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In recent years the term “pop-up” has become synonymous with the term “hypebeast.” If you don’t know what either of those two words mean then you’re probably just someone who doesn’t concern themselves with internet trends or the fashion world.
In short, a pop-up is a store which could sell any number of things, but most ordinarily sells clothes and accessories from high-end brand names to high school kids and readers of the now defunct blog Four Pins.
Supreme does pop-up shops all of the time as do many other brands intertwined in the world of street fashion like KITH, Bianca Chandon, and Stussy. The list goes on and on.
They make money hand over fist from kids with their parents credit card as well as from people called re-sellers who scoop up as much merchandise from a pop-up as they can and then hit the secondary market to flip it for three or four times what it is actually worth. Entire careers are based around the buying and re-selling of clothing from these aforementioned brands.
The lines for these pop-up shops usually wrap around several city blocks and it’s always for something that was printed by Kanye West, Drake, or Virgil Abloh on a fucking Hanes t-shirt.
The location is usually announced day of through word of mouth and obviously Twitter or Instagram and the chances of you actually getting some merchandise are slim to none.
The world of street fashion is very interesting and complex to me but I won’t bore you with anymore background on it. And while I am enthralled with street fashion, I also know how incredibly stupid and trivial it is.
The fact that people are willing to wait for days on end, sometimes camping out 72 hours in advance to get their hands on collaboration pieces by Louis Vuitton and Supreme is nauseating. The world is a sad, sad place and hypebeasts and pop-up shops only contribute to the problem. We knew this, though. The world is on the brink of destruction and that’s that. You know it and I know it.
For too long I have watched as the teeming masses line up in droves to buy this shit. For too long I’ve sat by and profited from none of that. That is until today when I decided that in the coming weeks I would like to open one myself.
It won’t be a pop-up per say. More of a booth thrown together from scrap wood I’ve found behind my apartment. I’ll set up a cash register and have a couple of t-shirts on a fancy looking rack like this one:
I’ll have Lil’ Uzi Vert or whoever the fuck the teens are listening to these days blasting from a portable Bose speaker and you’ll be able to buy Gildan white t-shirts with a custom design drawn by yours truly using only a Sharpie marker.
I’ll charge thirty or forty bucks a pop for the t-shirts with slogans on the front in bold lettering simply saying “Asshole,” “Cretan,” or my personal favorite “Hi, Bitch.”
Why am I thinking about doing this, you ask? Well, certainly there’s a financial gain to be made from making t-shirts that I can mark up and sell to idiots on the street.
But I also get the sense that anyone can just make a foray into the fashion industry with virtually no resistance. I’ll be the Mr. Brain Wash (made famous by Banksy) of the fashion world. I can latch onto to whatever Hailey Baldwin and Kylie Jenner are wearing this week on their Instagram story and make shirts that are of the same ilk. I can write “Stan Smith” on a pair of what are clearly a pair of Stan Smith’s, say they’re only available for the first 20 customers and sell them for eight times what they’re worth.
I could even send a t-shirt to Kanye West’s publicist and, on the off-chance that he wears it, become a very rich man. Duda Pop-Up is coming to you live October 1 from a location to be determined. Stay tuned for Will DeFries x John Duda collab..
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jduda@grandex.co
Kudos for the Mr. Brainwash reference, you should try this pop-up out at community festivals in Chicago or tourist destinations and see how many marks you can draw in