10 Things We Learned Watching Hip-Hop Style Documentary "Fresh Dressed"

Image via Complex Original

In the '70s, gangs adopted a rigid dress code: "You must at all times have black jeans... motorcycle jackets, and on top of the motorcycle jackets were denim jackets—cut sleeves," according to former gang member Lorine Padilla. However, even though most of the gang members adhered to this wardrobe, many customized their outfits to declare which crew they were running with. Individuals would sew letters and large insignias on the back to mark their affiliation, and the fronts of their denim jackets would be covered in various patches. "The art of customizing, hip-hop got that from the so-called gangs," says Popmaster Fabel. In Fresh Dressed, the legendary b-boy takes the viewer through the process of taking a jacket and making its one own through a series of handcut letters, carefully chosen patches, and other unique details, like laces, beads, and studs.

Today, the art of customization is everywhere from Kanye West sewing patches onto otherwise standard bomber jackets and Pharrell drawing all over Timberlands, adidas sneakers, and jackets. 

The eruption of vibrant colors in hip-hop style was influenced by street art and graffiti. People started taking the type of art they saw on the streets and replicating them by slapping their own names or portraits of themselves on shirts and jeans. The trend really took off when LL Cool J rocked a sweater made by the Shirt Kings, which prominently featured an airbrushed version of the rapper as a b-boy. The shirt was painted by King Phade and he says LL's sweater was directly responsible for making Shirt Kings, and consequently bold colors, blow up. "What Shirt Kings was about was drawing things that we saw in our community." King Phade says. "We basically remixed them."

Dapper Dan became famous for taking established luxury fashion brands—Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Hermès—and remixing them. He designed custom hats, sneakers, and bold outerwear that had brand logos plastered all over it, embellishing these staid brands for a community that wanted to stand out.

Dan's Boutique attracted crowds of celebrities to his storefront, including Eric B. & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Marke, Salt-N-Pepa, all looking to cop his unique luxe designs. Eventually Dan's business was shut down due to copyright infringement, but his legacy lives on. "Dapper Dan was Tom Ford before Tom Ford," Nas says in the film. "He should have been hired instead of shut down. Because he had the foresight to do back then what they just started doing maybe five years, ten years after him." 

A group that called themselves the Lo-Lifes were formed after two Ralph Lauren-obsessed crews—gangs from Marcus Garvey Village in Brownsville and Saint John's and Utica Place in Crown Heights—came together. "Two separate boosting crews... that came together and created a big brotherhood that influenced the world of fashion and hip-hop," Lo-Life member Thirstin Howl III says in the film. Boosting in this case refers to shoplifting, and Howl III recounts going with crews to ambush the stores and making off with as much Polo as possible. Howl notes that because Ralph Lauren was expensive and only available at Manhattan's higher-end stores, wearing it head-to-toe in his local neighborhood was a surefire way to essentially, as Kanye West says in a later clip about his own Polo piece, "shit on everybody there."

"Being a promotion, walking around in the club, we were influencing the rappers in the golden era," Howl says. The impact of 50 Lo-Lifes putting on for Polo inspired celebrities to wear the products in their videos and make the trend go global.

In the film, West also admits to being inspired to step up his style by a big Ralph Lauren fan. He remembers seeing an all-over print polo and realizing he needed to "get [his] fresh up to a whole 'nother level."

"[Tommy] Hilfiger would show up in the hood and open up a trunk with clothes and hand them out," Ralph McDaniels, creator of Video Music Box, says. It makes the malicious rumor that the designer didn't like black people wearing his clothes look even more ridiculous. Hilfiger's shrewd marketing move paid off big time as people who received the free clothes only ended up wanting more of it. "It was like the drug dealer giving you a free hit," McDaniels adds. Suddenly, people started purchasing their own Hilfiger, including '90s icons that made the label a staple in the hip-hop community. Hilfiger famously ended up on the backs of '90s icons like Aaliyah, Snoop Dogg, Raekwon, and more.  

