Key Takeaways
- Skate culture’s DIY graphics, logo flips, and repurposed workwear influenced the visual and business blueprint for modern streetwear long before it was a formal category.
- It spotlights 10 pivotal skate brands—from Vision Street Wear, World Industries, Blind, and Fuct to Zoo York, Girl, Supreme, Menace, Diamond Supply Co., and Fucking Awesome—and explains each one’s signature contribution, from controversial graphics to iconic jeans and logos.
- Across eras, these labels shaped everything from the “uniform” of tees and loose denim to the economics of scarcity and resale culture that define contemporary street fashion.
Influence is impossible to quantify, but it’s safe to say that skateboarding had a massive impact on streetwear. Skate brands had been pumping out graphic tees, ripping off corporate logos, and repurposing sports and workwear for decades before streetwear cemented itself as a category. The skate industry birthed an ecosystem of companies that basically didn’t exist outside of specialty stores. In the ’90s, as skating rose in popularity, the aesthetic they developed—designs that borrowed freely from punk rock, hip-hop, rave culture, and so on—began to surface in broader street fashion.
The designers behind each successive wave of streetwear brands had almost certainly come in contact with skating. Alongside influences from hip-hop, graffiti, and the downtown scene, elements of skate culture showed up in releases, sometimes subtly, other times less so. Streetwear brands also operated like skate companies, producing small quantities of clothing and selling them through limited channels.
Still, skating’s influence on streetwear dates to the ’80s, and some of the companies that helped shape it vanished more than 30 years ago. We can’t list all of them, but here are 10 skate brands whose imprints are all over contemporary street fashion.
Vision Street Wear
Founding year: 1986
Founded by: Brad Dorfman
Signature contribution: Probably coined the term “streetwear”
There were a lot of profoundly uncool, even reprehensible, things about Vision Street Wear: goofy ads, berets, Gator. But consensus says that the clothing arm of Vision, Brad Dorfman’s Orange County skate monolith, created the word “streetwear.” VSW sold every conceivable item of clothing, save for undergarments, alongside shoes that were actually pretty good. Its colorblocked logo showed up on TV shows and in movies and music videos, propelling Vision to a reported annual gross of more than $60 million by 1989. Two years later, skating would implode, and Vision would be left with a warehouse of inventory no one wanted. The logo, however, is a different story: It continues to reappear in unlikely places, including Ye’s 2020 presidential campaign.
World Industries
Founding year: 1987
Founded by: Steve Rocco
Signature contribution: Graphics some shops refused to sell
Five big companies ruled skating in the ’80s. Vert was cool; skulls and dragons were everywhere. Fresh off Vision dumping him, Steve Rocco started a company that within four years would reshape the industry. World Industries and its sub-brands became known for rip-off graphics, boards that shops were afraid to display on their walls, controversial ads, and having basically the best product—the boards every kid in your town wanted to skate. World also started Ghetto Wear, a clothing line with a name that didn’t age well but cargo shorts and pants that hold up. And in 1992 came Bob shirts, the blanks World used for its tees. Factory seconds came with “FUCKED UP” printed on them. In 1996, intent on drawing a new generation of prepubescent skaters, World reorganized itself around the Devilman, Wet Willy, and Flameboy characters, which this year reappeared via a collab with Palace.
Blind
Founding year: 1989
Founded by: Steve Rocco, Mark Gonzales
Signature contribution: Jeans 50-year-old skaters still talk about
Blind was former Vision pro Mark Gonzales’ response to his old sponsor—get it? The brand fell under the World Industries umbrella, and its graphics were in line with World’s product, albeit with Gonz’s artier touch. By 1992, skaters’ pants had ballooned, and Blind delivered enormous jeans that came with frayed hems. Every kid, of course, wanted them immediately. A quarter-century later, Supreme ripped off the Blind logo for pants of its own. Blind jeans are why.
Fuct
Founding year: 1990
Founded by: Erik Brunetti
Signature contribution: An ambiguous name that made it to the Supreme Court
Fuct resurfaced in 2019, when Erik Brunetti’s attempt at trademarking the name wound through the justice system and landed him and his company in the Supreme Court. Brunetti launched the brand with pro skater Natas Kaupas in 1990; Steve Rocco’s World Industries distributed it, which translated to 13-year-old skaters across America begging their boomer moms for Fuct shirts and pants. The name and logo, Brunetti told Jenkem, were meant to look corporate and confusing. His idea of what makes a subversive image has changed in the years since: “What about just an illustration of people lining up to go to church?”
