Danny Brown's 25 Favorite Brands

Image via Complex Original

Danny Brown: "Detroit is a blue collar working city, and Dickies is blue collar work shit. A lot of people, that's what they like. Like auto mechanic type shit. Everyone wear Dickies. The whole suit. The coats, everything. The jackets, the hats, all that shit, you know? And then it was almost like, a gangster staple too. If you're a thug that's what you wear. You wore Dickies and shit. With the Nike Cortez."

Danny Brown: "I love Burberry. I mean of course because it's just like a simple pattern, but I don't know maybe I think I'm English at heart. Like, the way people probably look at Polo and Ralph Lauren and shit, that's how I look at Burberry.

"I think I'm British 'cause I just love their music so much. [Laughs.] Like the grime music, we connect on that. They get a lot from us too. When the techno shit, ghetto techno shit, started crackin' back here the first pipeline of people listening to that shit was them over there. We used to have artists that were popular as hell over in London, overseas, who weren't really popular in America, you know? They were even with the whole J Dilla scene. They was with the big fanbase of that over there, moreso than there was in America."

Danny Brown: "I mean, you gotta put Air Jordans on the list because at the end of the day, when I was a kid, you wanted Jordans. No matter what sneaker came out that year, you wanted Jordans. I'd skip school to go get 'em. If Jordans came out that day we didn't go to school, and we all just went to the mall that day and got Jordans. If we could, if we was lucky enough, we would try to make it back to school to be the first person wearing the Jordans that came out in the day.

"See I wanted to be cool, so what I would do was, I would try to make it back to school that first day, and then I would wear them that first day that they came out. But there probably wasn't too many people seeing you because I only had a half day of school. Then don't wear 'em the next day so people don't think I got them. And then the next day, everybody wear 'em, 'cause then everybody got 'em. Then the next day, I wear 'em. [Laughs.] I used to do shit like that. I ain't even trippin' on the Jordans."

Danny Brown: "Another staple—the hoodies. Being from Michigan, it's cold as hell, and there's nothing like a staple hoodie. I would at least buy a new Champion hoodie every winter. So I had to put Champion on my list for that. And I love that when the hoodie gets really dirty and raggedy and the strings are all fucked up, it's just a comfortable hoodie. I put that on, I wear it around the house.

"They make a cheap one, and they make a more expensive one. I always go for the more expensive, I don't like the cheap one. I don't like the way that one feels. The expensive ones can last forever. I really like the socks and underwear and shit. I buy a lot of Champion shit."

Danny Brown: "I put Rockports on the list 'cause I don't know too many other cities that were fucking with Rockport shoes back in the '90s. But for Detroit, it was like a big staple. You wore the Polo shirt with khakis and the Rockports. That's my whole middle school, and my high school. Nothing like a pair of Rockport Gore-Tex boots in the winter.

"A lot of boots, they're made to handle winter, but they not made to be comfortable. Rockport's one of the first companies that started thinking about making boots comfortable. Coming up with new shapes, and putting air bubbles in them and shit way before Nike was. I fuck with Rockport hard."

Danny Brown: "As a kid, when they were doing the Starter jackets and shit, I wanted to have every single one. Every color, with the hat to match. That was like a big deal to me, as a kid. I had a few. I had the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, everybody had the Duke Blue Devils. I also had a Michigan, I had a Chicago Bulls. Everybody wanted a Chicago Bulls. So I had a few. They used to get stolen from me all the time, stolen out my locker. People were robbing peoples' Starter jackets back in the day."

Danny Brown: "Used Jeans, that was some back-in-the-day kid shit. Being nostalgic and just thinking about it, it was about Used and Damaged at the time. Used was just like a pair of jeans that looked used. I think the way fashion is right now, if somebody came up with that mentality, I think that shit would crack off. So I liked Used for that, it seemed like it was ahead of its time."

Danny Brown: "I put Cross Colours on this list, but my dad, he wouldn't ever let me wear that shit. [Laughs.] My dad, he thought it was corny. He was into like wearing Polo and Pelle leathers and shit like that. So he thought the Cross Colours shit was corny, and he wouldn't buy me no Cross Colours. So I put it on my list because that was something that I really wanted to be a part of my fashion, but my pops wouldn't let me. I don't know, maybe he helped me out, maybe he didn't.

"Now I would wear Cross Colour-type shit, I wear loud colors and shit. Maybe if he let me get it out my system early [Laughs.] I probably wouldn't dress the way I do as a 31-, 32 year-old man. He definitely influenced my fashion 'cause he bought my clothes! I would say what I want, and he would say "That's wack!" [Laughs.]. He would buy me something regular like some Timberlands, you know. It wasn't like people in school would say anything about my clothes, but it was fly shit."

Danny Brown: "Mm-hmm. Patagonia is just like another staple. It's a winter thing. I could put Columbia, too. In Michigan you know you gotta dress warm. Your Patagonia is for when you wanna dress warm and you want to look cool too. You know the hoodies, they have a nice logo, and not too many people wear it out here. People wear North Face or Columbia so I would wear Patagonia back in the day, just to be on some other shit."

