Whether they like it or not, streetwear designers have a responsibility. Their main customer base is made up of teenagers and 20-somethings who wait hours in line to cop these labels’ new releases. They’ll covet and save to purchase nearly anything stamped with a familiar logo, even if it’s a plastic MetroCard. As Virgil Abloh said while speaking alongside Heron Preston at Vogue’s Forces of Fashion conference last year, “The unique position in which Heron and I sit is that we are creating for the 17-year-old.” At that same panel discussion, Preston talked about his innovative collaboration with the New York Department of Sanitation and the idea of “dreaming up a possibility or breaking a boundary.” In his still young career, Preston has proven himself to be a creative thinker and boundary breaker. But today, amid headlines that include accusations of poisoning a former Russian spy on British soil and U.S. election hacking, both allegedly perpetrated by the Russian government, some are questioning whether a line has been crossed.
Yesterday, Preston released a special collaboration with Moscow store KM20 that includes riffs on Russian tourist merch like embellished, logoed fanny packs and a $594 T-shirt with Vladimir Putin’s aviator-bedecked face on the front and the words Mr. President emblazoned in crystals. For a designer whose last capsule collection was inspired by a walk down a dirty, littered beach in Ibiza and an urge to clean it up, this seems like an odd pivot. With presidential elections set to take place in Russia on March 18 and Putin likely to be elected for a whopping fourth time (this despite his dictatorial manner of leading the nation), the T-shirt is not just another one of fashion’s fun, cheeky nods to tourist culture, but instead, as many will likely argue, a piece of propaganda. Preston is a bold creator and his intentions might have been good—he probably just wanted to take a risk and create a piece of clothing that would spark conversation about the state of the world. There’s nothing wrong with being a rule breaker; in fact, fashion could use more of those types. But when you prop up a violent political leader on a T-shirt and sell it to impressionable 17-year-olds—or anyone just north of that age with voting power—that’s when the rules of streetwear need some redefining.
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