How many articles talk about women's streetwear?

Since its explosion in the early ten years, the streetwear world has always seen man as the epicenter of a culture that has never made inclusivity its strong point. Despite some timid attempts by some brands, lookbooks and releases speak for themselves, with a percentage of male releases far higher than the ones for women in a battle that sees communication and the language of fashion as the main battlefield in the search for the answer to a question all too obvious: is streetwear male-dominated?

The answer comes in part from Gabriele Murtas, Ph.D. student in Business & Law at the University of Bergamo who has always been passionate about music and fashion, who through the creation of a dataset consisting of over 1545 luxury streetwear-themed articles from both from the main fashion magazines (Allure, BoF, CR Fashion Book, Elle, GQ, InStyle, Jalouse, Officiel, Vanity Fair, Vogue and WWD) and from the streetwear magazines (Complex, FY !, Highsnobiety, Hypebeast, Hypebae, Snobette and also nss) managed to carry out what in the jargon is called "dictionary analysis" to understand the percentage of articles dedicated to women's collections. The percentages are pretty clear, with an average of 73% for men's collections versus 27% for women's collections in a trend that sees its greatest peak in 2019, when MEN outnumber WOMEN by 101 vs.39. In fact this gap has never narrowed, but has actually seen a progressive increase from 2013 to today with a small brake last year, when the pandemic partially put the streetwear world on hold.

“streetwear has completely revolutionized the once-established − not to say dusty − fashion market. However, despite its sky-rocketing sales and widespread growth, streetwear has sadly remained close to its roots as a male-dominated movement” said Murtas about his work. “For instance, the long-awaited grand opening of the latest Supreme store in Milan on May 6th showed that the majority of the followers and avid consumers of streetwear are males. I literally spent over two hours interviewing people who were waiting to lay their hands on the new limited-edition Box Logo tee, and of all the people I have talked to, girls were less than a third of the total." Defining streetwear as a male centered culture may be an exaggeration but it best describes a mentality that has never fully had the desire, or courage, to put women at the center of the narrative. Many brands continue to use only men's models in their lookbooks of item that could have a unisex nature, while just as many sneakers still see the division into men's and women's releases. If the activity of the magazines analyzed by Murtas is only the mirror of the choices of the brands, it is these that have to begin to progressively change mentality, opening the doors to a necessary change in a movement that really wants to look to the future with hope.