Danny Brown: "The Polo Bear, now that fucked my whole world up. I don't know, maybe I'm a sucker for immature, adult-looking clothes, but when the Polo Bear first came out, I was like, just infatuated with that shit. That shit was expensive as fuck. It was like $300 for a sweater, and $100 for the T-shirt. So I was doing whatever I could do to obtain Polo Bear shit.

"I didn't get too many peices. I only got a couple T-shirts. I think I had a hat maybe too. I wish I could have got those sweatshirts back in the day man. Those shits was so hard. I was working at a job then. I was working at a buffet, washing dishes and shit. I'd be getting like a $200 check every two weeks. And then spending $100 on a T-shirt! The fuck? [Laughs.]"

Danny Brown: "Maybe if I lived in different climates, it probably would have persuaded my fashion a little more. But here, you gotta dress warm. I hate being cold, and Timberlands, when they came out with the boots, it made dressing warm cool. That's what I give Timberlands props for. Before them, you just had to be warm. But then when you had Timberland on, you can get flashy if you want to.

"I'm a fan of the regular construction boot, but I'm a huge fan of when they made the big tall boots for, like, $300 and shit. That's what we was all about. We wanted to get the big Timberlands. The ones that came up to your knees and shit. [Laughs.] I'm more so that Timberland guy rather than a construction boot guy. That's like the Air Force 1s of boots. But I like the big joints. The big expensive boots."

Danny Brown: "Same thing with North Face. It's about dressing warm, but the thing about North Face is that their clothes really worked. You wonder why they cost what they cost. Back in the day, I'd rather just get a regular coat. Same thing—it's gonna be warm. But no, it's not. When I first got a North Face, I realized this coat can handle a Michigan winter. My first North Face lasted me three winters. You gotta give them props."

Danny Brown: "That was just like a staple jean when I was in high school. You had to work, you had to get the Guess, and certain colors everybody had. The light blue, the acid-wash ones. And there was nothing like seeing girls in them. I don't know, it did something to the figure, especially when they made the horseback riding jeans. Those shits was fire. Guess jeans made high school real pervy. [Laughs.] Shouts out to Guess Jeans, man. It's more so about the women wearing Guess jeans. If I talked to a girl in high school, she had to be wearing Guess jeans."

Danny Brown: "Particularly Wallabees, and that's just coming from being a fan of Wu-Tang. When Ghostface came out, and he started wearing Wallabee things, I don't know how it affected other cities, but it took Detroit by storm. You ain't have no Wallabees back then. You ain't really had shit. We was dyeing them too, same way he he was, fucking up our shoes and shit. [Laughs.]

"They couldn't survive the winters. When you dyed them, and then they get in the snow, the dye would wear off. I mean one time I wore some raspberry, wine color, and then I was walking in the snow and the dye was coming up and splashing on my Tommy Hilfiger corduroys. [Laughs.] Fucked up my whole shit!"

Danny Brown: "I was wearing Levi's real, real heavy like in 2002, 2003. I was really wearing them because that's what the grime guys was talking about a lot. Dizzee Rascal wore Levi's then. And nobody wore Levi's at that time. To me, that's tight because they only made like crazy slim-fit boot-cut, they didn't make them like the hood dresses. And then eventually they did make them and then they were everywhere, by 2005. I'm giving the UK, I'm giving London the shout-out for me wearing Levi's. I only fucked with the skinny type. I was wearing them before they made the baggy True Religion lookin' kind."

Danny Brown: "Not necessarily the clothes, but the jackets. In high school, they cost only $150, $125 bucks so it wasn't hard to just get a Nautica jacket. Like I said, I made $200 every 2 weeks at that time. Then when I started selling weed, it was just easy. So I had a lot of Nautica jackets. I still have 'em to this day. Maybe Nautica will come back. [Laughs.] I'll whip 'em out. All my weed money went to buying clothes. Most of it went to smoking weed too. I'm gettin' high on my own supply. Any leftover that I got, it was me supporting my habit and me buying clothes."

Danny Brown: "As a kid I fucked with Calvin Klein. To me Calvin Klein is the cleanest. As far as underwear, that's the only fucking underwear I wanna wear. I remember I used to wear a lot of the jeans and shit too. Calvin Klein, I feel like that's the cleanest shit. That's like something, it will never go away. It will always just be cool with Calvin Klein. 

"I remember two brands that to us was like the clean shit. That was Calvin Klein and Claiborne. I fucked with Calvin Klein, and we fucked with Claiborne hard. So I put them two together. When I think about it, they had the most slim-cut jeans that you could get away with. The Calvins didn't fit baggy but they wasn't tight. So you looked clean with the CK and the Claiborne on. That's like '96 right there."

Danny Brown: "That's just another one of it. Like what Dickie is, Carhartt is the high end of that. Still to this day I wear Carhartt. I wear the coats and the hoodies. The vests still go. But of course the skullies. Skull caps, beanies and shit. Carhartt is just an ill logo, and you know they're making a more high-end version of it. I see they got the store in London. I went out there, and that shit is tight. So Carhartt started out as maybe a workman's brand, but now it's like, really fashion. It's really fly shit. I was in Paris and they had a store. They fuck with it hard in Japan, too."