Gen Z Car Merch is Dope as Hell
The exciting new styles of women-owned car culture apparel.
A weekly newsletter by Ryan K. ZumMallen | @zoomy575m
HAPPY RACE DAY, especially to The Drive for its continued AAPI Heritage Month content. This week alone there’s been excellent stories from photographer Larry Chen and journalist Jodi Lai. Enjoy!
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Here’s this week’s top article:
ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS on Car Twitter this week came just last night, when designer Syd Cummings (read our interview with her here) dropped another round of car-themed merchandise through her OHOAT brand. The set of stickers, pins, shirts, tote bags and more is playful, fun, silly, impassioned and absurd — all at once. But undeniably they are beautifully designed. Totes sold out in 10 minutes.
OHOAT is the latest in a trend of automotive-themed merch that promotes car culture to the masses, and are sold largely online. That means they originate and are marketed through the hyper-bizarre memes and trends of the Internet, where they’re allowed to evolve and build organic fanbases before spilling out into the real world in the form of physical products. It’s online car culture, but IRL. Similar examples include the Leen Customs pins or Blipshift t-shirts.
But OHOAT and a select few others are owned and operated by women, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that they’re charting new ground when it comes to automotive retail. Consider the Tokyo-inspired neon collection from House of Prix by drift racer Collete Davis, or the muted yet curated style from With Love Supply by YouTuber and racer Emelia Hartford. There’s also the hardcore motorsports apparel Chasing Checkers from stunt driver Brionna Lynch.
These are car culture brands, but they don’t smack you over the head about it. Car merch typically puts the car front and center; with OHOAT and others, cars are more like characters in a story than the whole plot. And that’s if a car is present at all. The brands are each reflective of their founders’ personalities but not necessarily tied to them, and certainly not in the way that many YouTubers simply sell shirts and hoodies with their own names on them. Instead they put the lifestyle itself first, in a distinctly more open and welcoming way than traditional male-run brands. It may be both reflective of a more open and welcoming car culture that now exists, as well as a hope for the next generation to find an automotive landscape with fewer barriers and gate-keepers than before. Maybe it’s just making stuff they think is cool. But if the success of the OHOAT launch is any indication, one thing is for sure: there is definitely a market for it.
Want to see more of my writing on cars? Click the link below to buy a signed copy of my book, Slow Car Fast, or an eBook of the motorsports classic The Stainless Steel Carrot. Thank you for your support!
Culture
WILL FUTURE GENERATIONS know the pure joy of the Car Talk radio show?
SOMEONE BOUGHT a 1985 Corolla (a rare one, but still) for $40,000, thus completing the cycle of completely unpopular cars now going for beaucoup bucks.
On Your Radar
THIS WEEKEND in Los Angeles, the collective AutoConduct is hosting a hatchback roll-in. Judging by the confirmed list of vehicles so far it should be a blast.
ON THE HEELS of the supercar rally to Stop Asian Hate that we covered last week, the same organizers are throwing another such event this weekend in the Bay Area — where attacks have continued to escalate. Info here.
And Finally…
Tuesday was 05/10, recognized by enthusiasts as a day to celebrate the plucky little Datsun 510 sedan in all its forms. (Of course this year was special to us after publishing The Stainless Steel Carrot, which chronicles two championship-winning seasons in a 510, earlier this year.) Enjoy this excellent tour of our friends at Z Car Garage to celebrate!
Drive hard and be safe. Black Lives Matter.
Want your event included? Shoot me a note with subject line “Race Day” at ryan@carrarabooks.com.
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