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The Best Streetwear Collaborations of 2022

From luxury to fast food, the creative partnerships that pushed streetwear into bold new directions.

WRITER: CHRIS DANFORTH
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The collaboration landscape has never been more diverse than as it stands on the eve of 2023. Across all corners of the industry, collaborations arrived in various shapes, sizes and forms throughout 2022.

In the luxury space, fashion brands threw out their rulebooks as they tapped into the youth-driven energy of streetwear. Collaborations like Supreme x Burberry, Balenciaga x adidas and Palace x Gucci continued to cross-pollinate street and runway influences in new ways, with Louis Vuitton’s Nike partnership yielding the most luxurious Air Force 1s ever created. This year gave us a few truly unexpected moments as well. Cactus Plant Flea Market’s McDonald’s Happy Meal made news headlines, while the recent Stüssy x Dries Van Noten team-up had fashion archivists scrambling to make room in their closets.

With the scene set, here are the 10 best streetwear collaborations of 2022.

Supreme x Burberry

In January 2017, luxury monolith Louis Vuitton shared the Paris Fashion Week catwalk with New York City skate label Supreme, cementing a previously unthinkable collaboration that united streetwear and heritage fashion like never before. In doing so, the two brands flipped the industry on its head.

In 2022, Supreme continued its foray into the world of couture by partnering with English house and the inventor of the trench coat, Burberry. Clad in a check box logo T-shirt, Irina Shayk fronted the campaign, which also featured tracksuits, denim options and, of course, a selection of Supreme x Burberry trench coats.

Palace x Gucci

Following up on partnerships with Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, Palace teamed up with Gucci this year for a comprehensive drop, debuting with a creative campaign equal parts brilliant and absurd. Comprising a number of offbeat scenarios, the visuals featured floating newspaper shops, bathing extraterrestrials and a heavy dose of Palace x Gucci goods, including motorcycle jackets, football jerseys, triangle-shaped luggage and even a co-branded Moto Guzzi V7 motorbike. 

The collection’s sneaker offerings included a low-top tennis style dubbed the GG-P Supreme Women’s Sneaker, a selection of loafers and some Gucci flip-flops. Driving home Palace’s knack for witty product descriptions, one of the collection’s standout accessories was, naturally, a safe, evoking the familiar London colloquialism. 

McDonald’s x Cactus Plant Flea Market

Esoteric streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market is shrouded in mystery. Not much is known about the brand’s founder and designer Cynthia Lu and to date, Lu has never been interviewed about her brand.

In October, McDonald’s tapped Cactus Plant Flea Market to reimagine the fast-food chain’s beloved mascots, taking the opportunity to introduce a new exclusive friend named Cactus Buddy. Of course, the collaboration also included an apparel capsule of staple graphic pieces like hoodies and sweatpants. Both at launch and months later, Cactus Plant Flea Market’s signature smiley face logo remains a perfect match for the McDonald’s Happy Meal.

Balenciaga x adidas

When pictures of a three-striped Triple S first surfaced on social media, it was difficult to discern if the image was a meme or a real product. Having previously collaborated with Gucci, adidas tapped into another Kering brand, Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga.

The designs mixed adidas’ core sportswear aesthetics with Balenciaga’s exaggerated and oversized silhouettes, manifesting in XXXL luxury tracksuits and warmup gear. Comprised largely of sports styles such as T-shirts, long sleeves and track pants, the collection mixed logos throughout, placing Balenciaga’s wordmark alongside the adidas Trefoil. Fake stacks of $100 bills were sent out in place of invites to the show, which was held on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in what amounted to a Balenciaga-style critique of capitalism and consumerism.

Salehe Bembury x Crocs

2022 was Salehe Bembury’s breakout year, as the designer dropped many more colorways of his much-anticipated collaboration with Crocs. Bembury’s Pollex Clog marked the first time that Crocs had allowed an external designer to reimagine one of its silhouettes, borrowing inspiration from the human fingerprint, as shown in the curving grooves that cover the slip-on. As foam silhouettes like the Yeezy Runner and Merrell HydroMoc had already been percolating, Crocs was able to shatter its reputation as a brand for chefs and nurses, with Bembury emerging as the perfect catalyst for Crocs to capture the attention of the TikTok generation.

Stüssy x Dries Van Noten

Landing just weeks before Thanksgiving, the discourse between Stüssy and Dries Van Noten is a late contender for collaboration of the year. The OG California surf-streetwear brand linked up with the legendary Belgian designer for a small collection of basics plus cut-and-sew items, punctuated by graphics (see: bongs and Stüssy 8-balls) that highlight Van Noten’s abstract patterns. Featuring styles such as tie-dye tees and sweatpants, as well as a rhinestone smoking blazer and pants, the collection was fronted by Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, who added his signature attitude to the campaign. 

In many ways, the appeal of the collaboration lies in the fact that Dries Van Noten simply doesn’t collaborate often, with his last partnership arriving in 2020 alongside Christian Lacroix. For this new co-designed collection, Stüssy and Dries cooked up something special, finding just the right recipe for creative synergy between two pillars of modern fashion.

KAWS x The North Face

Outerwear giant The North Face enlisted street artist-turned-pop-culture-giant KAWS for two capsules across 2022. The North Face’s most iconic styles, such as the Nuptse, Denali and Mountain Jacket, were adorned with artist Brian Donnelly’s playful motifs and signature “XX” tag. Ultra-colorful renditions with contrasting panels were matched with more subdued, tonal color schemes, all decorated with abstract shapes drawn by KAWS. As the outdoor space becomes a bigger part of the streetwear and style conversation, it was only a matter of time until collaborative GORE-TEX jackets and hiking boots became commonplace, and this handshake between KAWS and The North Face was perhaps this year’s most prominent and most hyped example.

Cactus Jack x Dior

A project that came to life through the friendship of Travis Scott and artistic director of Dior Men, Kim Jones, this team-up between Dior and Scott’s record label, Cactus Jack, arrived in 2022 after social media teasing set the internet abuzz. The all-encompassing collaboration allowed Scott to deliver a full collection of designs including sweater vests, turtlenecks, outerwear, blazers and backpacks, but it was the Dior Saddle Bag that emerged as the most sought-after piece from the collaboration. 

The most noteworthy footwear inclusion, meanwhile, was Scott’s Dior B713 sneakers, which came in a range of energetic, contrasting colorways. While creative collaborations typically come packaged as brand x designer, this refreshing link-up between Dior and Cactus Jack avoided any potential of being pigeonholed as “just another collab.”

Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1

A project that Virgil Abloh conceived prior to his tragic passing, the Louis Vuitton Air Force 1 collection features the classic Swoosh court shoe elevated to new, unprecedented heights. Via this collaboration, the shoe was imagined in its most luxurious form ever, handmade at the French house’s atelier in Italy.

The idea for the collection began with Abloh’s SS22 show for LV where he recreated and auctioned off 47 bespoke versions of the shoe featuring an array of materials, like leather, crocodile, faux fur, PVC and more. Nine iterations of the shoe were eventually released to the public, priced between $2,750 and $3,450. The range of colors varied, some featuring classic toe box color blocking, others with an all-over monogram, and one that mixes a neck-snapping silver and purple combination.