Streetwear as a culture is built on an unwavering sense of community, leveraging a grasp on authenticity that the fashion industry has become desperate to capitalize on. At the core of this is streetwear’s unique ability to appeal to men in ways that have eluded mainstream fashion. Where traditional brands have long cultivated an air of unattainable luxury marketed primarily toward women, streetwear has done the exact opposite.

The industry at large is only now beginning to give due respect to this movement, but the seeds of streetwear were planted decades ago and can be traced back to countercultures of the ‘80s and ‘90s. With global outposts, the constantly evolving face of streetwear originally rose from communities like graffiti, hip-hop, skate, street and surf — all of which have traditionally been male-dominated.

“From the very start, streetwear has been this weird, strangely male thing,” says Bobby Kim, owner of The Hundreds, a Los Angeles streetwear label founded In 2003. “But I think the reason why it was like this from the very start is because of the subcultures that this fashion was associated with.”