Tansy Hoskins, author of Foot Work: What Your Shoes Are Doing to the World, argues that "hypebeast" culture — which fuels our obsession with collecting the latest trainers and streetwear — is causing an environmental catastrophe.

Navigating modern society means being bombarded with messages telling us we are being judged on what we wear, eat and drive. Thousands of adverts link consumption to our social status and tell us to be insecure about what we have.

The point of conspicuous fashion consumption has not changed since Thorstein Veblen argued that consumption is used to evidenced wealth and power. If you have the money, it is a simple process to use fashion to display wealth: attach expensive items to your body, or the bodies of your family, then parade around where people can see you.

What has changed since Veblen is the ever-present eye of social media, plus the fact that it is not only the super-rich who get to show off. Trainers are a classic means of using fashion to display status because not only are they worn in public, but they are routinely plastered in corporate logos. Sneakers also merit attention as an item that has come up from the streets rather than down from the catwalks.

Streetwear brands have taken this rebellious street spirit and run with it all the way to the bank. The Supreme brand was founded in 1994, having ‘borrowed’ heavily from Barbara Kruger’s artwork. The brand has gotten very, very rich by appearing to offer a counterweight to corporate fashion. But while its customers may wish to be anti-establishment, the corporation is not.

Streetwear brands still evade much of the scrutiny afforded to the rest of the high street. This needs to change – we need to critique the supply chain of every single brand.

In particular, we need to scrutinise shoe supply chains. Here are some reasons why – in 2018, 66.3 million pairs of shoes were made every single day. Fifty per cent of all leather goods are shoes and the number one cause of deforestation in Amazonia is cattle farming. The methods for turning cow skin into leather are so toxic that Bangladeshi tannery workers have been found to have a ninety per cent chance of being dead by the age of fifty. Plus when all the mayhem and shopping thrills are over, ninety per cent of shoes are not recycled.

Streetwear brands also need to be scrutinised for who they are targeting. Fashion is an industry that puts us in a cycle of perpetual competition, and it is a process that starts very young. Events like Sneaker Con are full of young boys who have been ramped up to extreme levels of excitement and who wait in lines to have their photos taken with YouTubers wearing trainers worth £14,000.

After twenty-five years of rising inequality and falling social mobility, we live in societies characterised by personal debt, job insecurity and housing bubbles – all over-looked by bloated conspicuous consumption by the rich. In this climate, fashion is not serving our needs, it is serving the corporations who rule it.

Trainers and streetwear can be a means for people to form friendships, to have a sense of belonging, and fulfil the desire to be noticed for something other than the negative assumptions often dumped on teenagers, particularly those from minority ethnic backgrounds. But this same inequality and lack of social mobility means real options for change have all but disappeared.

This leads to a greater rise in the desire to create an illusion of status. An appearance of affluence and progress rather than the real thing. This need is being exploited by streetwear brands like Supreme. Rather than being on the side of ordinary people, rather than caring for the teenagers and young people who crave attention, brands like Supreme perpetuate the cycle of more and more new products by creating discontent with existing ones.

It is harder and harder to keep up with streetwear, but allowing people to keep up was never the aim of the game. With the world already full of more consumer goods than we can possibly need, people must be compelled into wanting more.

The power of branding today is such that it can convince people to pay a premium for a product that is functionally identical to a cheaper one. Streetwear brands have nailed this because they sell the illusion that they are not participating in capitalism, that they are somehow outside of it. Streetwear has mastered the art of creating mythology around otherwise identical goods, mythologies that lead people to feel not only a sense of loyalty, but a sense of self when they encounter certain brands. This exploitative art now sees Supreme valued at a billion dollars.

Credit: Liam Yulhanson and Michelle Woods

Tansy E Hoskins is the author of Foot Work: What Your Shoes Are Doing to the World— opening our eyes to the dark origins of the shoes on our feet, and taking us deep into the heart of an industry that is exploiting workers and deceiving consumers. If we don't act fast, this humble household object will take us to the point of no return.

‘Fascinating and eye-opening, FOOT WORK shows brilliantly how a simple everyday object can shed light on the hidden costs of globalisation and environmental degradation’ Owen Jones

‘Tansy is one of the sharpest and committed analysts of the true cost of the stuff we own. FOOT WORK is an absorbing, meticulous and at times completely horrifying account of the shoes on our feet and how that supply chain is marching (all puns intended) us towards an even more dystopian future, especially for the workers in the system. Read this and you will make better decisions about all fashion, and all consumer goods in the future.’ Lucy Siegle

Check out her Book Trailer on YouTube here:

OP-ED: Tansy Hoskins on why "hypebeast" culture is creating an environmental disaster