Are skaters jocks now? Because these track suits say so.
Why do a majority of skateboarders today dress like jocks and professional athletes? Well they are professional athletes by today’s standards. Gone are the days when skateboarding was just for the misunderstood kid in middle school, but it’s for everyone. Skateboarding is going to be in the olympics in Summer 2020. With this, kids are starting even younger and are hitting famous skateboard spots as if it was nothing.
Recently, I got back from Woodward Skateboarding and parents were their pretty much coaching their 8 year old child to skate as if they were an athlete. Prime example of this below.
Straight up, a lot of skaters look more like tennis players, basketball players, or just straight up athletes ready to be in the olympics. And this isn’t a surprise. Skateboarding will be for the first time in the olympics in 2020. As I sit here again in my warm grey, ripped up Nike Sb Janoski’s, I can’t help but wonder, what will the uniforms of the 2020 olympics skateboarding team look like?
First thing that pops up in my head is the fact that the olympic team in the past has been mainly sponsored by Ralph Lauren. They all have to wear the same uniform. Now it’s not unheard of for skateboarders to be wearing designer brands today. A main reason why skaters can wear designer brands is because of Dylan Rieder. Not to say that there weren’t people already wearing it, but within the last 10 years, it’s because of Dylan. I’ll go into detail about this another time. When I started skating, it was whack to wear tennis shoes and whack to wear collared shirts with a small insignia. Today, it’s very different and as you can see, you can wear whatever you want in skateboarding. However, it’s just funny that when there was talks of skateboarding being in the olympics, this image arose.
A stark contradiction. But don’t worry, Andy Roy got a new grill recently through a gofundme.
Another thing that pops into my head was when I heard that Shaun White played a major influence in the 2010 winter olympics to have the uniforms look like lumberjacks since flannels were in during that time. Before that, it was just regular snowboarding gear. If you look at some recent photos of Shaun White, you’ll see him in some slim fitted snowboard pants. Interesting how snowboarding doesn’t exactly influence everyday fashion. (A thought for another time).
Skaters are looking like jocks mainly because of the commercialization of skateboarding mainly through brands like Nike Sb and Adidas. As a Sociologist, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. it’s my job to talk about theory and phenomenon. It’s not hard and you don’t need a degree to do it.
As a skateboarder, I don’t know how I feel about it. But that usually means I either don’t have enough information or I don’t like it. It’s the latter from a personal perspective.
Despite the commercialization of skateboarding through big brands, some of my favorite skaters are on these brands such as Donovon Piscopo, Stefan Janoski, Tyshawn Jones, Na-Kel Smith, Ishod Wair, and Blake Carpenter to name a few. In fact, I’m wearing Nikes right now as I write this article.
As I discussed in my first article, Nike has changed the face of skateboarding in the last ten years. My main point was that Nike has made skateboarding more commercial because of their pre-existing power as huge brand and because skateboarders are humans and need a pay check to live.
A friend of mine, @joeldoeskickflips, asked me to write a bit more after reading the first piece, so here we are.
But let’s check in. Why should you keep reading? Because we’re going to be talking about skateboarding & fashion from an advertising/design POV.
Now I’m a sociologist by my degree, but I’ve been doing design for the last 3 years and am still very early in my career. (Been wishing that I went to art school, but I’m here now and I don’t have time so let’s hope everything works out). My mantra right now has been “at the end of the day, everything will work out. But right now, I’m freaking out.)
From a design standpoint, Nike kills it. They have a design and marketing team that has been killing it for all other sports that they are involved in. It would make sense that they could kill it in skateboarding too. Just by looking at Nike’s designs, your eyes can taste the luxury. They hire agencies to do the designs. They probably do have their own design team, but I know for a fact that they reach out to agencies to complete some of their work.
