SAN FRANCISCO FASHION

I’ve been rabbit-holing on fashion influences from San Francisco.

There’s this common assumption that SF has nothing to do with fashion. But some of the most iconic garments in American history started here. Levi Strauss & Co. and Jacob Davis developed riveted jeans in 1873, building on San Francisco’s Gold Rush workwear economy. Denim went on to become a defining fabric across workwear, youth culture, rebellion, and streetwear.

San Francisco then continued shaping fashion in quieter but equally important ways. Haight-Ashbury was a major center of 1960s counterculture and the Summer of Love, turning the late-1960s hippie style into a major fashion movement. Bay Area companies like Athleta helped commercialize activewear and athleisure in the late 2000s and 2010s. Then SF became an important hub for resale, circular fashion, and transparent fashion in the 2010s through brands like The RealReal and Everlane.

The city also deeply influenced glam and drag aesthetics, gender-fluid styling, skate culture’s impact on streetwear through Thrasher, and Silicon Valley’s dot-com casual helped normalize casual office wear while undercutting traditional suit-and-tie norms. We made it ok to wear sneakers with everything!

The common thread across so many SF fashion movements is comfort, functionality, individuality, and a willingness to show up as yourself rather than conform to tradition.

I wanted to bring some of that research into this project and keep building on it as I learn more.

Yana