Zoo York
Founding year: 1993
Founded by: Eli Gesner, Rodney Smith, Adam Schatz
Signature contribution: East Coast imagery in a West Coast world
Zoo York arrived at a time when the East Coast was an afterthought in skating. Shut, Rodney Smith’s influential first company, had folded a couple of years earlier, and while it had sublimated New York into its graphics, Zoo was more explicit in its connection to the city, running a tag logo that’s still hard to replicate, graphics inspired by MTA wayfinding copy, and gold links on wheels. It was also among the earliest Nike SB collaborators, lending its name to a Dunk in 2002. Last year, Supreme released a Zoo capsule that included a soccer jersey from the mid-’90s. “That’s the coolest thing I ever made,” Gesner said.
Girl Skateboards
Founding year: 1993
Founded by: Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Megan Baltimore, Spike Jonze
Signature contribution: The uniform (white T-shirt, light denim), designer-brand rip-off graphics
Nothing Girl made inspired an obvious streetwear tribute decades after the fact. But its team ushered in an era of clean outfits—plain tees or polos, loose-fit jeans, fitteds, Superstars or Half Cabs—that corrected for the Goofy Boy nightmare of 1992. It also released Tommy Hilfiger and Tag Heuer graphics, prompting skaters to seek those brands out. And Rick Howard and Mike Carroll, two of Girl’s founders, put money into Diamond Supply Co., which ran out of the same building. There are skaters who still swear by the uniform that Girl pioneered today.
Supreme
Founding year: 1994
Founded by: James Jebbia
Signature contribution: The economics of scarcity
Supreme was far from the first skateshop to sell shirts and hats with its name on them. But its clothing and accessories looked cooler than whatever your flyover-state local was running, and as demand grew, a trip to the minimalist shop gradually became the exercise in patience it is today. Entire retail hubs coalesced around Supreme’s locations, and the store spawned a resale economy all its own. No streetwear brand has done the same, but plenty have tried.
Menace
Founding year: 1994
Founded by: Steve Rocco, Kareem Campbell
Signature contribution: The star logo
Joey Alvarez is a Brooklyn legend. He never skated for Menace, but there’s a classic picture of him switch frontside crooked grinding a ledge in front of the old Complex office in Menace jeans. Supreme would later pay tribute to the brand—which, because of a trademark issue, only kept its original name for about three years—with a logo flip on jeans of its own. Menace never released the video it advertised in ’96, but its ads, graphics, and team, all of which were heavily influenced by the hip-hop of the day, are canon for a generation of skaters. And although there have been a few attempts at Menace revivals, including one from Brooklyn Projects in 2020, none have fully materialized. The LRG tribute tee was hard, though.
Diamond Supply Co.
Founding year: 1998
Founded by: Nick Tershay
Signature contribution: Iron Maiden and Misfits graphics
Before Nick Tershay was known as Nick Diamond, before “Diamond Life” turned into a mantra, and before Diamond collaborated with Nike SB on a canonical Dunk, Diamond Supply Co. was a skateboard hardware company that didn’t make very good bolts. Nonetheless, Tershay was a credible skater, the bolts improved, and Diamond’s team grew. In the early 2000s, non-skaters asking for Diamond clothes and accessories became a common sight in skateshops. The Iron Maiden and Misfits flips were sought-after items, and a skate accessory company whose name owed to a line in a Sade song had enough juice to open a flagship on Fairfax, where its clothes morphed into a uniform.
Fucking Awesome
Founding year: 2001
Founded by: Jason Dill, Mike Piscitelli
Signature contribution: All-over-print Hulkamania hoodie
Fucking Awesome is one of the biggest skateboard companies of the last 15 years. But in its earliest incarnation, FA was a lark—Jason Dill printing and selling shirts branded with his name. His timing was good, though, and in the ensuing years, FA established itself as a legitimate name in streetwear, even if its releases (which Kanye was photographed wearing) were sporadic. In 2013, Dill and Anthony Van Engelen left their board sponsor, Alien Workshop, and turned FA into a skate brand built around subversive, esoteric found imagery. They soon put on young riders like Tyshawn Jones, Na-Kel Smith, and Sage Elsesser, all of whom showed up in Supreme’s Cherry the following spring, instantly stamping FA as a serious company whose reach transcended skating.
