Wile E. Coyote: Streetwear Icon?!

Even though the formal announcement of Space Jam 2 zapped the marquee Looney Tunes characters back into the news cycle, it’s the hapless Wile E. Coyote who is having the biggest cultural moment. In a high fashion and streetwear landscape obsessed with cartoons, Coyote is the centerpiece of Raf Simons's latest collection for Calvin Klein—a particularly choice $1,400 leather tote sold out initially and only recently got restocked.

That’s not all, folks. A few weeks back, affordable streetwear heavyweights the Hundreds made Coyote the centerpiece of their latest drop, featuring him and his eternal foil, the Roadrunner, on a line of bombers and hoodies. Lastly, a new movie, Coyote vs. Acme (which is as tantalizing a title as I’ve ever heard tbh) is also in development at Warner Brothers.

But the question remains—why Wile E., and why now?! What about the current moment mandates that the Coyote be back in our lives, seemingly out of nowhere? What aspect of the modern existence does Coyote speak to?

I’ve got a few theories. Theory No. 1: Coyote/Road Runner is as rich a rivalry as literature can offer this side of Ahab, and that untapped IP was going to be explored at some point in the era of “FRANCHISES ONLY.” Theory No. 2: The Sisyphean nature of the Coyote's task, as well as the desert setting of his futile trials of Coyote-dom speaks to a Nerfed-out escapism many of us are desperate to have in 2018. In the aftermath of Trump, the two franchises that saw the biggest increase in user engagement on Facebook were Star Wars and Peanuts—Peanuts is about the concurrent beauty and ugliness of emotion and Star Wars is about fascism. I feel like Coyote’s doomed dedication to a monumental and impossible task falls somewhere in that lineage.

But most of all, and I really do believe this floats above everything else… “Beep beep!” Haha, thanks for reading.