The first time Santiago saw the Supreme Box Logo hoodie, he was blown away by the style and how it looked; he tried to buy one off of the Supreme website but saw that it was sold out so he went to BUMP and saw the huge prices. This was when Santiago knew that there was something special about this brand.

In the last couple of weeks, some TCS students have started wearing not only Supreme, but other brands like it, such as: OFF-WHITE, A Bathing Ape, Palace, and many others. These brands tend to drop items constantly but sell out extremely quickly, so in order to buy from then you either have to be lighting fast and know when they are going to drop, or you can buy them from resellers, usually with a huge mark-up.

The hype Community in TCS

Hoodies and shoes have been the way that students express their personality since it is now the norm to wear the school uniform everyday. Recently more and more people have been bringing hoodies and crewnecks from brands like Stussy, Supreme and ASSC, which has raised some eyebrows since it is known that these items are extremely rare and even harder to bring here to Colombia.

“Everything that I have from like a hype brand has always been something that I buy resell; I have tried to get them retail but it’s too hard and they sell out too fast,” said Junior student Julian Jaramillo “I am willing to pay the extra money because I love the way the box logo look and I like what the brand represents.”

“I love the way that these brands look,” said freshmen Antonio Lugo. “I can wear the clothes to the mall or just to like chill with my friends and I can also wear them to parties so there is like no wrong time to wear clothes from these brands because they are so versatile.”

How students get these items

Most of these streetwear brands were founded in the early to mid 90’s; it wasn’t easy to get items back then and it sure hasn’t gotten any easier, so TCS students have gotten creative.

“When I went to the Supreme store in New York, I went there completely ‘vanilla’ because I went there with $100 and in the middle of the week, when all the good stuff was already taken,” explained junior student Santiago Jimenez “now I have a proxy that helps me get the stuff I want right when it drops every thursday at 11.”

The hard part is not even getting the products themselves; because these stores have such limited supply, they take measures to assure that as many sales as possible are legitimate. One of the ways they do so is by requiring an American credit card with an American billing address. This makes it nearly impossible for people who live outside the U.S, to buy these items, but some people have even gotten past this.

“When I tried to buy a hoodie from Supreme, my credit card got rejected, so I tried with my mom’s credit card, and it got rejected too,” said Jimenez “I had to get a virtual credit card from U.S. Unlocked and jump through a lot of hoops in order to get my [hoodie], but it was a sick hoodie so it was worth it.”