The Hoodie, The Hoodie Unravelled, The Hoodie – Living Apart Together in quarantine: what was it again about the Hoodie?

In its summary of the run-up to this closing event, Concrete Blossom’s Public Service Announcement states: ‘We unravel the hoodie in the here and now by asking: how, from where, and by whom is the hoodie’s cool created? Three young makers, aka the YouthDem, addressed this question. The goal was and is to create more awareness, in the Culture, about the relationship between place and culture. After all, the Hoodie comes from the street, which is where the real real flyness that “luxury” fashion houses and museums are laying claim to comes from. In December 2019, in the former legendary Chic barbershop on Rotterdam’s Middellandstraat, we started THU with a master class. There, we spoke to Abderrahmane Trabsini about grassroots mentality and the fashion label Daily Paper’s stormy rise to fame. A month later, Sheray of Light (YouthDem) opened her first solo exhibition, giving a glimpse into her world as a young Rotterdam maker. And just as we were getting ready for the second event, featuring Quinten Tilburg (YouthDem), the world was shook by the outbreak of COVID-19. Endless queues at the coffee shop, Little Richard gone, everything on hold. Shiiiiiit! We persevered, physically distanced at one and a half metres, and shot the shorts The Hoodie – Living Apart Together with young Rotterdammers and talked to them about social distancing and their dreams for the future.’

Concrete Blossom

Concrete Blossom is a self-proclaimed Swiss army knife and Rotterdam-based design and media collective. As a design studio, publisher, and cultural platform, they traverse the urban terrain with an analytical, creative, and design-centric mindset, constantly ‘questioning how to make shit doper’. Concrete Blossom’s projects interrogate contemporary metropolitanism’s meaning through the interactions of hip-hop, diasporic cultures, street culture, and the digital domain. In dialogue with like-minded parties, ranging from other grassroots initiatives to established institutions, Concrete Blossom strives for a multifaceted and inclusive cultural offering in Rotterdam and worldwide. In autumn 2019, Concrete Blossom announced a long-term collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut to build a cultural system that better moves with the rhythms and dynamics of the city and its inhabitants. To begin this collaboration, Concrete Blossom is ‘disrupting’ the institute via the programming for The Hoodie and G/D THYSELF.