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Dior x Shawn Stussy fashion collection brings OG streetwear designer back into the fold

  • Shawn Stussy, one of the godfathers of streetwear, has created a line of relaxed, surferesque clothes with the French high-fashion label
  • The designer has been out of the limelight, and out of fashion, for 20 years, but doesn’t rule out a return to the industry

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Shawn Stussy’s collaboration with fashion house Dior has brought the OG streetwear designer back into the fashion fold. Photo: Brett Lloyd

To millennials who grew up watching hip-hop videos on MTV and collecting Nike and Adidas shoes, Shawn Stussy is the real deal.

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The man who founded sportswear brand Stussy 40 years ago in California doesn’t like the word “streetwear” and is modest about his contribution to fashion. Yet he and James Jebbia, the creator of Supreme, are the godfathers of streetwear as we know it.
Shawn Stussy at a Dior fashion show in Miami. Photo: Alfredo Piola
Shawn Stussy at a Dior fashion show in Miami. Photo: Alfredo Piola

In the label’s heyday Stussy’s signature script logo – scrawled longhand by Stussy himself and stitched on T-shirts, baseball caps, jeans and sweatshirts – was a marker of street cred. And its downtown New York shop was a pilgrimage site for skaters and sneakerheads across the United States and beyond.

Stussy left the brand 20 years ago. “I was doing the same thing for so many years, so I was a bit [tired],” he says succinctly by way of explanation when we meet before the unveiling of Dior Men’s autumn 2020 collection in Miami earlier this month.
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A Stussy logo on a T-shirt. Photo: Shutterstock
A Stussy logo on a T-shirt. Photo: Shutterstock
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