ: MILANO
Milano is one of Italy’s most globalized cities. Their latest international import: skate culture. This skate part comes from the RATZ RATZ crew, a group of up and coming young skateboarders who spend the whole video tearing up the Milano Centrale train station with trick after trick. The team are the faces of Italy's quickly developing skate scene, and their style is one that draws heavily on streetwear’s early 2000s skater roots.
Milano is the epicenter of Italian luxury fashion and home to some of the biggest luxury brands in the world — it’s no surprise, then, that the skaters in Milan have gravitated towards the highest end brand skatewear has to offer: Supreme. The group draws from a diverse pool of Supreme pieces for their fits: some of the Supreme pieces worn include graphic tees (0:38), hoodies (10:46), jackets (1:24), beanies (4:09), the iconic box logos (4:13) — and even underwear (0:43).
Supreme is a brand that has been all but extricated from the skate culture from which it came. Hypebeast and price-gouging resale culture has made Supreme an incredibly saturated brand in the streetwear world, so much so that many skaters have tended to stray away from it because it might seem overplayed or cliche. Seeing these Milano skaters’ reclaim the brand for their own version of Italian skate wear style and return it to its original source is a welcoming sight: it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone make a Supreme box logo tee look not only not corny, but in fact hard.
Whilst these Milano skaters’ adoption of Supreme is in keeping with the Italian penchant for luxury wear, the rest of their style rejects typical Italian fashion conventions. Italian fashion is known for form-fitting cuts and sharp, slimmer pants; the RATZ RATZ crew eschew this, opting instead for tops with oversized cuts, baggy jeans and bulky skate shoes (some of the retro Dunk colorways that make appearances in this part, like the ACG Terra Dunks at 1:43, are absolute heat). It’s fitting – flaunting norms is what skate culture is all about.
PACCBET: RUSSIA
Russian skate brand Paccbet (pronounced RASSVET) is the offspring of storied Russian streetwear designer Gosha Rubchinskiy. Rubchinskiy’s work for his namesake brand, Gosha Rubchinskiy, is centered around Cold War aesthetics and what it means to be young and Russian in a Post-Soviet world. The clothing line got their start thanks to help in production by COMME Des GARÇONS President Adrian Joffe, and after a slew of successful collaborations with Adidas, Reebok, Burberry, and Fila that put Rubchinskiy’s brand in the forefront of the streetwear scene, Rubchinskiy decided he wanted to broaden his horizons and create his own new skatewear brand.
Rubchinskiy went with the brand name Paccbet — meaning ‘Sunrise’ in Russian — to signify both the “sunrise” of Russia’s new generation of skateboarders and the “sunrise” of Russia’s first Post-Soviet generations. The skate part, "ЛУЧИ PACCBET WORLDWIDE", is a product of the skate team that Rubchinskiy has sponsored in order to go along with his brand. As can be seen in the video, what primarily distinguishes Russian skater fashion from the rest of the world is their pant selection. Whereas most of the skater world likes to rock baggy jeans and loose-fitting cuts, these Russian skaters opt instead for cropped pants that sit above the ankles and allow their socks underneath to show.
These cropped pants are then paired with either some variation of Vans (the Checkerboard low-top Vans [like @ 1:09] in particular, make for quite a pleasing pairing with the cropped light wash jeans) or, a silhouette which is quite unique to the Russian skate scene, High-Top Converse (5:37 - 7:25). On top, the Russian skaters sport tucked in sport graphic tees (in the case of this video – almost all PACCBET designs), button-up shirts, and beanies. It is an extremely distinct regional style – the Russian skaters are completely in a lane of their own.
FRANK VILLANY’S “ONE BIG MESS” (THRASHER): AMERICA
Pro skater Frank Villany’s “One Big Mess” skate part for Thrasher Magazine opens with Villany skating through an abandoned water park — the faded out pastels of which make the colorful paint on his upcycled jeans pop. The part sticks out because, in my eyes, it serves as a comprehensive example of the quintessential modern American skater style.
Villany is signed to a brand partnership deal with Dickies, and so, not surprisingly, in this skate part he rocks almost exclusively Dickies. Workwear brands like Dickies and Carhartt have become the staples of American skatewear culture – their low cost and thick, durable material makes them perfect for the shredding and repeated falling that skateboarding requires, plus the “authenticity” aesthetic of these workwear brands has natural synergy with skate culture. Skaters’ proclivity for these workwear brands have caught on to wider audiences, and Dickies and Carharrts have become some of the most popular pant brands in mens streetwear (although I do feel it’s important to note that workwear in skater fashion has its roots in Venice Beach when skaters there took it from Chicano culture / LA rappers).
For shoes, Villany wears New Balance’s “Numerics.” New Balance has been a comparatively new player in the skate shoe game, having initially released their first skate shoe in 2013, but they have quickly become the most upstart challenger to America’s current skate shoe brand hierarchy. Three or four years ago, you’d be hard pressed to find a skater that wears New Balances — these days, with New Balance having inked brand deals with pro skaters like Jamie Foy and Villani among others, they’re one of the most highly visible brands in the skate shoe landscape.
In particular, though, my favorite aspect of Villany’s style is his hair. It’s long, shaggy, and almost always sprouting out of the back of a cap or a beanie (like at 1:53). It’s the infamous skater “flow” – a style of taking pride in unkemptness and dishevelment that is unmistakably American.
