West Coast Authenticity
LA’s skate culture in the seventies wasn’t trying to be anything. Kids in Dogtown had concrete and a way of moving through the world that didn’t require permission, and that was the whole thing. The way that eventually became a marketable aesthetic is its own story, but what makes the Puma x Chinatown Market collection interesting is that Mike Cherman actually understands what he’s working with.
Cherman’s been around streetwear long enough to tell the difference between the pose and the thing itself. After running ICNY he started Chinatown Market on this idea that bootleg culture is legitimate—that counterfeiting isn’t some failure of authenticity but its own form. It’s a sensibility that could easily become a gimmick, but he doesn’t let it.
When you’re designing a collection around Dogtown, there’s a lazy version where you just grab some iconography and call it done. Cherman’s approach is different. The reworked Puma California feels like it came from someone who actually sat with what that era looked like and how it moved, not someone trying to bottle nostalgia. The collection doesn’t have that strained quality where everything is trying to prove it’s cool.
It’s the kind of work that makes sense only if you actually know where it comes from. You can tell when something was made by someone who cares about the source.