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All Eyes On Baby Keem

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June 5, 2026 12:00pm EDT

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JUNE 5, 2026

HIGHSNOBIETY

WEEKLY

Subscribe to all of our essential newsletters here, and download the Highsnobiety app for daily updates on the culture of style.

In today's newsletter:

— A football-loving rapper with a cult following

— Author Mary H.K. Choi on the complexities of quiet luxury

— A slow-fashion store with all the best brands

— Your new favorite fancy moc

BEHIND THE SCENES

Keep Betting on Baby Keem

When Sam Hockley-Smith set out to write about producer and rapper Baby Keem, he knew he wanted to talk about Las Vegas. It’s Keem’s hometown — the place where he experienced some of the hardship and loss that has leaked into his music. Keem’s mother started using drugs there, and his grandma, who helped raise him, died there early last year. “It hurts going back,” Keem told Hockley-Smith in an extended interview. “Vegas is hard for me. I still have some family there, but it’s tough.”

The pair met for two hours in an office above Licorice Pizza Record Store — the site of one of Keem’s album signings. It was the morning after Keem performed the second of two sold-out shows at Los Angeles’ Shrine Expo Hall. Still, the 25-year-old was thoughtful, engaged, eager to ponder the question of his own artistry. “He’s like the most polite artist I’ve interviewed, maybe ever (in a good way),” Hockley-Smith recalled.

Their wide-ranging conversation touched on everything from how Keem first started making music — in an insular group of very online friends — to how he fell in love with football as a sport, to his collaborations with his cousin, Kendrick Lamar, to why he took an involuntary five-year break from the music industry. And at one of the LA shows, Hockley-Smith witnessed the cult following that Keem has attracted: a generation of young people who see him as proof that, if you wade through all the bullshit, you might just end up somewhere great.

Keem’s fans — packed crowds of Gen Z’ers — “feel a connection that transcends regular fandom when they hear his new music, or when he’s alone on stage commanding them to completely lose their shit, or keep still while he gets serious for a minute,” Hockley-Smith writes. “They show up in their Baby Keem Ca$ino tour shirts, ramming into each other in animal costumes, moshing to nothing but the sound of Keem talking.” It’s a safe bet that they’re along for the ride.

Read Hockley-Smith’s full story on Baby Keem here.

STYLE AGENDA

An Investment Piece Can’t Save You

Quiet luxury was supposed to simplify getting dressed. Instead, it gave us a whole new thing to obsess over.

Author Mary H.K. Choi — whose new novel, Pool House, comes out next week — takes us from an afternoon in SoHo (derogatory) watching quarter-zip boys dream of Rolexes to the emotional spiral that is late-night scrolling on The Real Real to the uncomfortable realization that even the most beautiful clothes can’t save us from ourselves. “Quiet luxury is inside me,” she writes. “It will not detonate like a spore. Rather, it will continue to leech its influence like contaminants into groundwater forever and ever long after I’m dead. Quiet luxury is microplastics.”

Somewhere between Choi’s first true “luxury” purchase (“a swift bloodletting”) and her pursuit of a perfect cashmere sweater, we learn the complicated truth: that the clothes that matter most never announce themselves when we buy them. Their value becomes clear years later after they’ve quietly joined the stories that make up our lives.

Read the rest of Choi’s dazzling essay here.

GOOD POINT

“Neither makers nor wearers benefit from cheap garments in the long run.”

—Oisín Quinn, co-founder of the store Nubes, which exclusively carries slow-fashion brands.

SHOPPER SELECT

The Only Moc You’ll Ever Need

For many people, the Car Shoe brand and namesake product — a driving shoe with rubber pebbling meant to grip a gas pedal — falls into a specific category of Italian nonchalance. It’s easy to picture these on silver-haired men with sun-worn skin, pressed linen shirts, and the sort of allure that makes aging look expensive. And yet, a properly roughed-up pair can carry the same appeal as, say, a thin-soled sneaker. Car shoes are svelte, versatile, and soft enough to wear daily. Our favorite pair of car shoes comes from the brand of the same name, but options from Tom Ford and Tod’s also fit the bill. Or, the pedal.

THIS WEEK'S TOP STORIES

ICYMI

IT'S TIME TO TAKE UNDER ARMOUR’S FASHION GAME SERIOUSLY

2026 is shaping up to be Under Armour’s most stylish year to date. A Marine Serre collaboration is just the start.

YOU DON'T KNOW YOU KNOW THIS BALENCIAGA-BACKED ARTIST

Artist Jon Rafman discusses everything from Travis Scott and Balenciaga to reality and AI.

THIS STYLIST SHAPES THE “LOOK” OF ALL YOUR FAVORITE BRANDS

Charlotte Collet is the Paris-based stylist who makes AURALEE, Jil Sander, & Proenza Schouler look cool.

WE’VE ENTERED THE ERA OF “HAUTE WELLNESS”

Dior is now making gym gear, and it doesn’t come cheap.

ALSO...
Hunter Schafer was spotted sampling pastrami at the Prada Mode afterparty (Interview). Emily Blunt has been alien-pilled, and really, who can blame her (WSJ)? And we hear Steph Curry’s new sneaker deal is ruffling some feathers (Sports Illustrated).

From Our Brand Partners

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