NOAH Is Many Things. But Streetwear?
A landline phone, a typewriter, a 1974 edition of Sports Illustrated. NOAH’s lookbook for its latest collection, Fall/Winter 2025, is a tangible ode to tangible nostalgia, modern clothing from a bygone era.
Suitably titled “Return to Analog,” the collection sees the New York menswear label reminiscing on simpler times. But is it also a sidelong reference to recent happenings?
When Brendon Babenzein, NOAH founder and former creative director at Supreme, went on the Cutting Room Floor podcast in April, his message couldn’t have been clearer. “NOAH’s not a streetwear brand,” he deadpanned. “Not in a million years.”
Host Recho Omondi was taken aback. “This is new to me,” she said. She wasn’t alone. The top comment on Omondi’s Instagram post of the podcast clip approximates the tone of the nearly 600 others: “It’s weird to hear such a disdain for being categorized as streetwear…” Fashion podcast Throwing Fits was similarly bemused, describing Babenzein’s comment as “a bit disingenuous.”
However, NOAH Fall/Winter 2025 would seem to make Babenzein’s point.
This collection purports to offer the antithesis of the fast-paced, collaboration-centric, graphic-focused nature associated with streetwear. This is NOAH's version of slow fashion.
“In a world obsessed with speed and convenience, there’s something radical about the slow and thoughtful,” said Babenzein in a statement. “We apply this same thinking to how we approach our clothes: every fabric we choose, every construction decision we make, it’s all rooted in the belief that quality matters.”
Many of the new clothes will feel familiar to NOAH enjoyers, from the preppy button-down-collar shirts to the relaxed tweed suits. In fact, the entire 40-look collection presents a gently modernized form of menswear classics steeped in retro Americana and made from organic fibers and materials sourced from time-honored European textile manufacturers.
These are all things NOAH has been doing since it was reborn a decade ago, of course. (Babenzien originally founded it in 2002, before his tenure at Supreme.)
Still, the question lingers: what is streetwear?
Does it encompass NOAH? Its founder did work at Supreme, it sells a healthy amount of printed clothing, and it has an active interest in skateboarding, a sport inextricably linked to streetwear.
But, then again, how many streetwear stores operate a separate outpost dedicated to tailoring? If Babenzien maintains, as he did in that podcast, that streetwear refers to something ephemeral and trendy, then NOAH's open discourse on its attempts to address fashion's inherent unsustainability is a clear attempt to offer the opposite.
Really, streetwear is in the eye of the beholder. Is it clothes you wear on the street? Is it an attitude? A mode of dress? Is it not unfair to describe NOAH's range of approachably grown-up preppy clothing as “grown-up streetwear?" Or does its urbane wool coats, rugby shirts, white trousers, and loafers make NOAH something else entirely? Unsatisfyingly, this is your call.
Perhaps everything is streetwear. And therefore, nothing is. Talk about a satisfying conclusion!
The only reliable thing about "streetwear" is that brand founders, from Babenzien to Madhappy cofounder Mason Spector, prefer to put as much air between it and themselves as possible.
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