In the summer of 1973, block parties were taking over New York’s Bronx borough as Black and brown youth were coming together to celebrate culture, community and a new genre of music: hip-hop.
Born as a response to the popular disco genre of the ‘70s, hip-hop’s popularity quickly expanded outside of New York City, as musicians and groups like Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, The Sugarhill Gang and others resonated with communities across the country and helped the genre become more mainstream by the ‘80s. Its mainstream popularity also helped hip-hop have a tremendous influence on global fashion by popularizing styles like oversize pants, logo necklaces and more.
Related Articles
Fifty years later, hip-hop has become the most popular musical genre in the U.S., with R&B/hip-hop having the largest share of total album consumption in 2022, according to entertainment data and insights company Luminate. And its fashion influence has only continued to grow.
You May Also Like
“Fashion and style have always been really important to hip-hop because fashion and style have always been important to communities of color,” said Elizabeth Way, associate curator at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who helped curate the museum’s “Fresh, Fly and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip-Hop Style” exhibit. “Even though [fashion] isn’t really an official element of hip-hop, it’s really important and you can see that just by looking at the lyrics.
“Very early on, we have so many artists rapping about what they wear and specific brands. Then we see the graphic artists transferring their art from the walls to clothing and we see break dancers developing their own specific style, so it’s always been very intertwined.”
The block parties of the early ‘70s also served as a platform for the youth to show off their outfits, with baggy silhouettes, nameplate jewelry, kangol hats, logos and bright colors, which helped define the fashion of hip-hop.
Because of its strong link to hip-hop from its early stages, fashion has historically been labeled as hip-hop’s unofficial sixth pillar (the other elements are: MCing, DJing, breakdance, graffiti and beatboxing.)
These five official pillars have in turn influenced fashion. Early hip-hop style favored baggy silhouettes to offer more functional styles for break dancers. Fashion also took inspiration from graffiti artists, infusing the bright colors and graphic brush strokes into clothing. Rappers and DJs called out brands and designers in their lyrics, which influenced fans to buy their pieces. Hip-hop’s emphasis on remixing extended to the clothing, where musicians and fans would mix trends and pull from different decades for their outfits.
“Basically what was happening back then was the colors in the stores were really dull,” said fashion designer Karl Kani, who founded his namesake label in 1991 and is known as the “godfather of urban streetwear.”
“We came out with color. We wanted to be like, ‘Here we are. Look at us.’ The other important thing is we came out with hook-up sets. The kids wanted head-to-toe outfits, so we came out with matching tops and bottoms, the denim outfits, things like that. We brought color, fit and style, and changed the symmetry of young men’s fashion.”
One of the main reasons for hip-hop’s popularity and resonance is how it gave marginalized communities a voice and a way to connect.
“Hip-hop and country are two similarities — they’re the voice of the haves and the have-nots, the voice of the streets no matter what streets you’re from,” said Daymond John, chief executive officer and founder of FUBU, one of the first fashion brands born out of hip-hop. “When people are reflecting and echoing what they’re seeing in the community, it will resonate with people because there’s more of the have-nots than the haves.”
Fashion has also become an extension of that expression, which furthered its symbiotic relationship with the musical genre.
“The substance of the lyrics is about imagining a bigger world beyond what we have and the most tangible things are accessories and fashion,” said Rhuigi Villaseñor, the designer behind Rhude and Bally, who recently has worked on hip-hop-inspired collections with Puma. “You can’t rap about properties — like when I was growing up, I wasn’t even thinking that big. I was dreaming big, but the tangibles were the easiest things I could talk about or think about doing and it was fashion, so that’s why you see a lot of guys from the community that are deciding to design because they have the same imagination, but they just can’t articulate it through words, so they do it through clothes.”
The early days of hip-hop were an era of creativity for both the musicians and designers. As hip-hop didn’t have a defined look at its inception, many designers in the community came forward to dress the musicians at a time before mainstream fashion took notice or wanted to be involved in the genre.
This created an entrepreneurial movement that defined hip-hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s as the period saw the birth of a multitude of fashion brands like FUBU, Cross Colours, 5001 Flavors and Phat Farm, among many others, and designers like Kani, Dapper Dan and April Walker spearhead hip-hop fashion.
Musicians themselves took on the role of fashion designer, with the likes of Jay-Z launching Rocawear and Sean Combs launching his Sean John label. Jennifer Lopez also entered the fashion and beauty worlds through licenses and quickly built a multimillion-dollar brand in the early Aughts.
“That spirit of hip-hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s were really magical because they were so authentic and creative,” said Walker, the designer behind Walker Wear who is known as one of the pioneers of streetwear. “It was really a time where we were expressing ourselves and it was diverse, but it was also so on fire. Like the industry itself musically captured the world and people wanted to recreate that in different ways. I see it with artists now — they’re nostalgic for that period, but in a bigger way. I think that young people — Black and brown people — we’ve always had to use our genius and use our creativity and be innovative because we are always disadvantaged in terms of the opportunities.”
These designers and brands are responsible for hip-hop’s main fashion trends, many of which have persisted over the last 50 years. One of biggest is logomania, which was pioneered by Dapper Dan.
