Market Clothing

Market Clothing: Playful Streetwear With a DIY Spirit

Market is a Los Angeles-based streetwear and lifestyle brand founded by designer Mike Cherman in 2016. Originally launched as Chinatown Market, the brand drew inspiration from the energy, bootleg aesthetics, and visual culture surrounding New York City's Canal Street. From its earliest releases, Market developed a distinctive approach to streetwear that combined humor, recognizable graphics, pop-culture references, and a willingness to experiment.

Today, Market is known for turning familiar streetwear ideas into something more unexpected. Graphic T-shirts, hoodies, headwear, shorts, outerwear, accessories, and original cut-and-sew garments form the foundation of its collections. The brand's playful use of illustrations, logos, characters, slogans, camouflage, and its recurring SMILEY® imagery gives Market a recognizable visual language while allowing individual collections to move in different directions.

Market's History and Evolution

Market's story began in 2016 when Mike Cherman transformed his background in customization and graphic design into a new streetwear label. Before Market, Cherman's work included designing the KITH logo and working with Nike's 255 Custom Lab, experiences that helped shape the brand's experimental approach to graphics, customization, and product design.

The brand initially became known as Chinatown Market, a name intended to reference Cherman's experiences around New York's Canal Street. Early designs leaned heavily into bootleg culture, parody, and customized footwear, helping Market establish a following within the contemporary streetwear scene. Its creative approach also opened the door to collaborations with major names across fashion, sports, entertainment, and popular culture.

In 2021, Chinatown Market changed its name to MARKET following criticism surrounding the use of the Chinatown name and broader conversations about cultural appropriation and anti-Asian discrimination. The company acknowledged the concerns and announced the rebrand while committing proceeds from existing Chinatown Market products toward organizations supporting the AAPI community. The change marked an important point in the brand's history and established MARKET as its current identity.

The rebrand did not mean abandoning the creative philosophy that had made the label recognizable. MARKET continued developing its mix of irreverent graphics, limited releases, collaborations, and streetwear staples while expanding its cut-and-sew and lifestyle offerings. Its Los Angeles identity remains central to the brand, with its flagship presence on La Brea Avenue and collections distributed through retailers around the world.

Recent Market Clothing and Streetwear

MARKET has remained active with new seasonal collections and collaborations. Its Spring/Summer 2026 collection has continued the brand's emphasis on graphic-driven clothing and playful design, with the current season represented through an official 2026 lookbook.

The brand's Fall/Winter 2025 collection was presented in Paris during Fashion Week and featured new graphics, bold cut-and-sew pieces, and fleece styles. MARKET described the collection as a combination of graphic experimentation and versatile seasonal clothing, with the range offered through its web shop, Los Angeles flagship, and selected retailers worldwide.

MARKET also continued its collaboration-heavy approach throughout 2025. In July, the brand partnered with KFC on a limited-edition collection celebrating National Fried Chicken Day. The capsule included graphic T-shirts, hoodies, baseball caps, shorts, and other merchandise, demonstrating MARKET's willingness to bring its visual language into unexpected cultural spaces.

In September 2025, MARKET and Reebok released their second collaboration, built around a Land & Sea concept. The project included two redesigned Club C 85 footwear styles alongside apparel such as relaxed graphic tees, hoodies, a reversible vest, a jacket, and wide-leg track pants. The collection emphasized movement, outdoor inspiration, unusual construction, and MARKET's signature tendency to reinterpret familiar products.

The brand has also continued exploring entertainment and pop-culture collaborations. A MARKET Studios x Neopets streetwear collection launched in February 2026, featuring T-shirts, a hoodie, and a Kacheek beanie connected to the Neopets universe.

Fit & Sizing Insights

Market clothing covers a range of silhouettes rather than relying on one universal fit. Graphic T-shirts and hoodies are often designed around a relaxed streetwear profile, while cut-and-sew garments can introduce more structured proportions. The Reebok x MARKET Fall 2025 apparel collaboration, for example, included relaxed-fit T-shirts with drop shoulders, a relaxed hoodie, a regular-fit reversible vest, a relaxed boxy jacket, and wide-leg track pants.

Because MARKET releases can vary considerably between collections, shoppers should check the measurements and sizing information for each individual product rather than assuming that every piece fits identically. Those looking for a traditional oversized streetwear appearance may prefer relaxed or boxier MARKET pieces, while more structured cut-and-sew garments can create a cleaner silhouette.

Styling Market in Urban and Streetwear Looks

Market clothing works particularly well when the graphic language of the piece becomes the focal point of an outfit. A graphic Market T-shirt can anchor a simple combination of relaxed denim or utility pants and sneakers, while a branded hoodie can add a stronger streetwear layer to an otherwise understated outfit.

For a more expressive look, Market's colorful graphics, playful characters, tie-dye treatments, camouflage, and SMILEY® designs can be combined with other statement pieces. The result fits naturally within contemporary streetwear's tradition of mixing casual basics with unexpected graphics and references from music, sports, entertainment, and pop culture.

MARKET's history with customization also makes it particularly compatible with the DIY side of streetwear. Founder Mike Cherman has described customization as an important part of the brand's design DNA, reflecting a broader philosophy of encouraging consumers and creatives to reinterpret clothing rather than treating garments as untouchable finished products.

Market's Place in Contemporary Urban Fashion

Market occupies an interesting position within modern urban fashion. Its foundation is unmistakably streetwear, but its collections frequently move beyond traditional logo-driven basics into cut-and-sew apparel, accessories, sports-inspired products, pop-culture merchandise, and collaborations.

That flexibility has helped the brand remain relevant as streetwear has become increasingly intertwined with mainstream fashion, sports, entertainment, and internet culture. MARKET's ability to turn familiar cultural references into wearable graphics—and then apply the same creative approach to collaborations and seasonal collections—remains one of its defining characteristics.

For shoppers exploring Market clothing today, the brand offers more than a single aesthetic. Its catalog can move from understated everyday pieces to highly graphic statement garments, making MARKET a useful choice for building outfits that combine casual comfort, contemporary streetwear, humor, and personality.