Highsnobiety Guide – Sneek Peak

Brands Are the
New Bands
A Letter from David Fischer
4
There was no conscious decision
taken at any point that led me to
start Highsnobiety. I didn’t notice a
gap in the market that was underserved,
and I didn’t see an opportunity
to speak to an audience that
was into the same things as me.
I just wanted to create something.
I was interested in blogging technology
at the time—so I signed up
on Blogspot under the name
“Highsnobiety.” Back then, it was
obvious to me that this needed to
be about was my passions—and
my passions are streetwear, sneakers,
and fashion, quite frankly.
So, it was this mix of exciting
things that I saw coming out of the
Japanese and American market,
mixed with my European background.
Of course, if you were
Europe-based and into fashion, then
that conversation mostly revolved
around the luxury space. I was into
Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Viktor & Rolf,
Dries Van Noten, and other European
high-fashion brands. At the same
time, in the U.S. you saw this first
wave of streetwear brands that suddenly
elevated skate fashion. So the
$19 T-shirt was elevated to a $50
T-shirt with a great fit and good
quality. Supreme made a New Era
baseball cap out of cashmere and
sold it for about $59.50.
I was always in love with
these opposites. Cashmere and the
baseball cap, Louis Vuitton and
Takashi Murakami’s art. These
things lived on different sides of a
spectrum, but they worked really
well together. Right around the
same time there was this art documentary
called Beautiful Losers,
which was produced by Sidetrack
Films. It had ESPO, Harmony
Korine, Shepherd Fairey, Barry
McGee, Ed Templeton, and Mark
Gonzales—and again, that title
“Beautiful Losers,” I loved that as
well. This attraction of opposites
breaking down barriers and bringing
different worlds together. That
was always super exciting to me.
I was always in love with these opposites. Cashmere and the baseball cap, Louis
Vuitton and Takashi Murakami’s art. These things lived on different sides of a
spectrum, but they worked really well together.
Those are the things that I
wrapped my life around—be it
footwear, style, music, or art. At the
heart of it, I was collecting the very
best of what I found on the internet.
What‘s interesting about blogs is
that back then, blogs were a place
where people had personal conversations,
and they left notes. It was
very personal. I think a lot of that
conversation already existed on forums
about sneakers and fashion,
but nobody was doing it on a blog,
where you could expose all of this
great product to a potentially larger
group of people, who maybe didn’t
know what it was, but all of a sudden
wanted to get into it. This was a
pre-social media era, and for better
or worse I wasn’t even really looking
at numbers. But I started to understand
their significance when I noticed
the numbers were going up.
The name “Highsnobiety”
comes from the book How to Lose
Friends and Alienate People, and the
story‘s about this English journalist
Toby James that moves to New York
City, ends up working for Vanity Fair,
and suddenly gets thrust into this
dynamic social life with people in
high society. And he becomes a
complete asshole in the process.
The German title of the book was
“High Snobiety,” and to be honest, it
was only the name that stood out to
me. The name stands for what I
loved back then, and what I’m still
I‘m in love with. I love the wordplay,
I loved this idea of being a
“snob” about something, and by
“snob” I don‘t mean the negative
connotations of the word, but more
this idea of being obsessed with
something, like being snobbish on a
certain subject matter. It’s like a double-edged
sword. On one side, I’m
100% snobby about what I’m into.
On the other, I do my best to make it
accessible. It‘s not just for a certain
person anymore; anybody can come
into this world and be attracted to a
product, brand, or the lifestyle. The
snob part of it is a little bit of a play
on words, but what it plays to is this
idea that we‘re looking and trying to
cover something that‘s the best expression
of a product.