In our FORUM, Have We Reached Peak Merch?, we asked whether merch had finally collapsed under its own weight. When everything becomes a drop, a collab, a limited run engineered for hype, meaning starts to thin out. The tote becomes generic. The band tee loses its story. Identity no longer feels personal and, instead, gets flattened into mass-produced signals.

But what if that wasn’t the end point? What if “peak merch” wasn’t saturation, but mutation? Because recently merch hasn’t looked like it’s disappearing. If anything, it looks like it’s hardening. Darkening. Drifting somewhere more ideological – and a lot less innocent.

Somewhere between defence tech and internet culture, the usual fashion pipeline has flipped. Instead of trends flowing from runway to high street, they’re emerging from tech companies, military-adjacent spaces and developer culture – repackaged as limited-edition drops with just enough irony to feel wearable. The new streetwear isn’t coming from the street. It’s coming from systems. 

Take Palantir Technologies – a company that inspires radically different readings, depending on your tolerance for opacity. It builds software for governments and militaries, including work tied to immigration enforcement during the Donald Trump era, while simultaneously presenting itself as a neutral infrastructure layer or even a public good (it also supported COVID-19 vaccine distribution). That balancing act – between public service and surveillance – is less a contradiction than a strategy.

To critics, it’s a sleek interface for extreme levels of state power. To its most vocal supporters, it’s something closer to a mission. Its stock – PLTR – is discussed in forums with evangelical intensity, and CEO Alex Karp has become a kind of ideological figurehead rather than just an executive.