The palm trees look black at sundown, the sky is orange, the clouds pink. The sound of wheels on dusty concrete slowly dies down. The boys in printed tees and faded black denim start toward the boardwalk, putting the Venice Beach skatepark to sleep for the night. They’ll be back tomorrow for another round, and the day after that until, maybe, the end of time. Skateboards and skate shoes change with the seasons and the decades, but the skaters?

Nah, they stick around.

It’s here in California that skateboarding gained its first foothold, some sixty years ago, on days when the ocean was flat. You see, when the ocean was flat the surfers were bored, and when the surfers were bored they made up hobbies. Like taking off the handles on their kick scooters, which, yeah, was fun for a while. When none of them had any teeth left, though, they opted for a wider platform and added a couple of wheels. A skateboard. That works. Little, local surf-n-skate shops hesitantly started popping up, and, hey, a skateboarding community was born. Through the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, skateboarding was a California thing, the pastime of grungy, sandy, tan, blond, bored surfers. “Sidewalk surfing”, Life magazine called it.

And then came a handful of passionate skateboarders who sent the sport on cross-America tours and demos, and then came the media coverage, and then the tens of thousands of young Americans who had never seen the Pacific but were curious to explore this strange new culture . During the ‘60s and ‘70s skateboarding started its slow move inland, technical improvements made boards faster and safer, and the first skatepark was born in Florida, 1976.

Fun fact: the inspiration for this park came from the worst drought in Cali-history, during which skaters would sneak in strangers’ backyards to skate in their dried-up pools.

It was still a B-list alternative to surfing, though, and skateboards probably would have disappeared if it hadn’t been for a rundown neighbourhood of Santa Monica, Dogtown, and the kids that skated there known as the Z-Boys, who turned skateboarding from a hobby to a lifestyle. The Z-Boys were the best of Dogtown ‘boarders, and they caught many eyes when they took part in the National Skateboard Championships of ‘75 in posh Del Mar, CA.

And by “took part”, I mean “took over”.

They skated low and aggressive when everyone else skated upright; they wore dirty Levi’s, dark Vans and tees with their logo silkscreened on when everyone else wore regular ol’ shorts. They won every single category of the championship, looked like punk rockers doing it, and intimidated every proper family in San Diego. With the Z-Boys, the culture, or counter-culture, took a shape all of its own, and the bad boys with messy hair were no longer “sidewalk surfing”. They were skateboarding.

The ‘80s took the Z-Boys’ outlaw image well beyond the limits of Dogtown. It resonated so loudly that it went far beyond skating: cinematographers made videos and documentaries, artists created board graphics, iconic magazines such as Thrasher - still published to this day - were founded, movies like the Josh Brolin-starring cult favourite Thrashin’ were released, a sub-genre of punk music dubbed “skate punk” thrived. This transcendence of the sport was unprecedented: no sport had turned into a comparably engrossing lifestyle on such a wide scale before. By and large, skaters, almost exclusively males, were portrayed as reckless rebels who disrespected authority and dabbled in drugs. Their clothing was intentionally careless, mismatched, oversized, loud, ripped. Fashion wanted nothing to do with them, and all they wanted from with fashion were Claudia Schiffer prints on their boards.

Fun fact: Vans shoes went from sporty niche to the big time when Sean Penn’s character rocked a pair of Slip-Ons in the 1982 classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

It didn’t take much longer, however, until there were so many skaters that the alternative culture became mainstream. The black-and-white checkered print Slip-Ons - you know the ones - were the first of many things to slip out of the punk-outlaw skating community, when regular Joes started wearing them. Competitions like the X-Games gained in notoriety and made skateboarding a regulated sport with an international following.

Tony Hawk became a full-fledged celebrity whose video games sold over thirty million copies. Ryan Sheckler got an MTV-produced reality show. Hip hop and reggae artists were seen with boards of their own. Films such as Lords of Dogtown and Grind portrayed skaters as kind-enough spirits who, without being fond of authority, were nothing like outlaws. Oh, yeah, and there was that Avril Lavigne song. The appeal of skateboarding became so significant that tens of other subcultures chimed in. Sure, it was made more popular and accessible than ever, but mainstream acceptance was inconsistent with its signature rebellious lifestyle. The growth of the sport forced its culture to fade.

And here we are, almost forty years past the Z-Boys’ heydey. In 2013 is there anything we like more than a youth-driven subculture with an air of nostalgia? If Gatsby, the beat generation and Lana Del Rey are any indication... there isn’t. Though the devil-may-care era of skateboarding draws from a more recent nostalgia, it has one characteristic that is very alluring to the world of lifestyle trends and high fashion: it has never been touched by the world of lifestyle trends and high fashion. There are no glossy Jazz eras, no ritzy Golden Ages of Hollywood, no workman-chic style editorials starring Ryan Gosling to glam up skateboarding and to remind us how cool it once was. There are only dirty sneakers and faded jeans. It’s untouched territory.

Or was, anyway, until the London and New York Spring/Summer 2013 Fashion Weeks.

The Dogtown skaters inspired a generation of urban kids to wear wide-legged shorts and unbuttoned button-downs, mesh jerseys and baggy jeans, printed tees, patterned pants and plaid shirts wrapped around the waist. Now, they’re inspiring a generation of high-fashion designers to do the same. Some of these elements started popping up on runways early in the decade (most obviously in a skate-influenced but boring Number:Lab collection shown at NYFW in 2011), but it was nothing like this year’s full-fledged revival. Topman Design, General Idea, Shaun Samson, N. Hoolywood, Katie Eary and Astrid Anderson -- to name a few, believe it or not -- all presented SS13 collections that were more or less skater boy-themed. Sure, their take on it is prettier, cleaner, trendier and much more calculated, but the idea’s there.

It turns out fashion changed its mind: the counter-culture has become couture culture. The good news for skaters is that most of these designers are rising, daring talent that challenge the conventions of high fashion. In this slightly twisted manner, skateboarding is still the rebel. The bad news? Well, let’s just say the Z-Boys probably never wanted to count Anna Wintour as one of their fans.

And so the skateboards and the skate shoes will change, but, as soon as the sun rises, the people of Venice Beach will hear the sound of wheels on dusty concrete rise up again. ‘Cause the skaters, they stick around.