“It exists to add to the rich tapestry of skate visual paraphernalia that used to be lacking in the Singapore context,” explains founder, Suhaimi Saadan.īut with public attention comes the inclination to superficially associate with skateboarding to appear relevant, without bringing any benefit to the community. The venture Nocturnal Society similarly pays plenty of homages to various visual cultures: everything from post-Internet to 1880s surf culture and DIY. “If you look good, you skate good,” adds Su’waidi Said, Triad member, jokingly. Aside from uniting skaters together, Triad produces a line of clothing and decks driven by nostalgia and humorous graphics (it’s made Snek Ikan decks, shirts with rickshaw service prints). Within the local skateboarding community, that very language is being defined with the presence of collectives. Meanwhile, a new generation of creatives is inventing a new language, that hopefully has a chance to stay under the radar to mature.” When things move on to become mainstream, maybe the general public becomes a little more sophisticated. “It’s great to see Barry McGee collaborating with Uniqlo. “It’s a good thing that skateboarding is more accepted these days and more people might tune into it and find joy through skating,” says Yong Ng, founder of design consultancy firm Somewhere Else. In Japan, parents are sending their kids to skate school.” Go Skateboarding Day sees all kinds of skaters together, shot by Mun Kong Even though a lot of people still don’t understand the life we live, with outlets like Instagram people have become interested and are keen on finding out. “Some random person would yell at me, ‘eh, skateboarders are losers!’ But that doesn’t happen anymore and I’m honestly so happy about it. “I used to get cussed all the time when I was younger,” says photographer Mun Kong. With all this in mind, what do skaters make of the entire phenomenon? For the most part, the change in public perception is something they’re very excited about. This is responsible for the rising interest in skateboarding courses, which helps to sell paraphernalia and clothing created by skaters, feeding the ecosystem. The Olympics has recognised it as an official sport: skateboarding will debut at the 2020 Tokyo games. Skateboarding has had to deal with a lot of misconceptions in the past as it’s always associated with rebellion, but now it’s definitely getting the supportive light that it deserves. Even if the majority of the population reflects that by donning Thrasher T-shirts, blithely unaware of the fact that it is a skate magazine. The list of errors is endless.īut of course, fashion is also a positive catalyst, helping the sport be more accepted by the mainstream. It’s responsible for the surplus of models chilling at skate parks in impractical outfits, either holding decks in awkward poses and questionable positions- often mall-grabbing them-or standing at impossible locations to skate (gardens, rocky surfaces, sandy beaches… maybe they’re practicing ollies? Improbable).
For an industry whose job description includes calling out faux pas, sometimes it fails to realise it’s the one perpetrating it. While skateboarding has clearly become fashionable, the conversation about it is mostly self-contained within the fashion industry by people who have no skateboarding background whatsoever.
Skater attempting tricks during Go Skateboarding Day, shot by Mun Kong. There’s been plenty of proof over the recent decade: in 2011, Céline’s ad campaign by Juergen Teller featured model Daria Werbowy candidly holding a bright-yellow deck skater Dylan Rieder modelled for DKNY’s spring 2014 ad campaign with model Cara Delevigne both Saint Laurent and Dior Homme have created an entire collection inspired by skateboarders in 20 respectively and Louis Vuitton launched an official collaboration with Supreme under the artistic direction of Kim Jones, immediately followed by Virgil Abloh’s debut at the house which saw actual skaters walking down the runway, including British poster boys Blondey McCoy and Lucien Clarke. Fashion is totally obsessed with skateboarding.
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