After the #menswear boom of the mid-to-late aughts, guys began looking in the mirror at their chambray shirts, raw selvedge denim and moc toe boots and wondering what was next for their sartorial lives.

It wasn't long before they were trading in Yuketen for Yeezy, Ralph Lauren for Raf Simons, and A.P.C. for SLP. But swapping heritage gear for high-fashion looks put pressure on their wallets. Fast-fashion retailers like Zara and H&M were there to give them the trends they craved at a fraction of the cost (and often testing the boundary between "inspired by" and outright ripped off in the process). As menswear became more like womenswear—more driven by “it” items from season to season—guys started looking for new ways to keep up with the revolving door of trends.
The times are changing once again. Interest in fast-fashion is, for the first time, waning. In the first quarter of this year, H&M had their first monthly sales drop in nearly four years, and Zara parent company Inditex SA saw profitability shrink to an eight-year low. They attribute these strains to divergent spending habits and the rise of competition, but it's also coming from the ground up—via young, independent, hungry labels that have used social media to attract young, trend-hungry customers. These brands might not categorize themselves as fast-fashion, but despite their relatively modest sizes, they understand the importance of instant gratification to their style-savvy, cost-cognizant audience. And like their more corporate competition, brands like Represent, KNYEW, and MNML have gotten popular by flipping the hottest current trends into instantly-available items, while using social media and YouTube to reach new customers. But to the designers giving the inspiration, like Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo, some of these new-age fast-fashion brands are more like imitators than actual designers.
Richard Sung, the co-founder of Las Vegas lifestyle brand KNYEW, knows what makes customers apprehensive about traditional fast-fashion retailers. “When I think of fast-fashion, I think of a massive tornado,” he says. “It sucks up everything in its path, feeding off other designers, destroying the environment we live in with absolutely no remorse for the devastation it leaves behind.” But labels like Sung’s are still taking a page out of the Zara playbook. Rather than revolutionize by inventing the next big trend, they've gotten ahead by hopping on current trends quicker than anyone else.
Brothers George and Mike Heaton started Represent with a small collection of distressed and ripped denim. Since then, the line has evolved into outerwear, velour hoodies, mohair shirts and crepe sole boots—the kind of products that hit runways a few seasons ago but are just now trickling down to the masses. "Fast-fashion puts such a pressure on the high-end seasonal approach to retail," George says. Represent has to keep up with trends just like any fast-fashion brand, but being small allows them to be nimble and selective about which trends they choose to hop on. They don’t have to make clothes in line with every trend. They just need the ones they bet on to be hits.
Represent’s competitive prices—bomber jackets for $370 and jeans for $150 that resemble the $1,000-plus versions made by Fear Of God—are a product of striking while the trend iron is hot. “We’re able to exceed minimum quantities [for fabric orders], which in turn brings prices down, which helps us create a wholesale margin as well as a healthy retail profit,” George Heaton says. In that way, Represent isn’t much different than a traditional fast-fashion retailer. Sell a shit ton of a shirt or pants, and you can buy up the fabric to make them for less. Where they differ is in the amount of products they offer. Selling fewer total styles, which keeps the need to buy multiple different fabrics to a minimum.
Like their customers, Represent pays close attention to social media. So do other brands. “We’re always keeping an eye on what’s going on in other industries as well—music, visual art, design—to make sure we’re developing upon other relevant areas to incorporate into our line,” says George. “With blogs and influencers, that product elevation allows [products] to be pushed hard to the masses, which in turn makes it a trend.” Parisian brand Nid de Guepes, too, points to a vague idea of “youth culture” as their inspiration, but they also have a pragmatic-veering-toward-cynical approach to the industry. "In the ready-to-wear industry and fast-fashion, everything has been invented, you cannot create something really revolutionary," says Erwan Ferriere, the brand's communications manager. “We don’t have the same market power Vetements, Gosha [Rubchinskiy] or Off-White has. It’s risky for a brand like us to release something that will be trendy before any high fashion brand releases it. So we must re-interpret what’s trendy—which is in the fashion world most of the time un-wearable—and make it wearable.”

