Obey Clothing, the streetwear apparel and accessories brand inspired by street art propaganda artist Shepard Fairey, is a unique brand in that it’s been able to crossover from action sports to fans inspired mostly through music, including punk, indie, rock, and hip-hop, as well as street and graffiti art, and even car culture aficionados. Mostly marketed through word-of-mouth (Obey does little advertising) since it’s inception, it’s grown to include a complete line of apparel including graphic T-shirts with design pieces from Shepard’s artwork, pants, denim, jackets, hoodies, caps, belts, wallets, among other things.
Label Networks TV talked to Burl Darden from Obey about the inspiration behind the brand and its success in global youth culture markets among both males and females. As he points out, the thing about Obey is that it fits in with anyone—not just skaters or graffiti artists—but also metal-heads and even hip-hop backpackers.
Obey is part of a new subculture of small brands gaining success on the fringes of action sports with crossover aspects that appeal to core youth culture interested in wearing pieces with a unique story, but from varied backgrounds. Other brands that drop into this crossover category include WeSC, Paul Frank, Cardboard Robot, and even Volcom to some extent—although the latter brand has now blossomed beyond this core grouping.
Such brands don’t always show at trade shows such as Action Sports Retailer, but extend out to others like Agenda, United, and even MAGIC if situated in the Street Culture section (Obey at this past show was at MAGIC for example, again on the fringes, located at the edge of the car culture section near Famous Stars and Straps, across from the core NYC scene such as 10 Deep and King Stampede, diagonal to urban labels such as Artful Dodger, and not far from punk brands such as Tripp NYC). Such brands also tend to be in key online retail shops such as DigitalGravel and KarmaLoop.
By not being pigeonholed as a skate brand, for example, Obey’s also been able to achieve a global audience rather quickly. As Label Networks international field research team has noted, Obey clothing has been spotted on trendsetters in Shanghai to Osaka, from Moscow to East London, and of course Brooklyn, Miami, Houston, Seattle, and Los Angeles. What it takes to make such an impact with a subtle splash, is more than creating a unique graphic T-shirt design or range of designs that appeal to a wider audience. It also includes a method of marketing distribution: word-of-mouth appeal that has cred.
Shepard Fairey’s street campaign from ’89 with the Andre the Giant stickers and Obey has been the backbone of the apparel brand, meaning it’s got a loyal, longstanding army of devotees ready to purchase the next thing that Obey produces—whether it be stickers, posters, caps, or clothing. The method started from the streets, the bottom-up, with loads of hustle, which you can still see with Shepard through his various nighttime tags in random cities around the world. Like Space Invader based out of Paris and his tiled Rubik’s cube and Pac Man artwork on buildings in various cities, the messages are meant for people who can “see” them. Space Invader, Obey, Swoon, Banksy…all make you look at things differently and their campaigns are stealth and potent. Such campaigning, whether for a political purpose, artistic expression, cultural jamming of corporate ads, or a clothing line, cannot be bought with dollars like a massive Nike billboard campaign in Times Square (think Nike I.D.), because it’s more like an explosion of personal stenciled artwork posted in the back alleys where only those in the know understand what it is they’re looking at when they see it. Add an apparel line attached to such a campaign and it’s a no-brainer who’s going to buy the message. As they say at Obey, the message is in the medium. The people who understand this medium, then pass the message along.
