Inside Slam Jam’s legendary style archive

Grab your notepad: we caught up with Luca Benini, the man behind one of fashion and street culture’s finest archives, for a lesson in collecting.
Style
Words: Joe Bobowicz
When it comes to contemporary fashion and style, Luca Benini is a name you should know. Not only did he effectively predict the rise and rise of what we now call “streetwear”, but he also convinced the most traditional fashion country in the world that it’s a valid sartorial medium. How? With his subcultural enterprise, Slam Jam.
Thirty five years since setting up in rural Ferrara, Northern Italy, the Slam Jam mastermind has turned an old-school distribution and marketing company into a fully fledged creative monolith. Today, Slam Jam is made up of several wings, working with sports and streetwear labels on all the above, as well as artistic programming and consultancy. (It’s also the proud owner of a flagship store and e‑com platform.)
The Napapijri Martine Rose collaborations of the late teenies and Puma’s Ewen Spencer-shot relaunch of the King Indoor silhouette are just some examples of the company’s subculturally savvy approach. In fact, this approach is one he hopes to inspire in the next generation, going as far as to launch the world’s first MA in Street Culture and Fashion Design with Iuav University of Venice in 2022.
While many will be familiar with Slam Jam’s Milan store, located in the arty district of Brera, the original, Diener and Diener-designed HQ remains home to Luca’s lauded archive, a 30,000-strong collection of clothing, jewellery, records, objects and curios housed among industrial shelving. The treasure trove ticks off everything from early noughties Supreme skate decks – the “Zoopreme” 2006 Zoo York collab is a favourite – to early ’80s Stone Island and FACE back issues (Nick Knight’s 1998 Lee McQueen cover, included).
Luca is keen to highlight his first acquisition, a zebra print shirt he picked up in Milan 40 years ago from a niche boutique called Crazy Boy. “I took a seven-hour train to go get it,” remembers Luca, who grew up in a small Northern town of just 1,500 people. Despite his relatively closed-off location, he set his sights on fashion. “My family didn’t have anything to do with it,” he says. “It’s like it was just my calling.”
As a youngster, Luca fell in love with the lore of Milan’s late ’70s club scene, not least the work of DJ Daniele Baldelli and the cosmic disco movement. He soon moved into partying himself, working in stores by day – where he sold Fiorucci, an early love in his fashion journey – and manning the decks by night.
Eventually, he stepped up as a sales agent, listing clients such as Armani and Versace. Still, he craved more subcultural depth. In the late ’80s, while visiting London, he came across the infamous scribble of Shawn Stüssy. Later, he flew to the US, met Shawn and became Italy’s first official importer of the label (yep, Slam Jam did that!), introducing Old World fashion consumers of Italy to a newer style offering.

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam
Poring through his archive, Luca’s early belief in sportswear, hip-hop and skate-adjacent clothing is apparent, if not prophetic. A number of pieces, including a classic baseball shirt by Spike Lee’s imprint, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, appear throughout. There’s also standout pieces from 1017 Alyx 9SM, a brand that Luca co-founded in 2014, which is, in many ways, the logical conclusion to what Luca foresaw: street luxe.
Luca’s sampled, mish-mash mélange of cultural symbols and signs was something he first witnessed and harnessed in cities like London and New York. In the former, he would pick up the wares of skinhead and second-wave soul boys, stockpiling Lonsdale. In the latter, he took special note of how music and style were so tightly intertwined – evident in the Beastie Boys, Wu Tang Clan and Sonic Youth – and would import accordingly.
Looking back, it’s clear that Luca’s high-low vision had legs, but certain moments certainly catalysed his journey. Indeed, in the late ’90s, Luca visited Japan to meet Jun Takahashi, adding Undercover to his roster. From there, Jun invited Luca to the first Undercover show in Paris, and from then on Luca would make frequent pit stops in Paris, as well as his usual haunts of LA and London. He had broken into the capital‑F fashion establishment on his terms.

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam

Photography Willie Corrente, courtesy Slam Jam
Since then, the underground-luxury crossover he pioneered has rocketed – a benefit and perhaps a curse to his practice. “Style and subcultures are in constant dialogue. A T‑shirt with a logo can unite and divide, represent movements or nothing at all. Recently, I struggle a bit to recognise real subcultures because access to things like information or exposure has become very different from my early days,” Luca explains. “I have always lived in the subcultural space, but then at some point subcultures could become vast enough to be called cultures.”
It’s true. A lot has changed in the past 35 years, and that affects how Luca sources brands to work with. This holds beyond just fashion, affecting anything cultural. He pinpoints music to demonstrate his point. “[Before] you could be the best DJ on the planet by finding that unique edit on vinyl, and you had to overcome multiple obstacles to get there, and maybe still not make it,” he says. “Today that access to certain things is easier thanks to technology. Other things count more: the selection, the timing, the approach.”
Luca’s clubland analogies are a throughline in much of what he tells us. Clearly, his second love, music, is more than just a hobby, but the guiding light of Slam Jam.
“I am more a selector, like a DJ,” he says. “Can be old or new, but the music I like inspires me, and I passed this on to my team.”
