Is the hype culture dead?

Hype culture, like energy and Rosalia, is also transforming. This subcultural evolution of streetwear, and its link to obsolescence, has also seen its reputation and validity questioned in a new era in which being hypebeast is no longer cool, but a meme product.

The roots of this transition towards a new hype culture have blossomed in the form of updated concepts interpreted in the latest episodes co-starring Swatch x Omega or Supreme x Burberry. Ideas derive that all that euphoria and cult of the drop is mutating by the hand of the new generations as agents of change.

The collaboration between Swatch and Omega seemed to reactivate all that maelstrom of debauchery to which we were accustomed a few years ago when Supreme launched a box tee. Queues of hundreds of people reminded us of the times of camping, fights and lists at the doors of stores to buy a product that, beyond the piece itself, what was sold was the emotion, the belonging to a community and exclusivity.

In this sense, this neo-capitalist format led the collaborative duo to offer the public extremely low prices with very limited stock, reviving that current and adapting it to the new times. A hype culture is now revered by a much more demanding public and with new values associated with street culture and the birth of the new luxury.

Prior to this resounding drop, the Supreme and Burberry collaboration also took us back to scenes from several years ago, with a police intervention in front of the brand’s store in New York to calm down the hype ultras. A throwback in time that now becomes an isolated case after a generational and market metamorphosis in which brands like Palace or Supreme have lost their original charm and attraction.

Now, that desire to spend hours in front of the computer to cop a product seems to be fading away to focus, instead, on something more transcendental than a logo. All those generations that are evoking the shift to a new hype paradigm are precisely bringing about that transition because they themselves are experiencing it firsthand.

If the streetwear community is now saturated and tired of drops and raffles, the mission of the brands would be to rekindle that hype flame that seems to have never been fully extinguished. In offering new forms of bonding and interest in the product, leaving aside the sale of non-existent emotions and empty ideas to a more critical and socio-culturally revised public.