Eric Koston is not only a legendary skateboarder, but he’s also a streetwear icon that exudes effortless LA style. Koston turned pro in 1991 and started a skate label known as Fourstar to bring sponsorship opportunities to pros in that era. Since then, he’s become one of the first to bridge skate style with a fashionable approach. He’s even appeared in lists on Vogue and broke looks in GQ like rocking a longer navy surplus coat that’s been slimmed down from Calvin Klein with a Burberry button-up, Louis Vuitton pants and his own signature Nike SB Boston 3 Hyperfeel just to slightly roughen up the sophisticated level of polish.
These days, Eric Koston and fellow long-time skateboarder Guy Mariano have a new skate label known as Numbers where the displaying numbers each have their own significance to each member. The brand itself features a series of skate essentials that includes, hoodies, crewnecks, graphic tees, and other skate apparel essentials.
What’s more is that Eric Koston doesn’t just rep his own brand. In fact, his two favorite brands are credited as Nike and Supreme. Since his official signing to the Nike SB roster in 2009, Koston has not only had several exclusive colorways for SB Dunks, but he’s also had a few of his own signature silhouettes – each progressing with technical performance upgrades as Nike’s sports components continue to evolve. As for Supreme, Eric Koston is far from a Hypebeast, having had ties with the company and wearing their product since the early ’90s. He even gets invited to skate their bowl at their Brooklyn location.
Frosty Fits
Eric Koston is one of those guys who is always ahead of the trends before they hit while incorporating a series of wardrobe essentials into the mix that remains completely timeless — even if they were shot for a particular ad five or more years ago. Look back at a few of those Nike SB ads from 2009 and you’ll get the idea (or just look at the ones below).
Despite wearing tons of head to toe Supreme outfits, Eric Koston keeps it fairly neutral and simple in terms of his wardrobe. That being said, he still makes it look really cool. His main go-to essentials usually consist of crewneck and chino combos, blank button-ups, cargo pants, coaches jackets, and more recently painter pants, which have been gaining momentum with the resurgence of the workwear trend.
During Koston’s early days at Nike SB, he was also repping plenty of the SB icon shirts and polos, which like most of their Dunks were challenging to come up on, if not harder, as they were only offered at select skate shops. One of his tricks to keep to standing out with these sorts of essentials is capping it off with a camp hat – usually from one of Supreme’s weekly drops.
“You Don’t Want Everyone to Like it” – Eric Koston Sneaker Shopping
As mentioned in his episode of Sneaker Shopping, you don’t want everyone to necessarily like your taste in footwear. And the same can be said for style, since A.), you can’t please everyone and B.), that’s the mentality of most skateboarder’s style. It’s a culture that’s very much, “If you know, you know.” It’s just what Froston does with his own style. Sometimes he’s putting together sweats and flannel combos that make it look like he put very little effort into what he’s wearing – even though he did. And other times, he’s dressed to the nines, while throwing in a pair of skate shoes just to make things look business as usual.
This mentality of not wanting everyone to like your style rings true for just about any skateboarder and any OG sneaker collector. It’s exactly what makes his style so unique and why he Koston is credited as bringing style to skateboarding. This rationale of thinking is also how he conceptualized his Koston 3 design with skate brand, eS, utilizing a similar aesthetic as the classic Jordan 12, even down to the aesthetic of the toe and asymmetrical lacing system.