Also, if you haven’t noticed, Nike SB’s logo has changed in the last 20 years. The block Nike font with the sb is still used, but the main lockup that is used features a script font with the classic swoosh. Definitely more fitting for the modern era, but also more welcoming and inviting to everyone, not just skaters. If you walk down the street, you’ll see people wearing Nike SB and not even know what the SB stands for. Maybe they think it stands for Super Bad or Select Batch. That’s the power of marketing, but also the power of having good branding. People will wear your brand and it’s alternatives, even if they don’t know the meaning behind it. And this is important if you want to dominate and monopolize a field. Nike already reaches the rest of the world, it wasn’t long until they would figure out how to make it into skateboarding.
Skateboarders were already skating Nikes such as the Dunks. Check out Sneaker Shopping with Tony Hawk. He references the dunks.
Tony rides for Lakai though and his son, Riley does too. Like I made reference to in the last article, one cool thing about Nike early in marketing was that they never distributed to Zumiez which is where a lot of skaters and the rest of the world get access to skateboard gear. While many skateboard brands would rather support local businesses, the reality is that many skateboard companies do have to distribute through Zumiez if they want to stay afloat. But since Nike is Nike, they had the money to withhold and distribute through finer skate shops and online only. However, that time has gone. It would be a foolish mistake on their part to do so and they have quickly made up for it in the last 10 years.
And now I hate to do this, but let’s look at Emerica. Now, I love Emerica too. For the longest time, they were the only shoes that I would wear. For years I would skate any shoe that Andrew Reynolds made and for the longest time I was skating in the Hsu. But if we look at their designs in this modern era, they aren’t targeting the masses. Emerica is a core brand. Let’s put that straight up. They are targeting skateboarders. What this probably means is that everything is done by a talented designer in house. Or they pull from one of their sponsored skaters and have them come up with a design or some type of content. Look at Kevin Spanky Long. In recent years, he’s been doing a lot of adobe premiere/ after effects work on his instagram edits. So much that Emerica is now using it as part of their content. It helps to be a core brand because that means you don’t have to go through bureaucracy to get approval.
In the early 2000s, their ads had a green overlay that was really good marketing/advertising because any time you saw green and skateboarding, you knew it was Emerica. However, they don’t have the same mass appeal as Nike. But that’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to reach out to just skateboarders. This isn’t to say that Emerica isn’t worn by non-skaters. Non skaters who shop at Zumiez can definitely purchase these shoes and wear these brands without knowing what kind of brand they are. It happens all the time.
But back to the point. Nike appeals to the masses. Because they have a stake in every major sport at a global level and with their buy into skateboarding, they’ve made skateboarding tantamount to the professionalism of basketball.
Taking all this into account, skateboarders are looking more like jocks. Now I’m going to use an extreme example of this by using Nyjah Huston as the scapegoat. I’m providing a street clip because he is gnarly.
Nyjah gets a lot of crap, but he’s a damn good skateboarder. It’s low fruit to pick at his fits, but since Nyjah and I are about the same age, we both know that skaters weren’t wearing spandex in the early 2000s unless you were Gonz. This was before the 2000s, but you get the point.
But let’s look at a few more examples.
Ok so what, a bunch of track suits that are reminiscent of the Beastie Boys. Show me some variations. I wish I could, but here’s a reasoning — 90s fashion is back in full swing.
Track suits are in and frankly, wearing clothes that basketball players, tennis players, and track stars wear is more comfortable to skate in.
So the phenomenon here is the confluence of 90s fashion has come back and that Nike has a stake in all other sports and can back Nike SB with their advanced forms of shoe and apparel technology has slowly made skaters look like jocks.
As I write this, I’m waiting for colleges to have D1 skateboard teams and have recruiters scout out talent for their schools since skateboarding is going to be in the olympics. There are already skateboard schools in Sweden.
Check out Heitor Da Silva.
But his pathway with Palace Skateboards doesn’t look like the olympics. But just thinking about how olympian skateboarders will live their lives is somewhat of a perturbing thought. Will they just train all year at the park like most skateboarders do? Will someone do a double backflip on a skateboard in the future? Will skaters start blood doping?
I have no idea. Most likely yes because the world is a wild place.
