The partnership rekindles the relationship between the movie and the sportswear company, which provided sneakers during the production in 1994. He remembers that some of this bullshit had already entered the world by the time he made the movie, but it does not manage to taint the authenticity of its leads' gear.
Accepting a product marketed specifically toward you at face value is decidedly anti-hip-hop and definitely bullshit. Yeezys are bullshit, sagging your pants is bullshit. "I really don't give a shit about a different sole color or insert color or laces length to make this a collectible that you can sell for $700 or $7,000," he adds.
In his acidic tone, he insists that the whole streetwear culture is bullshit. "I'm from an era where streetwear didn't exist," he says. The word for this kind of clothing today is "streetwear," but Kassovitz is adamant about the distinction.
Like any story successfully capturing urban life in that period, it is intentional in its use of sportswear. Its depiction of their pain became a national conversation: France's prime minister in 1995 mandated a screening for his cabinet. They are in constant discord-contemplating retaliation against police who hospitalized a friend during an interrogation, getting kicked out of an art gallery, tussling with plainclothes officers. The movie follows three young men, one Arab, one Black, one Jewish, falling together through the streets of Paris. The cow, the suffocating threat of police brutality, and the scream of the streets are among the enduring elements of La Haine, the 1995 masterpiece of French cinema from writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz. It exists in a groggy memory possibly influenced by hash smoke, and then only for a few seconds, but it exists. Over the years, Carhartt WIP has been adopted by many, if not all, actors of the street culture: from hip-hop to graffiti, skate and cinema.Here in turbulent Paris, right around the corner from the riots, beyond charred car skeletons and the reach of police batons, there is a cow. WIP products are less technical and more suited for everyday use, but maintain an impeccable quality and durability thanks to Carhartt’s prime manufacturing expertise. WIP (Work in Progress) was created in 1994, over a century after the original Carhartt, and is the streetwear line of the brand. Carhartt is the workwear pioneer, but doesn’t actually design the products we all know and love: Carhartt WIP takes care of that part. One cannot mention workwear without talking about Carhartt: 130 year old brand, arguably the most emblematic one of the style. Workwear clothing entails everything from denim and flannel over-shirts to vests and double knees, which have been particularly prominent lately: while streetwear brand like Aimé Leon Dore or Stüssy have recently re-introduced carpenters in their collection, more premium labels such as Off-White have released their first take on the classic silhouette this year. Carpenter pants for example tend to be quite large, as workers wearing them need room for comfort while moving. It is however particularly popular now, mostly thanks to the comeback of wider pants: people are substituting their slim jeans and trousers for straight and even baggy looks. You can’t go wrong with a pair of 874s Dickies or a Carhartt Detroit Jacket, but why? Mainly because workwear, as opposed to many other styles, was never designed for a specific era, allowing it to remain relevant and transcend trends.