MILAN — Take it from an authority: streetwear won’t ever be dead.

So believes streetwear guru Luca Benini, founding father of Slam Jam, which has taken a street-inspired approach since its early days in 1989. In an interview with WWD, the maven not only discussed the corporate’s recent expansion into womenswear within the lead-up to Slam Jam’s thirty fifth anniversary, but additionally shared thoughts on the state of the industry.

While the minimalist and beige-forward “quiet luxury” wave can have dimmed the keenness of hype beasts, Benini said that such a shift in fashion is just physiological. 

“I feel that a press release like ‘streetwear is dead’ can come only from those in fashion, not those costume at large. Fashion takes and rejects, and if we predict of streetwear as a food ingredient, there’s been a type of overuse — it was in every single place identical to parsley,” said Benini. “And since fashion has to vary by definition… [it’s understandable] that after years, there was a necessity to return to something more minimal.”

“Streetwear is dead identical to punk is dead — which is rarely dead, because even after 50 years, we still discuss it. Streetwear existed before fashion noticed it and can exist after it, too,” continued Benini. “What happened was that after a long time that [streetwear] was ill-viewed from the style system, at a certain point the industry realized there might have been something to take even from there. That principally it could offer quite a bit — and it did. In return, streetwear received quite a bit from this closeness to fashion, as well: it understood that clothes could possibly be made higher, it upped the standard.”

Began from a garage in Ferrara, Italy, Slam Jam was on the scene way before the category became mainstream. Benini established the primary Italian company to distribute cool American streetwear brands within the country, having catapulted the likes of Stüssy, Carhartt WIP and Alpha Industries to Italian and European fame, and establishing a way of all-are-welcome style by mixing music, art and clubbing outside of the European fashion establishment.

What kicked off as a small warehouse operation in Ferrara evolved into a world company that highlights urban subcultures and their cultural influence. From the mid-2000s onwards, Slam Jam progressively expanded its scope, adding a direct-to-consumer business with retail on top of its distribution arm. It introduced a cult e-commerce site, in addition to multibrand stores in Ferrara, contained in the headquarters, and in Milan.

To this end, the corporate decided to mark its approaching thirty fifth anniversary by expanding its product assortment and bringing its viewpoint to womenswear, too. 

“We’re in a continuing dialogue with our community and we felt it was natural — yet urgent — to increase our brand selection with the intention to serve our people higher through more categories, with a powerful concentrate on accessories,” said Benini. “For years we now have occasionally included after which removed women’s items, but now times were ripe to take a decisive step into this direction with a certain selection… There’s a dedicated buying that focuses in translating the Slam Jam attitude into the ladies’s world.”

The assortment blends emerging and established names, including Chet Lo, Jean Paul Gaultier, Martine Rose, Marrknull, Roussey, Abra, Guess USA and Kiko Kostadinov.

Benini, who can be behind a number of the sector’s successful collaborations — including Napapijri and Martine Rose, Oakley and Samuel Ross — confirmed that “the best way we operate won’t change, so there might be projects in partnership with brands that might range from the product to an experience or an event” for the ladies’s segment, too.

“Today multibrand stores need to offer corporations greater than only a window for his or her products, but additionally contents, collaborations and feedback,” said Benini. “This makes [the job] more interesting but additionally more complex since it means you don’t need to have just buyers, but additionally other figures capable of answer to different demands, and ultimately turn these destinations into something more.”

Speaking of collaborations, probably the most recent one is the XT-Quest 1 for Slam Jam sneaker developed with French sportswear label Salomon, which dropped Thursday. Marking the second tie-up between the 2 parties, the 190-euro outdoor-inspired footwear style nods to the rugged fantastic thing about desert landscapes and goals to make clear the importance of dialogue with nature.

For the occasion, the businesses conceived an immersive retail experience on the Beijing hot spot SKP and a takeover of the Shanghai-based electronic music club Heim Club with a six-hour party and international DJ guests.

The project marks one other step within the lead-up to Slam Jam’s anniversary, which might be celebrated with a free zine created with Zero and retracing the last “35 years of history of culture we imagine to have contributed to,” said Benini. The publication might be offered at Slam Jam stores, included within the deliveries of online purchases, in addition to available in a collection of bars in Italy and abroad ranging from the fourth quarter.

Overall, Benini defined 2023 as one of the complicated years, with the corporate’s DTC channel “growing but little.” Slam Jam reported a complete turnover of fifty million euros in 2022, equally divided between its business-to-consumer and business-to-business legs. 

