Brooklyn Streetwear: The Shops Outside the Feed
Brooklyn streetwear coverage tends to mean about six blocks of Williamsburg and whatever opened on Wythe last month. That is a real part of the borough. It is not where most of Brooklyn buys clothes.
The rest of it, Flatbush, Canarsie, Brownsville, Sheepshead Bay, has been buying streetwear from neighbourhood shops the entire time, without a single listicle written about it.
Paper Planes has five stockists in Brooklyn and four of them are in that second category.
Broadway, under the tracks
Tom Dick and Harry sits on Broadway where Bushwick runs into Williamsburg, on the stretch under the elevated J and M. That block has sold clothes for generations. It sold them when the neighbourhood was a punchline and it sells them now that it isn't, and the shops that survived that whole arc know their customers better than anyone who arrived in 2019.
Buy a hat there and you are buying from people who watched the neighbourhood turn and stayed put.
Canarsie, which nobody covers
Imax Fashions is on Rockaway Parkway, deep in the south-east corner. No fashion editor is filing from Canarsie. No brand's store locator bothers with it.
That is exactly why it matters. Canarsie is tens of thousands of people who buy clothes, and a shop out there exists because somebody local decided it should. Paper Planes sells to shops like that deliberately, its independent wholesale network runs on them, which puts the brand in neighbourhoods a chain would never open in.
The Woodstack pattern
Three of the five Brooklyn stockists are Woodstack: Flatbush, Sheepshead Bay, Brownsville. One operator running the length of the borough, north to south.
That is a serious retail footprint and it tells you something about how Brooklyn shops actually work. You do not cover this borough from one location. You cover it by being in three neighbourhoods that do not overlap.
Practical upshot: stock moves between them. If Flatbush is out of your size, Avenue U is a phone call away rather than a lost afternoon.
What to actually buy
The Original Crown is the founding 9Fifty and the piece you are most likely to find on any of these five walls. One size, adjustable, no measuring.
If you want a fitted, phone first with your crown size, a fitted has no closure and the wrong size cannot be rescued.
And ask about the New York colourways. The paper plane logo is about exactly the kind of neighbourhood these shops sit in, co-founder Emory Jones puts it as being able to "make that plane and throw it out the window" from the projects and dream your way to Paris. These streets are who that mark is for.
FAQ
Where does Brooklyn actually buy streetwear?
Beyond Williamsburg: Flatbush, Canarsie, Brownsville, Bushwick and Sheepshead Bay all have neighbourhood shops that have been selling it for years.
How many Paper Planes stockists are in Brooklyn?
Five. Three are Woodstack locations; the other two are Tom Dick and Harry in Bushwick and Imax Fashions in Canarsie.
Which Brooklyn shop should I go to first?
Whichever is nearest. They are spread deliberately, and each serves its own part of the borough.
Quotes from Emory Jones on Boardroom Talks with Rich Kleiman, also on YouTube.