A LOOK AT HIP-HOP’S FREESTYLE FASHIONS
Almost 40 years after the first beats were laid down, hip-hop music remains a major force in America’s cultural dialogue. The Oakland Museum of California’s new exhibition, “Respect: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom,” tells the story of the music scene’s ascent both locally and globally.
“In general there’s an under-recognized history of the Bay Area we want to highlight and flesh out in the origin story of hip-hop,” says René de Guzman, the exhibition’s curator. “The traditional story is New York-based, but the truth is it was a national phenomenon. There was a regional urban culture that kids were responding to at that time all over.”
Key to understanding hip-hop’s continued influence since the 1980s is understanding its ongoing cross-pollination with fashion.
Oakland’s earliest contribution to the hip-hop aesthetic, de Guzman says, is a certain kind of “street-hustler style, both in attitude and dress,” derivative of the East Bay’s funk scene of the 1970s. The style was typified by a colorful, pimped-out kind of maximalism that also drew on earlier Bay Area musical artists like Sly and the Family Stone.
“Hip-hop style is so rich,” says de Guzman. “It could cover everything from the mack daddy or the hustler on the West Coast to East Coast Italian mafia style with fedoras and suits.” In Los Angeles’ hip-hop scene, he cites the influence of Latino “gangsta” style with its signature baggy pants, white T-shirts and bandannas. Then there are crosscoastal trends, including “working-class references with Timberland boots and the Run-DMC athletic wear.”
In the 1980s-’90s time frame that is the exhibition’s primary focus, everyday wardrobe pieces like sneakers, bomber jackets and tracksuits were customized and became signatures of hip-hop style. These items were later re-appropriated by the fashion industry and marketed as part of a hiphop-influenced lifestyle by the same brands.
For de Guzman, the importance of customization for both artists and fans is a statement of “I am an agent of my own world; I’m so skillful and powerful I can take the products of corporate America and make them mine.” Trends like adding thicker laces to sneakers, graffiti motifs on clothes and lettering and “bling” (gold chains and sparkling stones, both real and costume) to pieces resulted in fans “creating your own power by customizing,” he says. “Like the way lowrider culture is about personalizing a Chevy, it’s the same way Run DMC says, ‘This is my Adidas,’ when he does it to a tracksuit.”
Among the authentic hip-hop fashion in the exhibition is a red and white striped Troop tracksuit with rapper LL Cool J’s name. The sweatsuit and suede pant zip-up jacket set is one of several pieces on loan to the museum by East Bay collector and rapper Eric Robles, a.k.a. EBONE415.
“You’d find something like this at an urban specialty hood store back then,” Robles says, naming the now closed Harputs on Fillmore Street in San Francisco as an example. “LL (Cool J), MC Hammer — a
lot of rap groups wore Troop.”
The tracksuit, and athletic apparel in general, especially sneakers, remain key pieces in hip-hop style today, including in hugely successful clothing lines by hip-hop artists like Sean Combs (Sean John), Pharrell Williams (G-Star Raw) and Kanye West (Yeezy).
“It’s about the youthful exuberance of physical style,” de Guzman says. “It’s the relationship between sports culture and music culture.”
Also featured in the exhibition are designer fashion and accessories influenced by hip-hop style, including bejeweled headphones by Dolce & Gabbana, a spray-paint can purse by Jeremy Scott for Moschino and a costume pearl “headphone” necklace by Chanel.
Susan Barrett, the lender of the items and the exhibition’s fashion specialist, says the fashion spread beyond the original community and into mainstream and high fashion as hip-hop rose in popularity, both aided by the growth of the Internet. The genre’s celebration of success via status symbols like bling and prominently logoed designer goods also made it ripe for style crossovers.
Unlike other antiestablishment music genres, “Hip-hop is unabashedly pro money and making money,” Barrett says. “Punk was anti-establishment and anti-capitalism; hip-hop is the opposite. But it’s not just about success in the preexisting system. These artists made their own system.
“There’s always a tension between hip-hop and fashion, about who is using whom,” Barrett says. “Look at the example of Dapper Dan.”
The Harlem custom clothier, once vilified and sued by luxury houses like Louis Vuitton for using their logos (without permission) in his designs for musicians, is now a featured collaborator at Gucci. The Gucci x Dapper Dan limited collection was announced after Gucci designer Alessandro Michele was called out for heavily referencing a Dapper Dan logo puffer coat in the house’s 2018 cruise collection.
“The story of Dapper Dan is fascinating in that Dapper Dan was copying all the designers and redoing it,” Barrett says. “That’s exactly what the hip-hop DJs of that time were doing: stealing, or sampling. That’s what Dapper Dan was doing. This has been going on since day one. Anytime there’s a cool street music, designers take it as inspiration.”
Ultimately, for de Guzman, the core of hip-hop style in any incarnation is rebellion.
“The idea of the antihero, the hustler, the gangsta is an essentially American idea,” says de Guzman. “America and hip-hop both have rebellious roots around oppression. In America it was King George and the British Empire; for hip-hop folk it’s issues of racial justice. It’s reflected both in the music and the clothes.”