Up to this point, the film has charted the insular evolution of hip-hop fashion. However, it's not until the early '90s that this style of dress crashes into the consciousness of mainstream America. The rise of the style coincides with the upwards trajectory of rap music in America. Suddenly, the first streetwear brand, Cross Colours, is born. "The first time we started seeing that urban really had some dollars behind it was through Cross Colours," says Elena Romero, a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The brand took note of style trends that were going on in New York City and adapted its clothes to go with the streetwear movement. Most notably, the brand's designer, Carl Jones, noticed that people needed belts to hold up their baggy jeans, so he created jeans that fit loose in the leg but had a waist that actually fit. 

Although department stores were hesitant to stock the burgeoning style at first, the clothes were seen on Will Smith on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and shortly after on In Living Color. All of the sudden, the brand was blowing up. The new silhouette disrupted the entire young men's market and the rest of the industry started to play catch up by straying from fitted clothing and producing larger sizes. 

However, the close relationship between hip-hop music and the style eventually hurt streetwear brands. A proliferation of rappers created lines that some believe were more about profit than being an actual brand or clothing line.

One of the streetwear companies that was birthed out of the movement Cross Colours created was the eponymous brand from Karl Kani. Kani's designs were seen on the likes of Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Diddy, and Dr. Dre, but his brand received a lot of help along the way.

When Kani first flew out from New York to Los Angeles he paid a worker at one of the factories that manufactured Guess to show him the local denim suppliers so that he could get started. Cross Colors' Carl Jones also took Kani under his wing after they met in the middle of one of the brand's fashion shows.

Kani also got a very crucial co-sign when Tupac agreed to model in Kani's ads for free. The designer says that 'Pac wore his clothing before they knew one another, and when he finally got the chance to meet the rapper he asked him how much money it would take for him to star in a Karl Kani ad. "I ain't going to charge you; you're black," Tupac said, according to Kani. "I don't charge my people for nothing." The rapper kept his promise and ended up shooting for Kani just two weeks later. Kani says those ads were part of the reason Kani gained international stardom because "they worshipped [Tupac] like a God overseas and in Europe."

"FUBU was clever enough to put a hat on LL in a Gap commercial," Esco Clothing founder Willie Esco Montanez says. "Changed everything."

The rapper reportedly felt like the Gap didn't respect streetwear culture, so he turned an ad that the Gap paid $30 million for into a commercial for FUBU. The commercial featured the rapper freestlying with a Fubu hat prominently perched on his head and he even managed to slip in a reference to the brand by spitting, "For Us, By Us," the phrase FUBU stands for. 

The appearance in the ad brought huge notoriety to the brand with very humble beginnings. FUBU designer Daymond John recalls receiving orders while holed up in a hotel room near a tradeshow in Las Vegas called Magic. Despite $300,000 worth of orders, almost 30 banks refused to finance FUBU, which led John to sell all the furniture from his house, while burning the rest, to create a makeshift factory where staff could sew the products and fulfill the orders. "We slept in sleeping bags next to those machines and for a year we would just crank FUBU out of the house," John says. Next thing John knew, FUBU was worth $350 million—and went on to inspire Sean Jean, Roc-a-Wear, et al.

Sean Combs, aka Diddy, created his Sean John brand at the height of streetwear fervor. However, the rapper's line was far from a vanity project. By melding together the traditional aspects of menswear with the trendier parts of streetwear, Diddy created a sustainable and critically-lauded brand. He even went on to win the prestigious CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award for Sean John in 2004. Sean John also served as the training ground for future Public School and DKNY designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, who took home the same prize last year. 

Also, shoutout to Diddy for recognizing Channing Tatum's talent and putting him on Sean John's runway before he was a star. 

"My brand is 100 percent inspired by hip-hop," West says. The rapper-designer acknowledges that he wouldn't be able to design with adidas if people like Diddy, Jay Z, and Russell Simmons hadn't made the idea of rappers as designers palatable to the current generation. Now, 'Ye says that it's his responsibility to further the movement by making his line "Ralph level."