Palace Skateboards (or Palace) is a London-based skateboarding and clothing brand established in 2009. The brand was primarily heavily worn by founder Levent Tanju and his skate team, Palace Wayward Boys Choir. Palace focuses on skate wear with heavy 1990s and pop culture influences alongside VHS style clothing advertisements, internet influencers and skateboard videos of their skate team.
The brand has stores in London, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. Palace launches new products every Friday morning during their five seasonal periods: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Ultimo. The rising brand has gained popularity within the streetwear community for its uniqueness and limited availability. Demand for Palace items can often outweigh supply, resulting in items being resold for significant margins.
said in an interview with Glasscord Magazine: “I had a gap decade after college, just skating and doing fun shit. Then one day I decided that I was a bum and I had to do something. I started designing some board graphics for people I live with. Then half way through designing them I thought to myself that maybe I should just start a skate company,”.
Tanju wanted a triangular theme for his newly created brand. The Palace name references the group’s ironic nicknames for the houses they resided in, which were usually worn down. The logo was created by Marc by Marc Jacobs design director, Fergus “Fergadelic” Purcell.
Early in the development of the brand, clothing and skateboards were sold in local skate shops and boutiques in the London area. As Palace business grew, they began to sell goods in Supreme stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2012, the company won their first award as ‘European Skate Brand of the Year’ at the BRIGHT Tradeshow Awards in Berlin for growth and professionalism as a small brand.
After achieving some recognition, the brand went on to collaborate with Umbro in late 2012, Reebok in late 2013, and Adidas in late 2014. Alongside these collaborations, Palace depended on the Dover Street Market, End Clothing and occasional pop-up shops around England to stock and distribute their merchandise.
In 2015 Palace announced that they would open their first store in London.
COLLABORATIONS
Palace regularly collaborates with Adidas to produce clothing and footwear. These collections usually consist of casualwear; however Adidas sometimes incorporate their sport-specific divisions into the collaborations. This includes collections for tennis (worn by Adidas-sponsored players at Wimbledon 2018) and golf.
Whilst Adidas were the kit manufacturer for Juventus F.C., a fourth kit was released for the club, featuring Palace branding. The kit was worn by the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Paulo Dybala during matches. Palace has also collaborated multiple times with Reebok, of which Adidas is the parent company.
Palace have collaborated with clothing brands such as Avirex, Umbro, Salomon, Dover Street Market, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Ralph Lauren, Rapha, Evisu, Moschino and Anarchic Adjustment. However, collaborations have also been done with brands not usually associated with clothing. This can sometimes be to make specific non-clothing items, such as Cîroc Vodka and Winmau darts, but sometimes clothing collections are made, as was the case when Palace collaborated with Stella Artois in 2021.
Gore-Tex fabric has been licensed for use by Palace to make various waterproof jackets and trousers.