Dylan Rieder. One of skateboarding’s golden boys and the style icon who refused to abide to what a skater was supposed to look like.

Many think of skate fashion as baggy carpenter jeans, baggier T-shirts, pullover jackets and ragged sneakers. Rieder, on the contrary, was commonly seen with a pair of slim-fit black denim trousers with his tee tucked in. He bridged the gap between cultures, namely skateboarding and fashion, and couldn’t care less about other people’s opinions. In a 2011 interview with Hypebeast, when asked how he would describe fashion, Rieder responded “Fuck, you’re asking the wrong person. What does fashionable even mean? I’d love to see that description in the dictionary.” Rieder’s death in 2016, following a two year long battle with leukaemia, is a tragic loss for skateboarding. Not just because because he was one of the greatest skateboarders of all time, but also because he made it okay for other skaters to change looks and ‘play’ with fashion.

Text: Marije Popping
Video: Team Handsome