The way we choose to dress says everything about us. The style and color palette of your closet can hint towards your personality and affect the way you are perceived. Choosing what to stock your closet with affects the way you dress on a daily basis. Some items like t-shirts and sweats are so essential it can be difficult to imagine a wardrobe without them.
Knowing how to balance your wardrobe is also important, especially when it comes to streetwear. It is essential to keep your closet filled with items you can wear daily and smaller amounts of infrequently-worn garments. This means filling your wardrobe with pants and shirts of various kinds while adding a few quality layering pieces.
The very notion of basics relies on the introduction of separates, which did not occur until the early 1900s. Separates started with sportswear but quickly branched out to other styles of dress. Clothing separates allow the wearer to pair any garment with another, making stylistic versatility essential in basic apparel.
This standard method of dress is key to building any wardrobe, but the “basics” change depending on your overall style. We are here to highlight the fundamentals of streetwear basics. This means centering practical, quality garments over mass-produced, impersonal pieces.
Core Streetwear Elements
Some core design standards influence streetwear apparel. This includes both garment types, as well as the standards which underlie them.
Streetwear, especially as Daniel Patrick envisions it, takes many cues from sportswear. Highly versatile and exceptionally comfortable sweats join together with track pants, swim trunks, golf polos, and running sneakers. This leads to the perfect blend of function in fashion for garments which, when designed well, can be worn everywhere.
A good streetwear basic should be comfortable enough to be worn casually and provide a full range of athletic movement. Materials should be chosen for comfort or performance value. A good designer should have their own understated embellishments to make these universal pieces stand out.
The basics of streetwear also extend to tee shirts. This includes both standard shirts as well as graphic tees.
Since the introduction of the graphic tee to West Coast streetwear, it has become a staple in any wardrobe. They can be worn to highlight aesthetics, interests, and especially groups like sports teams or local interests. A graphic tee can subtly enhance an otherwise standard outfit with cutting visuals.
An ideal basic piece also makes a statement without dominating your wardrobe. The point of a wardrobe basic is its ability to fit countless outfits for countless occasions.
Because they can be worn more often, they may wear out more quickly than other garments. This makes true quality essential when picking your pieces. A quality, luxury garment both looks better and lasts longer than its standard peers. There’s no point in cutting corners when it comes to those pieces you wear the most.
The core elements of streetwear include both style and standard. Daniel Patrick will next be highlighting our own standards to exhibit how to turn everyday basics into exceptional pieces.
What Makes Our Basics Luxury
Many factors make a good streetwear brand. Many factors make a brand luxury. We embody both these qualities in our Basics Collection, which infuses everyday fashion with our own standards for exceptionalism.
A piece of clothing starts with the design. Every one of our pieces takes the standard design for its piece and is subtly altered for the modern-day wearer. Tonal embroidery and logo appliques embolden garments without them being defined by the presence of a logo. Center seams provide many of our shirts with a silhouette that recognizably fits the Daniel Patrick brand.
The material affects the way a garment feels, looks, and lasts. We only use the highest quality synthetic and organic materials available, sourced locally from the Los Angeles area. When we look elsewhere for material, it is only for the richness of specialty materials elsewhere. This includes Portuguese leather in some of our footwear.
Today, luxury goods are defined as much by the methods used to produce them as anything else. We keep almost all our production local, save for a few specialty items. This allows us to be more integrated into the process, as well as support our local community.
We also source much of our inspiration for patterns and graphics from the varied ecosystem surrounding Los Angeles. Glowing beaches, dusky smog, rugged mountains, and delicate plant life all figure heavily in many of our designs. The result is a line of fashion that truly feels like it is from a particular time and place.
The defining value that makes our basic apparel luxury fashion is, in order words, our personal sense of ethics. We refuse to compromise or take the easy way out in any step of the creation process. The result is high-quality essentials we will share below.
Our Basic Tops
We start our exploration of streetwear basics with arguably the most essential garment of all time. The Standard Tee is built knowing it has to contend with, conservatively speaking, hundreds of other tee shirts. To make it stand out, we have put the greatest care into materials, design, and colorways.
Each standard tee features a ribbed neck and center seam at the chest and back to redefine its silhouette. Heavyweight jersey materials give the piece an outstanding softness and performance capabilities under heavy use.
The Standard Tee is available in colors ranging from a variety of neutrals to cool mountain blue and bright mustard yellow. Variations of our standard tee made from performance tri-blend materials and cool-weather thermal knits are also available.
Consider the Box Jersey Polo for a slightly more dressed-up look. This polo can be dressed up or down with casual or semi-casual pants. A center seam runs where the distinctive polo collar ends, and DP embroidery highlights the left chest of the piece. An oversized, boxy fit redefines the way traditional polos drape.
Streetwear tops cannot be mentioned without highlighting at least one hoodie. The Surplus Hoodie takes the iconic look of a kangaroo-pouch hoodie and adds a variety of our own enhancements. These include rib knit cuffs as well as an adjustable waist bungee cord for a fit that’s truly personalized. The garment is made from heavyweight fleece to provide both comfort and warmth in this luxe layering piece.
The Surplus Hoodie matches well with our Surplus Sweatpants. This piece continues many of the previous design themes, including bungee cords for adjustable ankles.
These and the above pieces together cover most daily streetwear needs on a base level. It’s now time to examine bottom layers in streetwear.
Our Basic Bottoms
Few streetwear bottoms are as immediately recognizable or overall popular as the sweatpants. A good pair of sweatpants need to be competitively durable, loosely stylish, and undeniably comfortable. The Loop Terry Roaming Sweatpants meet this standard thanks to our own design directives.
Each piece features elastic at the cuffs and waist, as well as a contrast-colored natural drawcord. Lightweight loop terry provides supreme softness and the perfect level of warmth needed from a casual sweatpant. This makes the piece ideal for travel and everyday wear alike. Tonal embroidery along the left thigh adds one final highlight.
These pants are not just created in a vacuum. Colorways range from cool to bright and pastel to vivid in 11 different versions. Our Loop Terry Crewneck Sweatshirt and Loop Terry Standard Hoodie match these colorways for a seamless combination that can still lend itself to creative variations.
This luxuriously comfortable material can also be found in our Loop Terry Standard Sweatshort. These relaxed-fit sweatshorts drape to the midthigh, with a drawcord that dangles just below the knee. They also feature tonal embroidery of the full Daniel Patrick name along the left thigh. The result is a comfortable, casual short that can be dressed down for your workout or up for daily life.
Other sweatpants are also available, using only quality performance fabrics. Our Polar Fleece Roaming Sweatpants testifies to this effect. Elastic at the waist and cuffs define the silhouette, but the material is the truly defining feature of the pants.
Polar fleece is a type of fleece that is especially effective as an insulating garment. It even maintains this property when wet. This makes these sweatpants the perfect mild weather garment to protect you from dropping temperatures. A diamond applique logo and high-visibility colorways such as neon orange and purple haze serve to call attention to it.
Why You Should Improve Your Basics
Streetwear basics are the building blocks to any effective wardrobe. They can be used as base garments to build an outfit around or clarifying pieces to tie everything together. They are the pieces you will be seen wearing in your day-to-day life. This makes it all the more important that you choose quality essentials.
We believe in excellence, always. This holds true both for the fundamentals of design and the fundamentals of fashion.
Sources:
What Your Clothing Color Choice Says About You I Everyday Health