So much has been made from so little. Graffiti legends Futura and Stash more or less started this whole craze about 15 years ago with their upstart t shirt brand GFS, which brought out the once-ubiquitous Philly Blunt tee shirt. Back then, only a few players occupied the space now crowded with countless companies just like those discussed by Rob Walker in his much-blogged about Brand Undergound article. What's more, the whole world seems to be paying attention now.

How underground can the whole rare sneakers thing be when the quest to get some ultra-limited Nikes from UNDFTD on La Brea in Los Angeles is a major plot element on Entourage?

The backlash, EMERGE predicts, is only just beginning. While companies like Nike will continue to enjoy robust sales of their "massclusive" product lines to the hordes just getting turned on to the thriving streetwear scene and many of the upstart brands that have clothed hipster dudes from Sydney to Seattle will surely grow into powerful fashion companies, the underground feel of it all may be evaporating. In New York- ground zero for this aesthetic- there are new shops catering to the "scene" opening all the time. There used to be literally four or five shops in a city of ten million people that served the discriminating tastes of the brand underground, but new additions keep cropping up. Online shop Boundless NYC appears to be the next to open a retail outlet in the perennially trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. It joins probably twenty or so shops selling obscure sneakers and tee shirts- all within about five miles of one another- to provide what has become the default uniform of the cool kids.

And that, of course, is the surest sign of impending decline. What was once the totemic sign, the coded message that you knew what was up, is now simply the flavor of the month for people without the cultural competencies to catch all the embedded ironies and references that define the brand underground aesthetic. In fact, these attributes have become so codified as to have inspired a mocking styleblog called Don't Believe The Hypebeast, which not only mocked the fervent online fetishization of the streetwear scene but the emergent cliches and rampant plagiarism amongst the scene's entrepreneurs.

While there is certainly still life left in the brand undergound, it's worth contemplating just how much longer it can be called an underground. And more intriguing: what will take it's place in the cool kids' hearts and on their backs once they've abandoned the all over print hoodies and pastel Air Force Ones to suburban teenagers?

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