Street style fashion is what emerges from the grassroots, not the studios. In major urban cities and centres around the world, street fashion has emerged, especially among the city’s youth. These are the group of people interested in stylish, urban, and comfortable clothing with a level of comfort that allows daily movement.

Usually, mainstream fashion is greatly inspired by street style clothing. Since every part of the world influences different types of street fashion, this fashion also looks different in different parts of the world.

Read along to understand what is street style fashion, how some street styles are high up in fashion, and how this movement has revolutionised the fashion industry.

History of Street Style Fashion

During the end of World War 2, street style was born, stemming from British fashion culture. Fashion on the streets began to grow on the background of scarce raw materials and highly-priced civilian clothing.

Throughout the history of street style fashion, the movement does not follow current trends and fancy labels. This form of fashion is a broad spectrum – trends are created and implemented by combining different styles. Thus, street-style clothing gives the wearer an opportunity to flex multiple identities.

Thus, clothing and style, as seen over the years, have been important as well as necessary for taking stands and depicting a position during social, cultural, and political movements. For example, the Suffragette Movement in the USA during the 20th century had women use fashion as a political statement to claim their right to vote. They wore pants instead of skirts and dresses and broke traditional barriers with a strong hand.

Similarly, the mini skirt of the 1960s began as an act of political rebellion. Eventually, it became a high fashion street style outfit.

High Fashion Street Style

When fashion meets comfort, street style is born. Several street styles from metropolitan and popular cities across the world have made their way into popular high fashion, such as the previous examples of women’s pants and mini skirts. And all of this is due to popularity and ease.

Street style fashion trends are born out of necessity. Thus, cities like New York, Paris, London, and Milan, which house the communities of fashion in the world, tend to become popular. Their street-style clothing is absorbed into high fashion easily, and their street styles begin to be considered high fashion.

Fast fashion brands, like Zara and H&M, have begun to adopt the design styles of street-style clothing and have also been called street style fashion brands due to their quickly changing inventory and pace of selling. This is the perfect example of high-fashion street-style clothing.

Street Style Fashion in India

India in itself is a diverse country, with varied temperatures and cultural conditions modifying the street-style clothing in every city. However, if we examine closely, a similar example of high fashion street styles can be made for India as well.

Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore are metropolitan and boast a higher quality of living, as well. To add to this, Mumbai houses the Hindi Film Industry and a combination of high-fashion brands and labels. Thus, the street styles of these cities are bound to get adapted to high fashion easily.

Street style fashion India has developed over the years, and Indian designers have also begun to appreciate Indian ethnic designs, materials, and patterns, combining them with international techniques to create casual and street-style clothing for everyone to use.

Street Style VS Casual

The final step is to be able to differentiate between dressing casually and dressing in street-style fashion. The ongoing debate of street style vs casual is rooted primarily in the statement that your clothing is making.

Street style clothing is used primarily for making a statement. Think colourful coats, decorative sneakers, statement jewellery, blended sportswear, and silent logos – clothes without branding. Street style, since the beginning of the 20th century, has been used to make statements through fashion – may it be personal, collective, emotional, or political.

Causal clothes, on the other hand, are worn primarily for comfort and as daily wear. These clothes may be properly branded and creative, but they are not to be mistaken for street-style clothing and fashion. The best street style outfits may have roots in casual clothing, but all casual clothing is not street-style.

Concluding words

If you are still wondering how high fashion meets street style fashion, you would be interested to know that this is an expansive field filled with many opportunities for students who would love to celebrate fashion through its use and impact on the world.

To capitalise on this opportunity, the perfect step would be a one-year diploma in fashion design from the JD School of Design. With an expansive curriculum that allows students to navigate through the field and discover their design identity, this course offers practical subjects and tasks to help students jump-start their journey in fashion design.