While Givenchy may not wield the same influence and gravitas today—though Clare Waight Keller is doing her best to return the Parisian label to its former heights—there’s no denying that the first half of the 2010s was marked by Givenchy and its creative director at the time, Riccardo Tisci.

First appointed as creative director of Givenchy’s women’s haute couture and ready-to-wear lines in 2005, Tisci began overseeing menswear in 2008. Givenchy’s menswear under the Central Saint Martins-trained Italian designer was at the fore of many a trend, most notably its luxurious maximalist aesthetic at a time when minimalism was thriving and its embrace of hip-hop.

Tisci’s most celebrated work in the womenswear sphere were his extremely refined haute couture creations, which saw Givenchy go from five haute couture clients to 29, but, funnily enough, it was his most simple menswear designs which earned the label widespread fame and acclaim. Givenchy’s graphic T-shirts from the early 2010s became luxury staples and, to a certain extent, can be credited with ushering in an era where establishment fashion embraced streetwear styles. Fall/Winter 2011’s Rottweiler print is among the most iconic designs of the decade, worn by everybody from Kanye West—who we’ll get to in a minute—to Liv Tyler. Subsequent graphics, like Spring/Summer 2012’s Birds of Paradise and Spring/Summer 2013’s Renaissance-era Catholic iconography also enjoyed a great deal of commercial success and help cement the Tisci-Givenchy aesthetic—at least in menswear.

That aesthetic came to be favored by a number of the biggest rappers at the time, namely Kanye West and Jay-Z, who were routinely draped in Tisci’s latest creations during their Watch The Throne roll-out and tour—Tisci designed both the album jacket and their merch. While, on the womenswear front, Madonna, Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kim Kardashian were all fans of Tisci’s Givenchy. Many considered West and Kardashian to be Tisci’s muses at Givenchy and, regardless of whether that’s true, it’s impossible to overstate the influence that he had on them and that they had on him. They gave Givenchy two very recognizable faces wearing the label, and, in return, they were cemented as the fashion-forward celebrity couple of the moment—a moment which has lasted a decade.

So, while Givenchy may have fallen off towards the latter half of the decade, there’s no denying that the label was, under Riccardo Tisci, supremely influential in the early 2010s—to the point where the industry is still shaped by what the brand did before 2014.

When Hedi Slimane assumed creative control over Yves Saint Laurent, the label was somewhat predictable. Under Slimane’s predecessor, Stefano Pilati, Yves Saint Laurent churned out what one would expect: double-breasted suits, powerful lapels, belted jackets, shorts, animal prints and leathers. In March 2012, Slimane was appointed creative director of the brand and his impact was felt almost immediately as he rebranded the label as Saint Laurent Paris.

Naturally, when examining the legacy of Slimane’s Saint Laurent was the aesthetic shift he brought about with the clothes themselves. The Fall/Winter 2013 menswear collection was, technically speaking, Slimane’s second Saint Laurent Paris show—Spring/Summer 2013 womenswear being the first—but it “consolidated his OCD approach to his gig at Saint Laurent,” wrote Tim Blanks, “[making] a guy to go with his girl.” Slimane’s Saint Laurent was very different than Yves’s; it was quintessentially Slimane—with slim silhouettes infused with rockstar chic Hollywood glamour. The list of iconic designs from Slimane’s time at Saint Laurent is truly impressive: the Wyatt boot; the Teddy jacket; the myriad pairs of skinny pants, made from leather and denim.

At Saint Laurent, Slimane resuscitated the androgynous rocker chic that had laid dormant for years. Even after his departure in 2017, Saint Laurent stuck with his vision for the brand, with Anthony Vaccarello as creative director—a testament to how successful Slimane’s brand of glamour is, financially. On a personal level, though, Saint Laurent was proof positive that any brand Slimane touched turned to gold. At Dior Homme, he had pioneered the ultra-skinny suit, something which reverberated throughout the industry for years. After stepping back for a few years, his return to Saint Laurent again saw the industry take a marked shift towards what he was doing—with a number of brands, like Enfants Riches Déprimés and Amiri, popping up in Saint Laurent’s aesthetic wake. While sometimes maligned for being a one-trick pony, there’s no denying that Slimane is extremely good at what he does and that he—and his Saint Laurent designs—have been extremely influential.

