ok ok ok, listen up… So the word ‘Street’ coupled with another word like ‘wear’ or ‘culture’ are used by a heck of a lot of people…..but its sort of an indefinable thing.  Streetwear is at the heart of an urban subculture that is intense…provocative…challenging…that takes a fluid form and pops up in many different arena’s in many different forms.  

Wearing RISE or ALIFE or Crooks…doesn’t make you ‘Street’.  There is no uniform, there is no code.  And yet at the centre of it all, there’s a mutual understanding between those who wear streetwear and are involved in the subculture about what it is, or usually….what its not.  For the keen students, homework is to read STREETWEAR by Steven Vogel.   

In years gone by, the UK has had little to show in the streetwear arena in comparison to the US…but like the evolution of hip hop and the birth of UK grime…the UK is starting to have a quiet but assured voice, worthy of recognition and respect in the streetwear arena.  RISE Worldwide draws closer to the US roots of streetwear than possibly any UK brand…Big prints.  Bold graphics.  Uncompromising ideology.  A love for the product.  A love for the message.  And most importantly a love for streetwear what we do. 

In the next few days…weeks…who knows, we at RISE are going to be blogging about some of the blogs that we love, and that focus on the sort of brands that we rate and sit with……..mostly blogs that focus on streetwear and streetculture and other random ones that interest us too.  We will be rating each blog on the RISE Worldwide rating system and each will get a score out of 10.  For those of you hooked up to RSS feeds, you can hear about blogs you may not have heard about….and for those of you that aren’t hooked up to RSS, take a step back, have a word with yourself……and now go and get NetNewsWire.  Its the shiz.  peace to your mothers…