Dapper Dan came to prominence in the early ‘80s when he opened his Harlem, New York, boutique where he became known for creating head-to-toe outfits by illicitly using the logos of luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi and others.
“The reason why logomania is the most popular is because it’s going to be very difficult for brands to go beyond logomania,” Dapper Dan said. “As people move up the economic scale — when they start from nothing and bridge the gap between the poor and the rich — they want to make statements of ‘I’ve arrived.’ Nothing does that better than logomania. You can take a pair of Jordans, but take the swish [logo] off, and it becomes something else. So, it’s the symbol. Success has to have its symbol, and big brands give it that symbol.”
Another hip-hop fashion trend popular in the ‘80s and ‘90s was remixing preppy and collegiate styles, namely looking to American fashion brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. While Lauren generated controversy when he allegedly distanced himself from the genre, Hilfiger leaned heavily into hip-hop by having musicians in his shows and campaigns and by catering to the hip-hop customer base.
“We were an early pioneer of the culture and the movement and supported the whole thing,” said Andy Hilfiger, who worked alongside his brother Tommy Hilfiger for the designer’s brand. “I think [hip-hop] will always resonate. Once you start something that becomes so big, it really doesn’t go away. It’s always a part of the DNA. Music has always been a part of pop culture and Tommy Hilfiger.”
For the Tommy Hilfiger brand specifically, hip-hop had a major impact. The genre’s embrace of the designer’s brand led to growth in its Tommy Jeans sector, the launch of Hilfiger’s women’s line and expanded marketing into new channels like Quincy Jones’ Vibe magazine.
Hilfiger was one of the first mainstream designers to start working with hip-hop musicians and can be credited for some of the most iconic hip-hop imagery, such as his ad campaign with Aaliyah in 1996 and dressing Snoop Dogg in a rugby for his 1994 “Saturday Night Live” episode.
“When [the musicians] were wearing the clothes, all of their fans started wearing the clothes,” Tommy Hilfiger said. “We dressed Snoop Dogg for ‘SNL’ and everyone wanted that shirt — preppies, athletes, surfers, skaters, rockers, all different types of people. The culture was becoming very relevant and present in the ‘90s. I would say we were one of the top brands of choice and this was when a lot of department stores were telling us that we should not have logos and we should not do oversize. They were pushing back, but the street was telling us that was the future trend and we were listening to the consumers.”
Mainstream fashion’s embrace of hip-hop ultimately followed suit in the late ‘90s and into the 2000s when major brands saw the sales bump the genre gave their own brands and hip-hop’s overall impact on the fashion industry.
European designers and brands started working with hip-hop stars on the runway and in campaigns, which created some of the most pivotal style moments in hip-hop’s 50-year history, such as Tupac Shakur walking the Versace runway in 1995 or Run-DMC’s $1 million endorsement deal with Adidas in 1986 following their hit song “My Adidas,” marking the first such brand deal in the hip-hop world.
“Hip-hop artists have invested tremendous amounts of disposable income into high-fashion before high-fashion said, ‘let’s partner,’” said costume designer and stylist June Ambrose, who has worked with musicians such as Combs, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z and others throughout her career. “They were buying the product. Gucci Mane was buying Gucci before Gucci invested in Gucci Mane. They were spending the money first and then the partnerships came after because [the brands] realized that this is now the customer.”
High-fashion’s embrace of hip-hop didn’t come without missteps, with some brands being accused of cultural appropriation or copying Black designers. (i.e. Gucci coming under fire for a jacket in its resort 2018 collection that resembled a Louis Vuitton jacket Dapper Dan created in 1989). While there is still work to be done for mainstream fashion to fully embrace hip-hop culture, the industry has been making strides in giving designers their credit and a platform.
Gucci, for instance, has partnered with Dapper Dan on collections and diversity initiatives in recent years. Louis Vuitton put a spotlight on streetwear in the mainstream when it appointed the late Virgil Abloh as its creative director of menswear, who paved the way for other streetwear designers to follow suit.
“When you look at the high-fashion marketplace right now, that consumer is a younger consumer and that younger consumer is a hip-hop and pop culture audience,” Ambrose said. “Artists like Teyana Taylor and A$AP Rocky, you’re seeing all those artists in ad campaigns. Even Pharrell [Williams, Abloh’s successor as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director] and Virgil Abloh, who was not a hip-hop artist, but he was hip-hop culture. You see all the hip-hop artists that are going into their own design brands and labels because the culture is bigger than just the music now. It’s the culture itself.”
When looking forward to the next 50 years of hip-hop and its relevance to fashion, many figures see the genre continuing to inform the industry and mix in with other prominent movements, such as genderless designs.
Even while its popularity has ebbed as fashion shifts to a more dressed-up mode, streetwear remains a key category and brands will continue to look to and work with cultural figures — not only from hip-hop but from other popular musical genres like K-pop as well as film — as style informers.
“I see it getting bigger and bigger,” Kani naturally predicted about the future of hip-hop and fashion. “The fact that hip-hop is celebrating 50 years this year is monumental. It didn’t really have a big push behind it at the beginning, but that’s why I think it survived for so long. It started from the ground. I look at hip-hop as it rose from concrete. Tupac used that quote and that is hip-hop. We rose from nothing to what it is today and those things can stand time.”