How Dapper Dan first brought hip-hop and high fashion together starting in 1982

fashion andare now as closely linked as Esquire and good guys, Jackson Pollock and action painting, fries and ketchup. Rap tracks today have titles likeMy Adidas(),Nikes(Frank Ocean) orAvirex(Rin), making the close connection between music and fashion clear. One pioneer in particular made a significant contribution to integrating high fashion into hip-hop culture: Dapper Dan.

To understand and properly classify the significance of this fusion, we must take a look at the beginnings of hip-hop culture, which emerged in the poor neighborhoods of New York in the 1970s. This movement emerged as a creative form of expression for young people who, through the four pillars of hip-hop - rapping, DJing, writing and breaking - could escape their difficult everyday life, express themselves creatively and gain recognition from their peer group. While many of the early hip-hoppers dreamed of luxury brands, that world seemed out of reach for them, and wearing designer outfits in their hood was unimaginable back then. But that changed in the 1980s.

To understand how this happened, you have to understand that hip-hop is a sampling culture. This means that fans of hip-hop culture have always taken existing things and created something new and their own out of them. This is most evident with music: Because hardly anyone could borrow a drum set back then, the drums for the rap tracks were not recorded by themselves, but rather sampled from funk and soul artists - for example from songs like James Brown'sFunky Drummeror the pieceApachethe Incredible Bongo Band. So are parts ofFunky Drummerincluding in well-known rap songs likeLet Me Ridevon Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Dogg, Jewell and RC,Mama Said Knock You Outby LL Cool J andFight The Powerfrom Public Enemy.Apache-Samples are available, for example, inMade You Lookby Nas,Protect Ya Neckfrom Wu-Tang Clan andAssassinsby the Geto Boys. And it is precisely this form of appropriation of something that already exists in order to then transform it into something new that a certain Dapper Dan applied to the area of ​​high fashion in the early eighties.

Dapper Dan was born Daniel R. Day in 1944 in Harlem, New York City. Even as a teenager, he had a passion and a knack for gambling, which is how he gambled together the money to finance his first businesses. At first, in the mid-1970s, he sold mostly stolen clothing out of his car until he opened his first clothing store in 1982: Dapper Dan's Boutique, located on 125th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue. Dan wanted to make big money quickly, so his store was open around the clock: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He originally wanted to become a wholesaler, but he had to struggle with prejudice - many business people didn't want to do business with him because of his skin color and where he lived. So instead, he started not only selling “ready-made” clothes in his shop, but also creating his own designs and creating new, unique pieces of clothing - mostly inspired by his own life and the experiences he had had in it so far . Through gambling, he had already learned that fashion has an effect on others - and he literally sewed this fact into his clothes. He also really studied fashion by visiting libraries and learning about designs and logos and their impact.

One material Dan worked with early on was leather. Because he noticed that the big fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and Gucci at the time only designed bags, wallets and luggage made of leather, but not clothing, Dapper Dan quickly changed this fact. What was he doing? He removed their logos from other clothing and had them sewn onto his new designs, many of them made of leather (incidentally, he never sewed himself, but had a team that did it for him). To get to the point: Dapper Dan had extravagant counterfeits created and sold them to his ever-growing clientele - and increasingly fascinated by wearing these exquisite brands. However, Dapper Dan himself preferred to describe his fakes as knock-ups, as upgrades that contained a lot of creativity.

In the beginning, Dapper Dan's clientele consisted primarily of gangsters and pimps who wanted to look good on the street and had the money - including the well-known drug lord Alpo Martinez. But because the opening of his store coincided with the blossoming of hip-hop culture, rappers soon discovered his fashion. The first of them what- and when everyone noticed him because of his clothes, all the other big hip-hop artists of the time followed: Eric B. & Rakim (they also wear Dapper Dan's clothes on their classic albumsPaid In FullandFollow The Leader), KRS-One, Salt-N-Pepa, The Fat Boys and Big Daddy Kane. Later, athletes such as Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather also counted among his customers. They were all suddenly wearing fresh clothes with the logos of luxury brands. However, even though Dapper Dan described these clothing items as knock-ups, they were still fakes. This repeatedly led to raids and legal disputes, which ultimately led to Dan having to close his shop in 1992 after a legal dispute with the fashion house Fendi. But by then the big high fashion brands had long since found their way into hip-hop culture.

From then on, Dapper Dan continued to work primarily out of the spotlight for a few years - until he re-emerged on the scene and in the spotlight in 2017. The trigger was thatCreative director Alessandro Michele made a jacket for track and field athlete Diane Dixon based on an old Dapper Dan design from 1989 - a fur-lined jacket with balloon sleeves originally covered with the Louis Vuitton logo, which Michele replaced with the Gucci logo had replaced the double G. This ultimately led to a collaboration between Dapper Dan and Gucci that continues to this day. Just like the unbroken interest of hip-hop artists in high fashion brands. Songs like this are evidence of thisGucci Bandanavon Soulja Boy feat. Gucci Maine and Shawty Lo,Versacevon Migos,Diorby Pop Smoke orChanel (Go Get It)by Young Thug feat. Gunna and Lil Baby. Hip-hop and high fashion are and will remain a connection for life!