Other brands keep costs down in slightly less savory ways. The owner and founder of LA-based MNML, who prefers to go by “M” for what will be obvious reasons, admits that his designs do more than just pay homage. He works with factories overseas to make MNML’s line of jeans, primarily in India and China. He sends those factories examples of pieces to reproduce from popular brands like Fear of God and Saint Laurent. (He’s even had vintage Levi’s remade.) During our conversation, he says he’s wearing a pair of Saint Laurent jeans that served as the inspiration for MNML’s F36—though, in this case, “inspiration” isn’t entirely accurate. But he says his gear can hold its own. “The key to our success has just been partnering with amazing factories. We have probably the best wash house in China,” M says. “I see brands that make denim in LA or overseas. I walk into Barneys and I’m looking at $300 jeans and I’m like, ‘Your wash sucks.’ Our wash factory nails it.”
He takes pride in the quality of his products because he’s done his due diligence in what he’s sourcing and who he works with. He knows he wouldn’t be able to keep costs so low if everything was sourced and manufactured in LA. “The minimums are absolutely insane. It takes forever,” he explains. “It’s the apparel business, so if you want to be successful, especially if you have a fast-fashion brand, you’re definitely producing overseas.” M. admits that, as someone who cares about fashion, he sometimes feels guilty about replicating the work of popular, trendsetting brands, but doesn’t get too bent out of shape. “At the end of the day,” he says, “it’s a wash and some holes in jeans. And it’s about giving people the look that they want for less.”
Jerry Lorenzo couldn’t disagree more with MNML’s claim to being a sort of streetwear Robin Hood. “I don’t want to hear that they’re doing some service to people who can’t afford our product. If you want to do a service, go give some clothes to the homeless. Selling a pair of $100 jeans to a kid isn’t providing a service to him,” he says. In response, MNML’s designer M. sees things differently. “If a student can spend $64 for a pair of quality jeans as opposed to hundreds or even thousands of dollars to look good, I think that is a service to a degree. Even though we do donate to charity on a regular basis, MNML is obviously a business and we feel we are offering something of value to our customer.”

To Lorenzo, what these upstart fast-fashion labels do is extremely damaging to his brand, especially when they’re able to knock off his designs before he can get the authentic product to customers. But he’s most frustrated by the idea that someone will mistake their gear for his. “It took us a lot of time and work to nail those proportions and details, and they’re stealing our designs and passing them off as their own,” he says. “No one knows that their track pants aren’t Fear of God, and so when they see it they might think, ‘That’s a $900 track pant?’ because their quality sucks, and that’s damaging to what we’re doing.”
According to Lorenzo, MNML goes a step further than say a Zara or a Topman. The big brands might adopt his design language like side zippers and oversized fits, but not the whole design itself. “I take seeing pieces inspired by mine at, like, Topman or Zara as a sign we have influence,” he says. “But when you see a track pant or hoodie with the same seams, proportion, colors, and zipper placements, it’s just stealing. That brand built its entire brand off of our proposition. It’s like erasing our name off the homework assignment, putting yours on it and saying you did the work,” he says of MNML.
But MNML isn’t willing to sell the farm on the fact that they are stealing designs, per se. “Our aim is to offer affordable fashion, and we are following the model that Zara, Topman, and H&M laid,” says M. “The only difference between them and us is those companies make poor quality clothes, billions of dollars and they don’t pay attention to the details.” He says his clothing is inspired by multiple sources, no different than any other designer or brand, and the number of styles of denim he’s producing, along with the positive customer feedback he receives, is proof that he’s doing right by the customer.

Legally speaking, however, Lorenzo's options may be limited, as his designs don’t rely on heavy branding or ornamentation—marks, like Adidas’s three stripes or Nike’s swoosh, that are easier to copyright. Still, Lorenzo says his legal team is currently working on how to address MNML and companies like it. Previously, Fear of God took legal action against Represent for a bomber jacket Lorenzo felt was too close to his own—an issue that he says has since been resolved. (For what it's worth, Represent still sells a bomber jacket that is quite similar to the one Fear of God made back in 2014.)
Micro-trends, Instagram marketing, aggressive litigation: the world of independent fast-fashion is in its Wild West period. And that’s all because these brands want to serve a much savvier consumer than the retail world has ever seen. They’re online, they know the trends, and they know how much they're willing to spend to get them. In their pursuit of young, cool customers, these labels are not unlike their more profitable elders. And some of these independent labels can even stake a legitimate claim to delivering designer looks to the masses for less, without all of the negative connotations that come with fast-fashion mall shopping. For now, though, the line between counterfeit and inspiration remains blurry. And while a label like Represent can use its indie status as cover for trend-hopping, they want to expand: Represent plans to open its own store in 2018. And as indie fast-fashion jumps into the big leagues, a these companies will have to confront a challenge: they’ll run the risk of becoming the very thing they set out to disrupt.

Source: gq.com