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On a weekend in January, groups of young people were spotted climbing fences and running through a car park in Wormwood Scrubs, west London, carrying puffer jackets from brands including The North Face, Stussy, Moncler, Supreme and Arc’teryx. They were following clues to take part in Da Great Bolo Exchange, an event organised by London-based streetwear brand Corteiz. Coordinates were shared on social media along with instructions to bring an authentic branded down jacket in reasonable condition. That made you eligible to receive one of Corteiz’s new Bolo jackets. Hundreds of young adults showed up, even though the brand had only 50 jackets to give away.
Corteiz (also known as Crtz) was launched in 2017. The founder is known publicly as simply Clint. His pieces — including £30 t-shirts, £120 joggers and £125 cargos — feature a distinctive Alcatraz logo that represents rebellion against convention, considered the core message behind the brand.
Pieces tend to sell out within minutes. The brand produces a limited run of each product, sold via a private e-commerce site (only those selected are granted access via a password) or at a surprise drop in the physical world. The Instagram account is also private. Resale is discouraged by Corteiz, but difficult to enforce — Bolo jackets are retailing on Depop for £500.
Clint himself declined to speak with Vogue Business for this story and rarely speaks to press, but it’s important not to overlook how this brand, and its hugely engaged community, is evolving. Corteiz is a new kind of modern streetwear brand that is keen to set itself apart from other players in a global streetwear industry worth $185 billion, according to PWC, with an egalitarian attitude and tight-knit community drawn to the anti-establishment ethos. A January tweet to tease the event read: “All the people who’ve had their norfy for 3 years+ & its been ran tru, battered and bruised. Tomorrow is your time to redeem it for something that will keep you warmer, satisfied & drippier. 50 Bolo’s only. Safe.”
Corteiz is tapping into a sector that has lost touch with its origins in a drive to make money, according to Laura Leeb, a director at PWC's strategy consulting arm Strategy& and author of the company's Streetwear: The New Exclusivity report. Counter-cultural authenticity has been replaced by the commercial imperatives of a multi-billion dollar retail market for the under-25s, she says.
The rise of secondhand channels like StockX, Grailed and Goat has also nurtured a $36 billion resale industry where consumers can make money from selling rare, limited-edition sneakers and other collectible pieces. The market is expected to more than double to $77 billion in the next five years, according to 2021 data from Thredup. Streetwear has become mass, says Leeb. “Many luxury brands are redefining themselves as streetwear brands – and existing players like Supreme have gotten massive due to acquisitions.”
This is not Clint’s first brand. A predecessor to Corteiz was Cade, which he founded in 2015 with his friend Ade Sanusi at the age of 19. Both were part of Apex, a London-based collective of creative teenagers who bonded over self expression and personal style while maintaining an IDGAF attitude. It’s unclear when the brand stopped operating.
Corteiz has over 190,000 followers on Instagram and more than 32,700 on Twitter. In January 2022, it was one of the most searched-for brands in the UK on Depop, with its joggers particularly popular. The brand’s fans included the late Virgil Abloh, founder of streetwear brand Off-White and artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear, who wore Corteiz's "Rules The World” socks to the Met Gala in September 2021, as well as influential British music artists such as Slowthai, Jorja Smith, KwolleM and Central Cee.
Connecting with fans
The Corteiz fandom is spectacular, observers say. “I haven’t seen that in fashion in a long time,” says Cody Eastmond, who has worked on digital marketing campaigns at creative agency Science Magic with brands such as Glossier and Versace. “Supreme had some of that — where people would sit outside and wait to get into the store. But, many streetwear brands have matured and lost that locality.”
Darnell Ferguson documents Corteiz's drops on his YouTube account Darnell Vlogs, which has 58,000 subscribers, and Instagram account @dvrnsz with over 19,000 followers. “I’ve seen the hype… People were missing work to come and swap their jackets, without the guarantee of even getting a coat,” he says. “I haven't seen another brand do something quite like what Corteiz is doing.”
Authenticity is core to the brand message of Corteiz, which is marketed only through social media, standing out in contrast to the heavy marketing spend of mainstream streetwear brands. “Corteiz doesn’t gift people or pay for promotions, so the celebrities you see rocking it have believed in it,” says Sandy Kaur, the London-based entrepreneur behind the platform and podcast Her Story In Sneakers, who first discovered Corteiz through the sneaker community in 2019. “The garms are high quality but they aren’t gentrified. The company is Black-owned and very much stands for London culture. It’s an ‘if-you-know-you-know’ brand when you wear it out and about.”
Why does this matter? “Buying from Crtz allows people to feel like they’re part of a community,” says Kaur. “I mean, Central Cee wore a full Crtz fit to the Louis Vuitton fashion show and didn’t look out of place. That has to count for something, right?”
The feeling of connectivity matters intensely to many younger consumers who are still exploring and developing their personalities, says Pavel Dler, founder and chief executive of youth media company Culted. “There’s a gap in the market for brands that make you feel like you belong. Brands often struggle to authentically connect with young fashion and streetwear enthusiasts because they fail to be transparent about their values and contribution towards communities that they’re trying to reach,” he explains. “Corteiz does all of these things without even trying. It’s just clothes, made by the community for the community, in a way that brings them together.”
Streetwear’s assimilation into the mainstream
As traditional marketing loses traction with younger consumers, some fashion brands have experimented with streetwear-style drops to create hype. Specialist streetwear designers are being courted. In January, Swiss luxury brand Bally named 29-year-old Rhuigi Villaseñor, founder of streetwear brand Rhude, as its new creative director. In a series of appointments in 2021, LVMH made A Bathing Ape founder Nigo creative director of Kenzo; Gap struck a 10-year-deal for a Yeezy partnership with Kanye West; and J Crew hired as its new creative director Brendon Babenzien, former creative director of Supreme and founder of streetwear label Noah.
The challenge for the streetwear industry is to stay true to its original roots, says Culted’s Dler. “In recent years it has been commodified and glamourised. It’s been boxed and labelled as one thing, but it’s bigger and more fluid than that.”
Corteiz returns to streetwear’s beginnings, observes Felix Katt, engagement manager at PWC's Strategy&. “The underlying theme here is accessibility and non-conformity. It’s not about whether you’re wealthy and can afford it, but rather it’s about being part of the community and therefore being in the know,” he says.
Younger fans are receptive, Eastmond observes. “They’re used to this behaviour. There are Discord and Reddit forums where people share information on how to get access. For brands, it’s about knowing your audience and how to communicate with them.”
Social responsibility initiatives appeal to this community. The January down jacket swap event had a surprising charitable twist. Three days later, Clint revealed that all the jackets were donated to St Laurence's Larder, a London-based organisation that provides meals for the homeless and those in need. “I’ve recently seen more environmental, social and governance (ESG) campaigns,” says Strategy&’s Katt. “That makes sense because streetwear is about being in touch with a brand that aligns with your personal values. It’s a new undercurrent in streetwear that I personally didn’t see two or three years ago.”
Could Corteiz lead a return to a more authentic kind of streetwear? “Corporations and fashion houses have profited from a culture that was never really theirs, and the only place streetwear can really head next is returning to where it originated,” says entrepreneur Kaur. “Corteiz is hot right now due to the noise it made, but it will survive beyond being a trend because its core base never relied on the support of the masses. Corteiz isn’t hype — it’s London.”
Clarification: Removes full name of Clint per request of the founder due to safety concerns. (31 January 2022)
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