The 2010s may not have seen Raf Simons churn out as many seminal collections as he did in the late ‘90s and early aughts, but the Belgian designer’s eponymous label was still hugely influential.

For starters, his Fall/Winter 2014 collection, designed and produced in collaboration with the American artist Sterling Ruby, is among his most celebrated and sought-after—on par with those from the ‘90s and ‘00s. Others, like his Spring/Summer 2017 collaboration with Robert Mapplethorpe or the Fall/Winter 2016 study of oversized silhouettes, were generally well-received and are important within the broader Raf Simons catalogue. But the 2010s were noteworthy for Raf Simons for reasons other than the clothes produced over the last 10 years.

Instead, Raf Simons was the brand—and the designer—at the center of the archive boom. Over the last 10 years, Simons grew from a relatively niche brand with a cult-like following to one of the most celebrated and revered in fashion. Much of that owes to the online communities that were devoted to the Belgian designer’s earlier work. On forums across the internet, and then on platforms like Tumblr, people came together to revel in the brilliance of those early Raf Simons shows—sharing photos from magazines and books, and buying, selling and trading archival pieces. The hardcore fans and collectors were certainly present pre-2010, but it was over the last decade that they began to congregate and expose new people to Simons’ work. It was, undoubtedly, good for business—Simons’s high-profile exit from Jil Sander and subsequent mastery at Dior certainly helped, too.

More importantly, though, the reappraisal of Raf Simons’s earlier work paved the way for the emergence of an archive movement within menswear—the very movement Grailed was born from and now embodies.

Rick Owens is a unicorn in the fashion world. With a clear aesthetic and commitment into creating a lifestyle around it, the American designer and his eponymous label represent rarities within the industry.

The last decade has seen demand for Owens’s clothes skyrocket, and while it’s not necessarily unusual for a brand with such a distinct aesthetic to enjoy moments of growth, the fact that it has been sustained for much of the decade is what’s fascinating. That, and the fact that Owens has done it while remaining independent—which is almost unheard of in this day and age, when immediate pressure to succeed in a crowded environment requires considerable capital investment.

Owens is one of the few avant-garde designers who has managed to make headway in the mainstream with much of that influence percolating in the last decade. Being name-checked by A$AP Rocky—alongside Raf Simons—and collaborating with adidas have certainly helped, but the prevailing feeling is that it is Owens’ distinct style that have earned him plaudits and recognition. Much of that owes to Owens’s singular creativity and flair for the dramatic—from marketing campaigns, to in-store seating, to legendary fashion week parties, to being peed on in music videos, to his show-stopping runway presentations that consistently manage to tap into some higher sociocultural idea.

If there’s one takeaway: Rick Owens has established him and his work as the gateway into the avant-garde fashion… all without minimizing, reducing or restricting his own creative output. Owens might be the most publicly-visible avenue for avant-garde fashion fans to get into the space, but his work is anything but accessible.

Like Raf Simons, Rick Owens greatly benefitted from the growth of online communities devoted to specific brands and aesthetics, compounded by the wider attention they garnered from the menswear community. There are plenty of brands that make clothes similar to what Rick Owens makes—Julius, Boris Bidjan Saberi, Carol Christian Poell—but few have the name brand recognition that Rick Owens does.

Consider, for a moment, what the menswear landscape would look like without Off-White. Founded in 2012, Off-White was the latest in a series of clothing ventures undertaken by the multi-disciplinary creative and Kanye West consigliere Virgil Abloh in the early 2010s. Following on the heels of #BEENTRILL# and PYREX, two streetwear brands that essentially consisted of screen-printing graphics on blank T-shirts, Off-White represented Abloh’s foray into fashion proper.

