He describes the collaboration as “the most modern moment in fashion that existed in our current time”. Virgil Abloh is the designer behind streetwear-on-the-catwalk brand Off-White and a Kanye West collaborator. The collaboration provoked wildly differing reactions from the fashion and streetwear communities. Such a move doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility. The Louis Vuitton x Supreme collaboration led to unfounded rumours that LVMH, the conglomerate that own Louis Vuitton, had bought Supreme for £411m. On a “drop day”, the traffic on the Supreme site can increase by as much as 16,800%. While the prices are much lower than Louis Vuitton (though still £60 for a T-shirt, £120 for a sweater), the commercial acumen of a youth brand such as Supreme wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the powers that be. Seventeen years on, the brands are collaborators. The order reportedly asked that all products with the design be burned. Louis Vuitton issued a cease-and-desist order to Supreme in 2000 when the brand put a version of the LV double monogram on its skateboards. The collaboration will no doubt sell out before it even gets to stores in July - not just because they are nice designs but also because of the backstory. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian We’ve seen our customers have apprehensions but we have always stayed true to the culture from which we came Supreme statement

Highsnobiety ran an article capturing what many within the streetwear community were thinking: “It’s official,” the title ran, “streetwear and luxury fashion are the same thing.”

A 23-year-old streetwear brand created by a skate scenester was on the runway for the most valuable Parisian brand in the world, one that was founded as a luggage label in 1854 and was valued at £22.5bn in 2016. Others followed wearing a pattern that combined the Louis Vuitton monogram canvas with Supreme’s logo. The first model on the catwalk wore a bright red crossbody bag with the Supreme logo writ large. Streetwear shapes and staples – sneakers, hoodies, printed T-shirts, tracksuit pants – have been seen at the likes of Givenchy, Vetements and Raf Simons for the past 10 years, but the look truly went mainstream this January when Louis Vuitton collaborated with Supreme. But it is being appropriated by high fashion. Until now streetwear has remained a niche interest. He was spotted in Soho recently followed by a film crew, and models in a video about Supreme’s collaborations with North Face on the Basement this month. He claims to have spent more than £9,000 on streetwear, and an average selfie garners more than 20,000 likes. Gully Guy, AKA Leo Mandella, is a 14-year-old from Warwickshire who has 197,000 followers on Instagram, and posts pictures of himself in Supreme, Palace and Bape. The hypebeast world has its own websites (the appropriately named Hypebeast as well as Highsnobiety) Facebook groups ( the Basement with 65,000 members, Sup Talk with 97,000) and its “faces”. In February this year, the queues moved to the Broadway/Lafayette subway station where Supreme MetroCards were for sale.

In 2014, when the brand launched a collaboration with Nike, the NYPD shut the launch down due to concerns for public safety. Supreme’s New York City store, on Lafayette Street, is hypebeast’s centre. In his 1979 book, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argues that “humble objects can be magically appropriated ‘stolen’ by subcultural groups and made to carry ‘secret’ meanings which express, in code, a form of resistance.” Hebdige pointed to punk’s safety pin but the same could be said of streetwear items such as the Supreme Obama hoody or the Palace Elton John T-shirt. But the hypebeast scene has all the characteristics of one, both in the gathering of young people on street corners and the obsession over the “right” item to be part of the tribe. Stylist Lotta Volkova, fashion’s current favourite mouthpiece, caused a stir last year when she declared “there are no subcultures any more”. Will, another queue member, wears Supreme army fatigues. Taran is in an immaculate white parka and P for Palace cap. Omer, who is 17, queued for six hours today and will spend about £300 even though he doesn’t “really like it that much” Taran, 16, will spend £200, and has travelled for two hours to get to the store.

Hype beast