Sporting a New Look
Eventually, all things merge into one.
Fashions for snowboarders, surfers and skateboarders didn’t have to wait very long--just until last weekend’s Action Sports Retailer Trade Expo in Long Beach. Once divided by geography and gear, the trio of board enthusiasts are uniting in apparel.
Ironically, action sports founded on the celebration of an in-your-face individuality now are starting to dress alike. A skateboarder wants to look like a snowboarder who wants to look like a surfer. And visa versa.
“Styles have melted and blended together,” said Court Overin, sales and marketing director for ASR Trade Expo. “There has been a huge crossover between the three sports.
“If a surfer heads to the mountains to snowboard,” he added, “he still wants people to know he’s from the beach culture. So, often, he’ll choose clothes from the same brand.”
The great unifying force behind these designs, said retailers, is music videos.
One noteworthy example is Ecko Unltd., a New York City streetwear company with hip-hop roots. Ecko Function unveiled a line that features unique, functional snowboarding pants with prints of camouflage and psychedelic splotches.
The feel of the fabric is soft and fuzzy, unusual because snowboarding pants need to be waterproof and rugged. The trick is in the material, tricot, which is basically brushed polyester.
Also, in keeping with the all-into-one theme is the small streetwear label XING of San Diego. The company featured shiny nylon cargo pants with a boxy construction that are snowboard-inspired. But they are also light and unlined--better for all-night raving than all-day snow carving.
It’s not surprising that wandering around the trade expo nearly duplicates the experience of wandering around an MTV video. The cast of shaved-head and belly-pierced characters is there, roaming around the funky fashion booths as such bands as Drill Team, Sneaker Pimps and the Human Waste Project play on and on and on.
In fact, music seemed to be the freshest influence at the Long Beach show, in particular, dance music, which finally made a splash on the charts and in the media in the last year.
Caffeine, a revered underground dance music label from Long Island, N.Y., is in its third year of bringing the beat to its clothing line with basketball-style nylon warmup pants and tank tops, deejay record bags that can double as book bags and flare-bottomed raving pants. The club culture label reported doing $1.5 million in sales last year.
Likewise, Extra Strength DJ Co. of Santa Cruz is also in its third year in the streetwear game. The label, which puts out T-shirts with turntable-inspired graphics and basketball tank tops, as well as functional record bags, record boxes and deejay slip-mats, is in the limelight of dance music culture. One of the deejays it sponsors--San Francisco’s Q-Bert--happens to be a former world champion and the darling of a media that is suddenly discovering the cult of deejay stardom.
As it happens, MTV Sports debuted its first streetwear line at the expo, calling it S-M (a name inspired not by sexual fetishism, but by the convergence of sports and music). The line so far features techno-graphic T-shirts and functional snowboard pants and jackets, but in keeping with all-into-one theme, it will not be limited to the slopes.
Plans for S-M include forays into other so-called extreme sports such as BMX (bicycle motocross), surfing and skateboarding. The line is licensed by MTV Sports to Eurocraft International of New York, which is using the MTV name wisely as more of an endorsement than as a label itself. Prices will range from about $18 for T-shirts to $150 for snowboarding jackets. The line will debut in stores this spring.
Despite the rainy weather over the weekend, trade expo retailers were still able to find the silver lining in the dark clouds. El Nino has bolstered retail orders of surfing- and snowboarding-related equipment.
“There’s an El Nino frenzy that’s driving product sales,” said Overin. “When there’s exciting surf, a lot more boards and wetsuits get sold. Snowboarding is seeing the same thing.”
Snowboarders also caught a publicity break from inclement weather--this time in Japan. With the traditional ski events shut down because of high winds and poor visibility, Olympic viewers were served up a full plate of snowboarding instead. (Snowboarding is making its Winter Olympics debut this year.)
“I don’t know if it will mean extra sales immediately, but it’s a huge plus,” said Peter Johnson, general manager of Rusty Surfboards / Wakeboards in San Diego. “I mean, a billion people are going to see snowboarding, and a lot of them have never even seen it before.”
