Baja hoodie an alternative hoodie
Alternative apparel has a Constant presence in the society we live in today. This scene, if that is the correct terminology for it is riffle with logos and brands and its hard to pull back the curtains so to speak. The Alternative style in apparel is particularly appealing to surfers and the outdoors with many adverts being targeted towards these groups. Marketers and large advertising firms have locked onto this groups vulnerability and in some cases insecurity and taken advantage of it. Similarly to the kind of advertising that top end fashion magazines have, images that make you want something that you never even knew about. Having mentioned the main stream fashion industry I would like to point out that the alternative scene isnt as pushy or snobby as the fashion scene but the alternative scene still has its flaws.
hippie hoodie
All of this nonsense of having to have the right clothes and be seen to be wearing the perfect out fit is a bit over rated. Ive only every seen one group of people ever achieve to ignore all sense of branding and thats the hippie, out and out hippies have the ability to oversee advertising (or in some cases just exclude themselves from it, which is an amazing and rare skill). It seems that every other type of person is targeted in some way. The clothes that they wear unusual in the sense that they are mass produced in small scale. For example alababa pants are everywhere but have never been mass produced by a company or label. It seems that every time they are made they are produced in about quantities of 40 or 50 but this may happen 20 or 30 times a day in different little workshops. Its a particularly unusual manufacturing style.
Baja hoodie and the big logos
The perfect example is the Mexican Baja hoodie. It has never gone out of fashion, it has always been there at some stage. The only time it was more than lingering in the fashion industry was during the 70s when hippies ruled the earth. Its vintage poncho style fitted into the hippies perfect life style. The Baja hoodie was there during the 80s and 90s and is still being a fashion icon today coming back into the world as a vintage Baja hoodie. This time with a twist as some top end surfer brands are trying to take a different angle and make the Baja hoodie into a main stream item. It is a massive under taking and fair play to them if they follow through and its successful. It will be very interesting to see how the Baja hoodie integrates into main stream fashion.
I can never see the original Mexican Baja hoodie becoming main stream, its one in a million, a legend and will live on forever as an outdoor / surfer vintage poncho / alternative apparel hoodie.