Meet the cool kids who are shaping Singapore's sneaker culture. In the first of a three-part series, co-founder of Culture Cartel Douglas Khee shares the inception of convention and media platform, Culture Cartel, and how sneakers constitute a large part of streetwear
For Culture Cartel co-founder Douglas Khee, the originality and can-do attitude are just some of the aspects that he finds fascinating about street culture. “I was first drawn to music such as hip-hop and indie rock at age 16 before being hooked on to the lifestyle surrounding basketball, freestyle BMX and skateboarding,” he says.
Realising that there was a lack of space in Singapore for enthusiasts to gather, he teamed up with three other street enthusiasts in 2018 to launch a convention and a media platform featuring the four key pillars: fashion, art, toys and tattoos that constitute this subculture. He shares: “We wanted to make them accessible to the masses as these pillars may seem intimidating at first glance.”
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Sneakers constitute a large part of streetwear, and the culture has evolved by leaps and bounds partially attributed to fashion trends and social media. "Today, everyone wears sneakers to boardroom meetings and gala dinners but this wasn't the case 25 years ago. Sneakers were only accepted as sports attire and not daily wear."
Yet despite being knee‑deep in street culture, Khee considers himself an average sneaker collector. "One of my all-time favourite pair of sneakers is the iconic Reebok Instapump Fury, designed by legendary sneaker designer, Steven Smith," says Khee. "When it launched 1994, the design, colourway and cushioning system was ahead of its time. I came to know about the sneaker only because my favourite singer at the time, Björk, wore it all over her fashion spreads. I then chanced upon a pair in my size at Royal Sporting House in Marina Square of all places! Today, the sneaker is still considered to be revolutionary in its design."
Over the past two decades, he has witnessed an exponential growth of the sneaker community in Singapore and Southeast Asia. “We’ve had a small group of sneaker collectors in Singapore since the early 1990s,” he explains. “Collectors used to discover new sneaker launches through blogs or Japanese magazines. Otherwise, they would travel to Japan or the US to acquire them as there were no online stores.” The inception of e-commerce sites such as eBay in the late 1990s enabled them to buy and sell sneakers on a global level—“that was when sneaker culture started to expand”.