It’s easy to get caught up in the flash and hype surrounding street wear these days. Every minute a new brand appears on the scene pushing a uber-exclusive-limited-edition-one-time-only-collaboration. STRICTLY FITTEDS takes a pause from the feeding frenzy that is street fashion and pays respect to one of the brands that was instrumental in setting the tone for today’s younger companies: SSUR.

Visual artist Ruslan “RUSS” Karablin emerged on the New York City art scene in the late eighties. After gaining notoriety with his paintings, RUSS translated his art onto a new canvas - the tee shirt. The highly successful brand and its Nolita retail shop pioneered the rise of streetwear boutiques and lifestyle brands like TRIPLE FIVE SOUL, SUPREME and STUSSY among others. SSUR continues its worldwide following, blending the realms of fine art, popular culture, political commentary into premium products.

As previewed here on STRICTLY FITTEDS, SSUR’s recent NEW ERA fitted releases caused quite a stir, but SSUR has been putting it down in fitted baseball caps for years. RUSS extended a studio invitation to us, and showed us some SSURstory - fitted style. Here are a few of the old and the new from the SSUR collection.

For those on the collector’s tip, prepare to dig deep. As SSUR pieces are limited, and never re-issued, you may have to search high and low at high end vintage shops to find one of these classic pieces.

More after the jump >>

**EDITED for content. Our lawyers made us do it folks, sorry**

We’ve been informed that the highly anticipated SSUR, CONEY ISLAND “WONDER WHEEL” NEW ERA fitted cap will NOT be appearing in White, as show in early samples. The production versions will be available in Black on Black and Royal on Navy. Look for these to drop in the end of this month / early JULY.

www.ssurempirestate.com
SSUR*PLUS
7 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
212.431.5375

A special STRICTLY FITTEDS salute to RUSS and the crew at SSURPLUS!