Since 2012, Off-White has been based in Milan, while Abloh pulls the strings from wherever in the world he happens to be. While the brand has been criticized over the years, there is no denying the success it has had, nor its influence. When Off-White launched, it did not show on the runway, opting instead for a small showroom in Paris and Milan—adjacent to Marcelo Burlon—where Abloh and his sales team secured a list of renowned stockists like SSENSE, Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

Almost immediately, Off-White did well, thanks, in part, to Abloh’s then-burgeoning fame, but also because the brand tapped into something similar to what Givenchy had been doing around the same time. Off-White thrived by existing at the intersection of luxury fashion and streetwear, but, unlike Givenchy—where it was really only T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies—Off-White’s entire ethos was based around disrupting both genres to create something relatively new. With Off-White, Abloh created an aesthetic and a lifestyle to match—a brand for globe-trotting, young, successful creatives who were raised by streetwear but now had more luxurious inclinations. It’s the 360-degree approach that makes Off-White an extension of Abloh himself. It’s an approach that has worked and that gained Abloh a number of fans—most notably those at LVMH.

There is seemingly an Off-White version of everything, from Rimowa luggage to furniture to sneakers. No collaboration has had quite the same impact as “The Ten”—a project that saw Abloh reimagine some of Nike’s most iconic and revolutionary silhouettes. Among myriad knock-on effects, it’s also a project that shifted the realities of the secondary market.

So, back to the original hypothetical—what would fashion look like without Off-White? Well, for starters, who knows what Louis Vuitton would look like. Would menswear, writ large, have the same streetwear influences it does? Dubious. Would adidas have made further gains over Nike without Abloh? Doubtful. Virgil Abloh was successful before Off-White, but Off-White amplified his influence in ways that are almost impossible to measure—not just in fashion, but in culture writ large.

Speaking of Nike, it, too, has proven to be one of the most important brands of the last decade—as it seemingly has for every decade since Michael Jordan started playing in the NBA. What Nike showed throughout this last decade, though, was that it is essentially an immovable object. Even when things look dire—there’s no denying that, for at least a year or two, adidas got the better of the Swoosh thanks to the Ultra Boost, the NMD and Kanye West—Nike continued to do what Nike does: innovate and work with a cast of truly exceptional partners.

Even an incomplete list of the latter is impressive and drives home just how influential Nike has been. Over the last decade, the Portland-based sportswear giant has worked with: Fragment, Off-White, Supreme, Undercover, Sacai, Riccardo Tisci, Kim Jones, Acronym, Comme des Garçons, Patta, Parra, Drake, Skepta, Kanye West, Stone Island, Carhartt W.I.P., Fear of God, Stussy, A-Cold-Wall*, 1017 ALYX 9SM… the list goes on and on (all without feeling diluted). Nike’s commitment to being selective with its partners means that each collaboration is surprising—at least at first. And, given the stature and track record of the partners, they’re afforded relative carte blanche. Projects include creating a mid-calf Air Force 1, designing entirely new silhouettes, or making textile innovations.

Which brings us to what has really become Nike’s calling card. Throughout its history, and over the last decade, Nike has been unwavering when it comes to innovation. adidas’s BOOST technology was successful because it was innovative—and rightfully so. Be that as it may, Nike’s Flyknit technology, which was only introduced in 2012, was, arguably, the most transformative innovation the footwear industry has seen in quite some time, ushering in an “arms race” that resulted not only in knit upper footwear becoming commonplace, but in rival adjacent sneaker innovations—including things like Boost. Other technologies, like self-lacing sneakers inspired by the Nike Air MAG from Back to The Future Part II, haven’t had the same commercial success as Flyknit, but are proof that Nike is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to innovation.

The brand’s deep archives are placed on a pedestal by Nike itself—thanks to re-releases—and by customers, for whom retro Jordans, SB Dunks and Air Maxes have always been, and seem poised to continue to be, at the center of the resale market.

Nike’s ability to strike a delicate balance over the last decade—between nostalgia and innovation, between sportswear and streetwear, between having partners and staying true to the Nike brand—is what has allowed it to retain its crown as the undisputed king of the sneaker realm.