Because the mid-2010s, the latter segment also includes production, design, licensing, brand consultancy and marketing services, along with distribution, as Slam Jam added one other layer to its corporate structure and evolved from curator to creator.

Slam Jam’s portfolio includes majority stakes in brands akin to Roa and _J.L-A.L_; a minority stake in Aries and the license of the soccer-rooted label Umbro for the premium lifestyle segment, as reported. Production accounts for 80 percent of Slam Jam’s business-to-business revenues. 

The expansion of this business marked a pivotal change for Slam Jam, as “we now have to supply and maintain creativity,” said Benini. “It’s like a distinct job, which I hope it’ll mark the long run of this company.”

Looking ahead, Benini’s wish is “to seek out with my team something that continues to make us unique, because one other thing that’s scaring me of the market at once is homologation.”

“Unfortunately, there’s an excessive amount of stuff, they usually all look too similar. I feel it’s our duty to try to distinguish ourselves and find our place in a world that today may be very, very homologated,” he said.

Methods to do this? “I don’t know. We’re eager about it each day,” said Benini candidly. “Perhaps attempting to think in a way that’s slightly revolutionary; attempting to revolutionize what has been done up to now. And I comprehend it’s difficult, since the things that work out are probably the most difficult to let go of, but I feel that there’s a necessity for a [thought] that may enable this company to seek out quite a novel place in a market that today makes it difficult to be different.”

“Luckily Slam Jam has a powerful identity, so we don’t need to create uniqueness. We now have to preserve it, stimulate its evolution and communicate it,” continued the founder. “We now have to reinvent ourselves by remaining true to ourselves… And we don’t need to be afraid to diversify where we invest energies and concepts.” 

Being a full-stack business partner comes with the privilege of getting a special observatory within the industry, which enables Slam Jam to oversee the event of a product or project from A to Z, representing “already a uniqueness by way of business architecture,” noted the founder. 

Asked about how the surface perception of Slam Jam has evolved through the a long time, Benini joked that “there’s more confusion.” 

“I see that sometimes we’re identified as a retailer but we’re not only that,” he said. But for an organization that has “Chaos is Order” as one in all its claims, that doesn’t sound like a significant concern for Benini. He underscored that Slam Jam’s increasing complexity and internationalization marked its evolution and identified within the shift from curation to creation one in all the three major turning points of the past 35 years.

The primary two Benini pinpointed were his first trips to Recent York and Los Angeles within the early ‘90s, which kick-started Slam Jam’s journey and people to Tokyo within the early 2000s. 

“I began to work in fashion within the early ‘80s and Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace and Gianfranco Ferré were among the many designers influencing me. Seeing streetwear going toward a more fashion orientation — and the firsts on this sense were the Japanese brands — has been pivotal for this company,” recalled Benini. “Once I opened the shop in Verona, the thought was to have Dior next to the Neighborhood. Perhaps it didn’t turned out really like that, but we had Sacai and Undercover, and all this was happening long before that famous Supreme collaboration with Louis Vuitton.”

Asked in regards to the current designers who’re influencing him, Benini struggled to supply names as “today greater than single designers, situations encourage me.”

“The sensation I actually have is that greater than absorbing, now it’s time for me to release. I had managed these past 4 a long time as blotting paper, and perhaps now that blotting paper is drenched,” said Benini. 

“I actually have at all times had guiding lights since I began working, from Fiorucci to Armani, from Shawn Stüssy to Hiroshi Fujiwara and lots of more,” he continued. “Today, it feels right that every little thing that I’ve absorbed, I release it under the guise of the projects we’re doing… But don’t mistake it for being self-referential, reasonably for expanding horizons much more going forward and perhaps finding recent references inside me — which it will probably even be a pain within the neck because I’m not used to it and it’s difficult,” he added with amusing. 

What’s sure is that music will at all times play a central role in Benini’s universe, as proved by the Archivio Slam Jam personal archive inaugurated in 2021, which gathered the memorabilia and knickknacks he has collected through the years for a complete of around 30,000 objects, including 10,000 vinyl records hinging on the counterculture and club scenes from ‘90s Recent York, London and Italy.

Through the years, Slam Jam also dropped a series of music-leaning capsule collections under its (Un)corporate Uniforms private label project introduced in 2020. These paid homage to the likes of Italian punk band CCCP, to Akron, Ohio-based band Devo, and to the Gaznevada music group from Bologna.

Benini can be committed in continuing to explore Slam Jam’s role as cultural promoter, which was fueled with the opening of the Spazio Maiocchi multidisciplinary hub in Milan in 2017.