Author: Anthony Allman

Anthony Allman, Social Existence

Process Essay

Anthony Allman

ENG

2-18-20

As generations go on, fashion starts to change. Today modern fashion has given birth to a term called “hypebeast” At first it was nothing but small indie companies getting artists to endorse their products, which made companies “Supreme, BAPE, Palace, etc” become bigger. Now, people like ourselves buy them because we see our favorite artist wearing them. Since then the term “hypebeast” has sprung up in popularity and become a common term used among the youth in society. However, a few questions that have been brought up are, “what is really a hypebeast? How do you become one? And ultimately what is the goal?”

To start off, a “Hypebeast” is someone, mainly males, who wear clothes that are in style (streetwear.) Although it is mainly meant for men, women have started to wear it too. While researching the term “resale” has come up often. Companies such as Supreme, Nike etc. come out with products that could be originally in the range of $40-$170, but the catch is that it may never come back and it is hard to get your hands on, which made people start to resell them, but at a much higher rate. Which made these clothing brands much bigger in our generation, because people earn profit and it can be done from the comfort of your home. It has become so intense that people have bought bots which can checkout an item without you doing anything and it is almost guaranteed you will get the product so you can make $400+ on an item that did not cost nearly that much. It may sound easy, but it’s not due to the high volume of people on the site trying to go for the same item that will cost the most. Being a hypebeast or so much as becoming one is not easy.

To become a hypebeast you will have to know a few things. One, when do these brands drop their latest pieces and at what time. Two, what is the best and most efficient way to “secure the bag” and lastly, how to style them or resell them. Usually a brand like Supreme and Palace have a Fall/Spring collection where they drop new items a specific day each week at a certain time. For example, Supreme drops various items at 11am on Thursdays every Fall, then they stop till Spring comes along. The catch however, is that not every piece they drop will go for a high price. Usually an artist will endorse a product which has yet to be released or there will be a product that has been talked about amongst society on social media that is set to come out soon which will be the most wanted item, which makes it that much harder to get because everyone will be going for it. The most stressful part everyone said was that the website always crashes and loses internet connection because of how much traffic is on the site, which leads to you losing out on an opportunity to look trendy, or on profit. It is hard to stay on track of what is up next and how to achieve the end goal.

I became hooked on reselling items after I resold my first Supreme t-shirt and saw how much money I could make on it. My first ever sale was a supreme hoodie and beanie and I sold the hoodie for $600 dollars and I only paid $150 for the hoodie. The beanie was $30 and I sold it for $100. That’s when I realized that this is something I could do full time. I then saved the money I earned for the next season of 2020 spring/summer season. Over the Christmas holiday I made over a thousand dollars off of a total of 4 clothes items. When I saw how many certain items were selling online I wanted to buy more. I will only buy hyped items, so I read comments and polls on Twitter and or Instagram to find the popularity of a certain product. Sometimes items will “Flop” (an item that doesn’t resell for much more than retail), so sometimes we take a loss. To help increase my chances of success, I will list the same items on multiple resale platforms. Sometimes I will ask friends to buy stuff for me. I will also seek out products from labels such as Nike, Adidas to try and get a quick “Flip” and make money when hyped items are not coming out.

The ultimate goal is to have the best pieces that no one can get their hands on and to look or follow the look of your favorite artist that would make you stand out from people who don’t wear such clothing items. The way every hypebeast communicates is through social media and following trends from artists, from different brands and to see what everyone is talking about. At the end of it all, you will have to be able to know what’s next, know what will sell, and know how to even get your hands on a product before someone else. A game plan on how to get the piece you want is necessary, which is where the “bot” comes in. Without it, you only have yourself to rely on. With a bot, it can help you checkout in a millisecond. The ultimate hypebeast will have some sort of game plan that will most of the time contain something along the lines of that.

Conclusively, some takeaways are that becoming a hypebeast is not as easy as just buying clothes and putting an outfit together, second, you can make money off of it, and third if done right you can be creative and impress those around you. It’s more of a lifestyle than a trend. It is shown that once you are in this type of group it is hard to stop, but ultimately can help you by making money and not just spending it. It’s an investment at the end of the day that our generation has put together because we took something small and ran with it.