If you take a walk through nearly any neighborhood below 14th Street in Manhattan, around a block in Williamsburg or down Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, you’ll see them everywhere: the Aimé Leon Dore guys. They’ve all got the same ALD-embroidered baseball cap, the same lace t-shirt, and the same black and white loafers or New Balance 550s. Every piece is instantly recognizable — not because of its originality but because it’s been worn and replicated hundreds of times by the same kind of person. 

Today’s ALD guy is yesterday’s Supreme fanatic. He once lined up outside of Supreme or watched the clock hit 11 a.m. to start shopping online. These guys haven’t developed good taste in fashion and aren’t becoming fashion-forward. They aren’t exploring fashion or curating their own — they’re simply following a brand’s instructions but now from a different source.

Back in 2016, hypebeast culture was loud and brash. Oversized graphics, bold logos, exclusivity and resale culture dominated the scene. People didn’t want to look good; they wanted to feel on trend. The brands didn’t just make clothing; they made the culture. Choosing to wear Supreme wasn’t just a fashion choice but a cultural statement of belonging. 

Now in 2025, the same crowd and culture remain — they just dress differently: The Supreme Box Logo hoodie has been swapped for the ALD Unisphere hoodie; joggers are now “trousers;” and YEEZYs have been swapped for loafers. The hypebeast is not dead — it’s simply taken a different shape. 

Supreme was the blueprint; now it’s ALD. What changed isn’t the consumer — it’s the aesthetic. However, the formula stayed the same: Buy the brand and let the outfit do the talking.

Teddy Santis, ALD’s founder and creative director, combines ‘90s New York streetwear with a nostalgic touch of European and Mediterranean leisure, crafting an aesthetic that is aspirational and accessible. 

In a post-COVID-19 time marked by economic precarity and shifting consumer attitudes, loud displays of wealth began to feel gauche, which is where ALD bridged the gap. For hypebeasts who once idolized ‘90s streetwear icons — maybe the Lo Lifes or the visual mashup of Nas — ALD represents a mature version of that dream. 

ALD’s business model is genius. The sheer power of their branding sells an aesthetic without asking people to develop their own actual style. Their campaigns are well curated to be aspirational: a man sipping coffee or leaning on a vintage Porsche. The settings — cafes, SoHo streets and Brooklyn stoops — evoke emotion and give an illusion of authenticity. Their message is evident: Buy this and you’ll become the man in the photo.

Except they won’t. Copying an outfit doesn’t make you stylish; it simply makes you a consumer of a brand and a participant in their strategic branding. 

This is what’s become of present-day fashion: more curated than creative. People are no longer doing their own styling; brands cultivate it for them. Fashion is seemingly no longer about individuality or idiosyncrasy; it’s about recreating someone else’s aesthetic — even down to the location. 

It’s worth acknowledging that not everyone is naturally stylish. That’s fine. But also, neither is a person who wears curated outfits directly from a brand’s lookbook. If everyone were to wear the same outfit, it would just become a uniform — a fashionable uniform, but, regardless, still uniform.

Of course, people are free to wear whatever they want. But we should still think critically about how brands influence our perceptions of taste and identity. 

The original critique of hypebeasts surrounded their perceived lack of depth and individuality. Now, that same crowd cosplays possessing this depth, which they still lack. They have swapped their streetwear for tailored casualwear, believing this swap signals evolution — as if lace shirts and pleated pants signal aesthetic maturity — and that swapping out a Supreme hoodie for a fisherman’s knit suddenly reflects sophistication.

Fashion isn’t about dressing like a mannequin or a lookbook; it’s about developing your own style. An outfit should express your personality, not just reflect what a brand tells you to be. 

As Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) famously put it in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), “You’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” Today, “this room” is ALD’s curated Instagram feed and their lookbooks. Fashion has become a homogenous showroom disguised as a lifestyle. 

These outfits may look personal, but they’ve been preapproved, prestyled and premarketed to target their demographic strategically to feel like each consumer’s own, individual discovery.

So the next time you see an ALD cap or black-and-white loafers in the wild, just know the hypebeast didn’t die. He just turned in his Box Logo for ALD and shrunk his logos. But the playbook has stayed exactly the same.