![]() Alexander Martin, Keith Perrin, and Carl Brown. To expand the line’s reach, the designer teamed up with three of his childhood friends from Queens, J. That’s when I started thinking about the concept of ‘for us, by us.’" "It showed me something about the reason people buy clothes - that when there’s an emotional connection, products sell quicker. In an interview with The Washington Post, John admitted that the shirts set off a lightbulb in his young entrepreneur-driven mind. John noticed the cultural relevance of screen-printed T-shirts, and shortly thereafter whipped up a few in response to the Rodney King riots and the arrest of Mike Tyson for rape in 1992. His first taste of success came in 1989 after making $800 in one day with a batch of wool hats he had a friend sew up for him. Daymond John was just a kid from Queens, New York with his sights set on hitting it big in the urban apparel market. Like most urban clothing lines, FUBU was a homegrown venture with modest beginnings. Here, we take a look at the rise, fall, and current whereabouts of Fubu, Phat Farm, Rocawear, and Sean John today. ![]() Somewhere down the line, rappers stopped donning FUBU hats and started looking back to Paris and Milan, to a legacy that was not created with them in mind. By staking a claim in the fashion world and turning their labels into multi-million dollar companies, black business owners and rappers rivaled the Ralph Laurens and Tommy Hilfigers of the world by creating label-based clothing their urban customers could relate to.īut somewhere down the line the baggy jeans, oversized sweatshirts, and label-ridden clothing fell off the fashion radar and out of the minds and shopping carts of their customers. The ‘90s and early 2000’s witnessed the rise of the "for us, by us" mentality, an era of innovation and entrepreneurship within the hip-hop community. Urban apparel lines became hip-hop’s answer to the corporate white world that wanted so desperately to shut them out. However, many of these unabashed signs of affection often went unreciprocated. Aaliyah made Tommy Hilfiger a household name in black households after posing in heavily rotated commercials and advertisements for the brand in the ‘90s. and Puff Daddy pretty much put Versace on the map for young black kids. Young kids and hip-hop heads alike embraced high-end labels because it was something to aspire to. "The entire time I grew up, it was like I only wanted money so I could be fresh." Being able to afford the Salvatore Ferragamo and the John Galliano Cam’ron name-dropped in his songs became equivalent with success. ![]() ![]() "Being fresh is more important than having money," said Kanye West at the opening of the documentary. The 2015 documentary Fresh Dressed details fashion’s significance as a form of identity for hip-hop artists and the fans who look up to them. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.įor decades, rap music has served as the arbiter of what is in and hip for the urban community, especially when it comes to style. The archives will remain available here for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. ![]()
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