I love Karmaloop, it is an impressive online store and resource for Urban and Streetwear Culture.
Polos, tshirts, jackets, pants… and also jewelry, belts, bags, housewares… headphones? Yes, also very stylish headphones. Why? In the Urban Culture, style and respect are very important, but also hip hop music, the source of everything.
Karmaloop and Urban Culture
When I speak about Urban Culture, I mean baggy shirts, baggy jeans, sneakers, hip hop and urban neighborhoods… and also jewelry, earrings, long chains.
Urban Wear has evolved over the years. You can find more aggressive styles lately along with very elegant and fashionable designs. Evolving is a good thing, nobody wants to always wear the same things for years, but of course if you follow the trends very closely, you’ll have to spend a lot to keep yourself up to date.
Nice thing about Urban Wear is that it has been influenced also by Japanese streetwear culture, and the ever evolving indie music scene. This brings to new trends and new ideas… and of course new ways to spend your money!
At Karmaloop you can find practically every kind of Urban Wear, every trend and every flavor. What matters is that all the clothing represents the city and is not mass produced. You’ll feel really cool with their apparel.
Prices are very good and you can create your own style easily with just few dollars. We can say that Karmaloop is at the cutting edge of the urban fashion market and sells everywhere in the world.
Baggy, brightly colored urban clothes are not only the culture of cities in United States. This style is going to be international and more and more customers from other parts of the world are being attracted by this fashion appeal.
Street wear is a retro 80s look inspired by the sneaker culture and hipsters on New Yorks Lower East Side. With a few wardrobe essentials you can incorporate the street wear look into your own style, with tight fitting jeans, vintage-style sneakers and graphic tees. But where to find the tees?
Street and Urban Fashion, with a touch of red
StreetWear-And-Red.com, which has also the domain StreetWearAndRed.com, provides cool designs for the urban and street fashion along with elegant ideas for the modern gentlemen.
The nice thing about this website is the idea behind it. It is not just a virtual shop where you can find tshirts, sweatshirts, jerseys, polos and jackets, it is also a fashion mark, red and scratchy, a perfect mark for this kind of wear!
We have found the best design to be the “Legend” one. It’s based on a funny phrase but the graphics and the idea are superb!
There are other interesting designs like the vintage ones but seems that there will be tons more in the next days… so it’s better to check this website daily to see what’s new and what’s changed, the website is growing fast and changing daily!
I found this “new” website, 925e.com, its company is a wholesale silver jewelry supplier from Thailand (established in September 1995 in Bangkok, so I can say they have experience in online selling). Also, they have more than 30 employees; practically a well organized company in wholesale jewelry that has been serving thousands of customers from around the globe since 1995.
The fascination of Thailand
Ok, there are so many websites in the jewelry wholesale industry, why this one picked my attention? The reasons are many: the website graphics is simple but very effective and elegant, there are good discounts, an impressive availability of new products and designs every month, the prices are really low.
And, of course, in all the designs you can feel the fascination and traditions of a beautiful country like Thailand.
The Kingdom of Thailand is an independent country which lies in the heart of Southeast Asia. The country is bordered by Laos and Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia.
This is just to have an idea of where Thailand is and why it is so charming.
Thailand is one of the most strongly Buddhist countries in the world. The cultures and traditions in Thailand are significantly influenced by those of India, China, Cambodia. Thailand people are also well-known for their friendliness and hospitality, leading to the country’s so called reputation as the “Land of Smiles.”
The availability of elephants, exotic jungle and beach settings, relatively low production costs, and a mature domestic film industry that provides a legion of experienced crew members, have made Thailand also an attractive location for many Hollywood films and other foreign productions.
Films set in Thailand include “Around the World in Eighty Days”, “The Big Boss”, “The Man with the Golden Gun” and “The Beach”.
I’m sure you’ve seen one of these movies, so if you loved the settings, you loved Thailand natural landscapes, jungles and elephants.
And of course there is silver jewelry. Crafting silver jewelry is a long-standing tradition in Thailand.
You can find all the spirituality of this Buddhist country in the designs. Just browse 925e.com lists to have an idea of what I mean.
Al Keser wrote this article for us. He is a New York fashionista, intrigued by the on-goings in the urban fashion scene in the Big Apple. He is writing on behalf of R.A.G., the New York clothing store which specializes in urban wear such as graphic t-shirts, plaid shorts, and baby doll t-shirts. R.A.G. was established in 1959, has 5 locations in Manhattan, including one at Times Square.
Graphic t-shirts enter the world of haute couture
It was only 15 years ago when teenagers were still seen wearing Nirvana band t-shirts showing off their adoration for the grunge band lead by Kurt Cobain. These t-shirts were seen as un-stylish, over-sized, and definitely not acceptable in any New York nightclub (not that these kids were trying to get in). That was back then. Today, brands from Armani to American Eagle carry graphic t-shirts that are both stylish and are completely acceptable elements of fashionable clothing. This has happened for many reasons, mainly due to changes in t-shirt manufacturing, but also in the mindset that it is okay to pay over $10 for a tee.
Graphic t-shirts, in general, were part of the anti-establishment culture that reigned with the grunge movement and previously with 80’s hip-hop (anyone say Run DMC?). Then came West Coast gangster rap and its series of graphic tees that idolized stars such as Tupac. Interestingly enough, we also owe these two groups for the advent of plaid as being cool.
These days, vintage tees from the 80’s – especially Run DMC’s – are sold for astronomical amounts (up to $13 000) and major fashion houses such as Armani and Ralph Lauren have began to produce graphic t-shirts with new techniques that make them fashionable and hip. New weaving techniques have made it possible to make very fine cotton, while distressed finishes allow for vintage looks to be enhanced – as seen in many American Eagle t-shirts.
What has really made graphic tees a hot item are the many 2.0 websites that have popped up – such as Threadless.com – that feature very original designs, which was rare thing back in the day. Now that a t-shirt can be a work of art and not something mass-produced, its value rises and it becomes a cool t-shirt. These new arenas are giving way for more graphic t-shirt designers to show-off their talents. They are relying on the graphic design software that is readily available – also something absent a few years ago.
New York stores now readily carry graphic t-shirts that resemble the usual Gothic style as well as abstract designs. These tees have become part of the mainstream. The market for graphic t-shirts has grown in the meantime. People are not only okay to pay a lot of money for graphic tees, they are also okay with displaying messages besides a name brand or a band name on their clothing. Now every college student wants a t-shirt that sends a message about him or herself in an original way, and be able to go out in clubs without a problem.
In the streets of New York, you will not miss the number of ironic, funny, or offensive messages delivered via graphic tee. In clubs, worn under a dress jacket, graphic t-shirts are becoming a statement. They have become what’s hot. Meantime, those anti-establishment folks have turned elsewhere. The mainstream crowd should not be far behind.