One more way in which Nike made an important mark on the decade in menswear? By cutting Kanye West loose and enlarging his well-documented enormous chip on his shoulder. When Kanye West announced that he was going to be working with adidas, arguably Nike’s biggest competitor, few realized the scale of what was in store. Even adidas may have been surprised by what eventually came to be.

West had long-harboured ambitions of creating a full-fledged fashion line, though his initial flirtations with that idea weren’t immediately successful. That all changed with adidas’ backing. Yeezy’s footprint—if you’ll excuse the pun—over the last decade owes mainly to footwear, with dozens of designs and colorways flooding the market since the initial Yeezy Boost 750 debuted in February, 2014, making good on West’s promise that “eventually, everybody who wants to get Yeezys, will get Yeezys.” But, there’s also an argument to be made that the massive profits from the sneakers have been used by adidas and West to fund Yeezy apparel.

Yeezy has allowed West to have the fashion line he always wanted, and gave fans a taste of his flair for grandiose performances, like the Season 3 runway-The Life of Pablo listening party hybrid event at Madison Square Garden in February, 2016. It also allowed him to tap into his singular ability to influence the way people dress—few, if any, celebrities have managed to wield the same amount of influence as West has. For much of the decade, anything he wore became sought after, selling out within hours—from Vans to Ultra Boosts.

To some, the Yeezy brand is diluted. The shoes no longer sell out. The resale value has, for the most part, tanked. But, that would be to discount West’s goal. His initial fashion forays may have sought to dominate the runways and steer trends, but Yeezy is meant to be populist. The clothes have been rather bland and maybe even a little dystopian—bereft of graphics, cut with billowing proportions and made from earth tones. The shoes have been mass-produced. But, that the Yeezy 350 v2 is a “top 10” bestselling shoe—something almost unheard of for a shoe at that price point—is undeniable proof that West’s gambit is working.

Outside of fashion, this decade might be best remembered for giving us the proliferaton of the meme. If this decade was built on memes, it was Vetements that managed to turn fashion into a meme. Launched in 2014 by the brothers Gvasalia—with Demna as creative director and Guram as CEO—Vetements was designed by a collective of friends and acquaintances with prior industry experience at some of the most respected labels in fashion.

Even Vetements’s name—which literally means “clothes” in French—seems to poke fun at the fashion industry. As each season went by, Vetements seemed to get increasingly daring, moving from oversized silhouettes that riffed on well-known staples to ’90s-streetwear-influenced to cultural nods—like graphics referencing Antwerp or Thrasher or skatewear brand Fucking Awesome. Spring/Summer 2016 was the moment when Vetements changed the fashion landscape, though, thanks to the collective’s now-infamous DHL T-shirt. While some saw it as a “hack”—low-hanging fruit meant to sell as much as quickly as possible—there were others who saw it as a brilliant reference to something the fashion industry could not survive without in the modern era: globally sourced shipping and handling.

The popularity of—and reaction to—that T-shirt, and the collection more broadly, might have been what pushed Vetements to push the envelope further. It came to typify a movement towards “anti-fashion” that even the biggest and most luxurious of establishment houses got behind—none moreso than [Balenciaga](https://www.grailed.com/designers/balenciaga, where Demna has presented a slightly more refined take on the aesthetic, as creative director. Vetements exposed the limits—or lack thereof—within the fashion industry, working simultaneously with Brioni and Juicy, showing in a McDonald’s, admitting that its pieces were overpriced, and, eventually, that tapping into trends doesn’t guarantee sustained success.

Still, Vetements managed to tap into the zeitgeist with such aplomb—into Susan Sontag’s famously nebulous idea of camp—that even if it were to cease operations tomorrow, it would have earned its place in fashion history.

Gucci’](https://www.grailed.com/designers/gucci)s decade seemed like a lost one until the brand unveiled its Fall/Winter 2015 collection on the Milanese runway in January, 2015. It was the first collection designed by then-newly installed creative director Alessandro Michele and was, rather famously, designed and produced on an incredibly short schedule that showcased Gucci’s might.

