Introducing: The Streetwear Psycho

So here he comes: all 6-feet-0, 33 years of him, dressed in a lavish semaphore of painfully scarce Off White. He is turning the corner—both literally, nearing West Street, or Brewer Street, or Oranienstraße—and also metaphorically, because this will be his most grailed and consequential drop yet. Today, it’s Corteiz. But last month, last year, last decade: Wales Bonner, Cactus Jack’s, Salehe x Bembury Moncler.

As he makes his way, he is thinking of his crimes, though that’s not how he sees them. He is thinking of the time his bots copped first season Yeezys and how he flipped them for thousands; about how he tricked a 13-year-old petroleum scion into believing his cast-off Skechers were a highly divestable investment. The time he made a poor woman crawl around his apartment in Flatbush—or De Beauvoir, or Neukölln—wearing nothing except Tabis on her hands. “D’ya like jazz?” he screamed then, as he pumped her full of orange wine and the city’s nightly sirens bled in through a jammed open window. None of that matters now. Today’s drop is set to be the most fire yet, and will earn him enough to finally get ahead.

They called him a Hypebeast. They called him a fashion victim. But truly he is The New Streetwear Psycho, and he is no longer in control.

Now he is thinking of the dropshipping venture that went to shit (“13,000 fidget spinners stuck in a fucking warehouse in Denpasar!”). The Goyard card holder in the breast pocket of his Off White tee, protruding just so, contains a small deck of bone-colored business cards that simply read “fashion>” in embossed, dignified serif font. He will introduce himself as a fashion consultant to the store manager and anyone that looks professionally relevant. He went to the same party as Blondey McCoy once, and he will mention it whenever it feels vaguely appropriate.

There are things meant to be seen and some that won’t be. In his home, on his mantelpiece, lives a $400 Prada money clip. On his bed, most of the time, is an adored Canadian Spyhnx named ‘Issey’. In his wardrobe, there is a mountain of unworn Balenciaga trainers so comically oversized and distended they seem like botched AI renderings you can hold in your hands. In various private security-deposit boxes located around the country, sequestered on USB sticks, are the home addresses of his local rivals, as well as the GPS coordinates for near-mythical vintage streetwear dealers based in southern Italy and the Osaka docks.

He is moving quicker now (“The line!” he is fretting. “How long will it be?”), like a salmon upstream, and his mind finds images of Japanese denim, and then of the Kapital ​​Katsuragi High Waist Neem Pants with the tapered silhouette and the tasteful patchwork embroidery. They don’t ship internationally, but he knows a guy. A rough sleeper asks for change and the psycho thinks “kill yourself”. A push notification lands: Some weenie on Depop is claiming there was a “gumbo-looking stain” on a Supreme jacket he bought—the guy wants money off. Blocked!

Eyes on the prize, for he is running through the checklist in his mind of what happened this morning: Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream moisturizer, applied liberally; Kiehl’s Cucumber Herbal Alcohol-Free Facial toner—for a fresh sheen—20 minutes of HIIT, performed rigorously, religiously even, while listening to Throwing Fits. He posted a morning fit-check reel to IG to keep things ticking over. And why not? Exciting developments are happening on Hinge. He’s got a table for two with a hardbody at San Sabino booked for 9 (or Tayēr + Elementary, or JAJA). He’ll try to be mentally there for three hours or however long is necessary. She has 26k followers; presumably a few hundred could be grafted across to man his ship of 34,583 lost souls. He’s even thinking of employing a social media intern (to be paid in skincare samples and “opportunities”). Life is a numbers game.

He has buyers lined up in Easts both Middle and Far; some idiot who seems keen in Denver, or Norwich, or Aachen. If he can just get ahold of enough jackets today, he can dine out on the mark up through the summer, like a Western driving instructor living like a wintertime king in Bangkok.

His nostrils flare: There is a line, and for the minute he can bare to stand in it he can see into his past and future, where he’s been and where he’s going; the audacious puffers, chunky trainers, and elephant’s-foot pant legs on the young guys armed with parents’ plastic; the scene elders in snapbacks with overly bright colorways that jar with their jaded skin. He’s discussing his recent Virgil Abloh book purchase with one. “Over $1,000, but it’s worth it to have the whole repertoire on file,” he hears himself say. Then he slips him the “fashion>” consultancy card before they get waved into the store. The elder returns the favor, except his is eggshell.

Read Next

Here Comes a Regular: How Barflies Became My Brothers

No time to chat: Talk is far cheaper than the limited-run mohair jacket that has called him here. He goes to grab a dozen size large and mediums when a hand grabs his and squeezes. It’s the elder hypebeast from the line: “Not today, my guy,” the elder says.

A slow-motion arm wrestle: Brows reddening, snapbacks bowing. “You fucker, unhand me!” the New Streetwear Psycho yells, and now any pretence, any sense at all of a trendy past and vanguard future is lost. His screams draw the eyes, ears, and ire of the cool guys and few girls in the shop, all now fixed upon the escalating duel. A phone appears, then many phones, filming for the whole hypeworld to see. The store manager summons two security henchmen with faces like gravity dams to cart the pair of them out. ‘The windfall!’ he’s thinking. ‘My mark-up summer! Gone!’

At the dinner date later he’s still smarting about the upset client DMs and the indignity of the viral wrestling match. Luckily the date doesn’t know about any of that, though this does eliminate the possibility that they might have anything at all in common.

“So, tell me about yourself,” he says, and then his eyes glaze over as she does so. She talks about work, about her passions, and he says “for me, they’re one and the same.” That’s when he reaches for the Goyard card protector to fish out a “fashion>”, except the one he grabs is eggshell.

“It can’t be,” he whispers. “The subtle spacing. The weight of it!” and now the final dagger to the heart, as he’s reading it over in his head: “fashion∞”. Fashion infinity! How had he not thought of that? The rage and redness of his face. The forehead vein, skipping rope. He places the card back in the protector and forces an insane smile. “I hear the lobster triangoli is simply to die for,” he says.

@nichet