But Michele, and that seminal collection, weren’t heralded for the logistical miracle. No, it was because the pieces represented a drastic shift for Gucci: One which saw the clothes veer away from the severely sexy, Euro-chic garments that Gucci had come to be synonymous with towards something whimsical, androgynous, mysterious and—of course—uniquely Gucci.

Michele’s Gucci has been a model of maximalism, albeit in a different manner than Givenchy or even Vetements. It’s opulent, decadent—generally unnecessary from a utilitarian point-of-view, but a welcomed change from an aesthetic standpoint. A riot against the first half of the decade’s love of minimalism, Gucci, like Vetements, contributed a great deal to fashion’s embrace of Sontag’s camp. Michele, for his part, has embraced theatrics for his shows and for his garments. There have been the all-over logo tracksuits, the collaboration with the New York Yankees, the severed heads, the floral tuxedos and the camp collar shirts. Just enough current trends—like the maximalist Rhyton sneaker—sprinkled in to win over even those who find the ‘70s-inspired tailoring doesn’t quite do the trick. This is to say nothing of the Gucci signatures—the ageless Horsebit loafer and the Ace tennis sneaker for a start—that insulated the brand’s global vision from the whims of Michele’s seasonal interests; in time, these Gucci signatures would go on to be reworked by Michele, becoming new canvas for Michele’s wider aesthetic revamp of the storied Italian house.

And, it’s worked. Everybody from Leo Mandella to Harry Styles—who, let’s be honest, have quite different styles—seems to have found something to like with Michele’s Gucci. Michele’s pop culture chops even include personally dressing Elton John for his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. It’s a Gucci no longer tied solely to interlocking Gs, but to a broader aesthetic for the first time since Tom Ford was helming the brand.

There’s no better way to cap off this list than to talk about the brand that has had the biggest impact on the last decade—bar none. Supreme did everything right over the last 10 years, including, most importantly, staying true to its brand DNA. If you take a look at what the brand has done season in and season out throughout the 2010s, you’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint when one of the 20 collections was from. That’s not to say that all of Supreme’s decade-spanning designs are timeless, but rather that the brand has been incredibly consistent over the years. Even from a collaborative standpoint, the skate brand has remained true to itself, working with a handful of the same partners over the years, including The North Face, Nike, Comme des Garçons, Vans and [Stone Island](https://www.grailed.com/designers/stone-island, in addition to a rotating cast of artists and cultural figures.

At the beginning of the decade, Supreme was known in streetwear circles, but remained a relatively niche brand. But as the decade wore on, the brand became increasingly popular, thanks not only to the likes of Tyler, The Creator but to the brand’s commitment to producing limited quantities and sticking to its weekly drop structure. By the mid-2010s, there’s no doubt that Supreme could have doubled, tripled, or even increased its production five-fold. But it didn’t. That, combined with the store staff’s famous nonchalance, contributed to the mythology that Supreme frankly didn’t really care about making as much money as possible...if anything, it didn’t give a damn about anything but what it wanted to do. This ethos is core to its inevitable recognition at the 2018 CFDA Awards.

It also contributed to fashion, as a whole, embracing the drop model. By the latter half of the decade, luxury fashion houses and streetwear brands alike were touting limited-edition products that were sure to sell out within minutes of dropping. Supreme birthed a discourse around bots, pushed companies like Shopify to develop new release mechanisms and has been at the center of the resale economy for much of the decade.

Two things are emblematic of what Supreme has accomplished this decade. The first is probably the most obvious: an above-board, official collaboration with Louis Vuitton. It was a reminder of how far Supreme had come since the days when it was getting hit with a cease and desist from Louis Vuitton. It was also the crowning moment for streetwear and fashion’s aesthetic coming together. The second was its investment from the Carlyle Group, valuing the label at, roughly, $1 billion. Supreme’s version of finally “selling out,” the investment proved how far (and frankly, how mainstream) the business of streetwear had become, with even those far removed from the cult culture that birthed streetwear wanting to get in on the action. For better or worse, the reason that streetwear is a global phenomenon that has shaken the fashion industry to its core is—undoubtedly—a result of James Jebbia and Supreme.