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A hip hop culture study

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Hip-hop has long been associated with freedom and creativity. With all the exciting elements, such as DJing, rapping, breaking dance, and graffiti, and its concern over class differentiation and social inequity, hip-hop gained a firm foothold in the global community. At the same time, hip-hop culture lifestyle has been appreciated around the world and hip-hop fashion is embodied in all kinds of clothing items. The various meanings embedded in clothes could shed light on social conditions and people’s different attitudes and values. Culture and clothes are tightly woven, giving popular culture a great impact on clothing and fashion. Jeans, as one of the most important and desirable items in the fashion industry, have the potential to reflect contemporary popular culture and values. The purpose of this study was to examine various jeans’ styles from different hip hop fashion labels and the way jeans from selected hip hop fashion lines portray hip hop culture.

What is hip-hop? Is it a musical genre, a kind of art form, or a culture where people live in? DJ Quick (1997) believed that “Hip-hop is a way of life” when he said “hip-hop to me is how we express ourselves. It’s what’s deep down inside of us.” DJ Run expressed the same idea in an interview in 1997, saying Hip-hop “has to do with the way people dress, different language that they use… different movement, different hairstyles. It’s definitely a culture.” With its African cultural roots and its persistent efforts in elevating African-centered consciousness, hip-hop has become a compilation of the Afrocentric attitudes, values, beliefs, and experiences that shape the African Americans’ lives (Walker, 2001). However, given its sub-cultural nature, Hip-hop is not confined within the African American community. As hip-hop culture evolved, it incorporated a large global community, embracing all races, regions, classes, and religions.

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In Jeanette C. Lauer and Robert H. Lauer’s words, “Fashion has been called, among other things, a tyrant, a despot, a god, and a mystery” (1981: 1). A little exaggeration could be applied to the statement, but it certainly addressed the prominent role fashion has been playing in societies. As Marilyn J. Horn put it, “there is probably no sphere of human activity in which our values and lifestyles are reflected more vividly than they are in the clothes that we choose to wear”(1968: 1).

As for the interrelationship of clothing and culture, Horn indicated that clothing is like a cultural mirror from which we could understand a certain group or a culture, “yet it is one of the most visual expressions of the habits, thoughts, techniques, and conditions that characterize a society as a whole” (p. 29).

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If we need to name one clothes item that is durable, comfortable, and fashionable, jeans would definitely come into sight first. As the most common item in peoples’ wardrobes, jeans, however, are not easily described by one single word due to its multiple meanings. James Sullivan expressed his feelings that jeans are “timeless-flawlessly designed, yet infinitely versatile. They are mass-produced on an epic scale, yet each pair tells its own story” (2006: 4). This depiction encapsulates jeans’ richness over its long emerging process.

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The study is intended to investigate the following questions:

Q1. How do jeans from selected hip hop fashion lines represent hip hop culture, and to what extent?

Q2. What are different styles and characteristics of jeans from selected hip hop fashion companies’ and what are those fashion companies’ business strategies and goals in hip hop fashion industry as well as in the whole designing fashion industry?

To these ends, several hip hop fashion lines’ products, especially jeans are examined and analysed. These selected hip hop fashion labels include: FUBU, Sean John Clothing, Phat Farm, Baby Phat, Rocawear, and Tommy Hilfiger. This paper employs a textual analysis of the commercials and campaigns, product runway shows, and product images in recent years from these labels. Jeans, in particular, in those commercials and runway shows are examined in the ways of what are those jeans’ designing characters,  how those jeans portray the labels’ main style, and how they align with other fashion items to embody the labels’ overall design feature, and to promote the labels’ image in the public.

Another methodology conducted in the paper is political economy. Since the study focuses on jeans from different hip hop fashion lines, those fashion companies’ histories and business strategies will be inevitably investigated. This paper will briefly introduce the companies mentioned in the study, their policies for their jeans and other items, and their positions in the hip hop fashion industry as well as in the whole fashion circle.

Hip hop culture’s creativity, self-expression, and essence of mixing find full expression in the jeans from those selected fashion labels. Their featured design and how models convey the messages embedded in those jeans show that every brand wants to make their own jeans unique and well recognizable from piles of jeans. Each brand tries to bring out the diversity in their designs, whether it is various colors, various textures, or various details added on the jeans. All the selected fashion labels have been trying to extend their targets outside of their certain group of consumers and domestic market, and they embrace other races, regions, and classes’ features in their design.

For men’s denim jeans, all the latest products display originality and add some extra details to make the jeans recognizable. Rocawear men’s jeans employ a variety of colors, and they also apply a lot of details such as embroidered logo at the waistband or on the back pockets, and contrasting embroidered trim. Phat Farm’s latest men’s denim jeans feature in flap back pockets with embroidered logo crest or stud detailing and single button closure. Sean john’s jeans are generally grouped into three kinds of fit: Clayton Fit, Hamilton Fit, and Gravity Fit. They also embrace a lot of colors such as indigo, overdye black, diesel, and raw indigo; and with each pair, one or two of the details (flap back pockets, embroidery, slight distressed detailing, contrast stitching) are employed. Tommy Hilfiger’s denim jeans are featured in their simplicity, yet, some details are still necessary for their recognition such as light whisker detailing, naturally worn look, and lightly frayed at pockets, hems, or edges.

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As for women’s jeans, all the labels make their jeans skinny and sexy, trying to highlight women’s curve and character, but for the details, they generally follow the men’s jeans style of their own label. Tommy Hilfiger’s women’s jeans are simple and classic, with various colors. Rocawear’s women’s jeans are fuelled with passion. Baby Phat’s stylish and fashionable jeans flatter the female bodies with their glamorous details.

Image from http://www.thesource.com/2009/08/back-2-school-block-party-and-fashion-show/6780_140662104545_623984545_3309787_4370073_n/

Interestingly, past hip hop style jeans featuring baggy and oversized denims could hardly find their traces in nowadays’ hip hop fashion labels. “Class” is the most used word in their jeans advertisements. Deviant and gangster style seemed to be thrown out of the sight of contemporary hip hop fashion. As hip hop culture is a collection of various values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences, hip hop fashion is becoming a melting pot of the styles and inspirations from different races, classes, and regions. Hip hop fashion as a fashion genre, is leaning closer toward formal, high-fashioned, and refined clothing style. XXL, a famous hip hop magazine, has selected 10 worst hip hop dressers and 10 best hip hop dressers several months ago. According to their evaluation, the deviant, over-exaggerated street style is out of date and considered for unfashionable and vulgar.

Although jeans from the selected hip hop fashion lines bear some common grounds in representing hip hop culture, each brand’s jeans are different in style and target consumers, and they convey their hip hop messages in different ways.

Tommy Hilfiger’s jeans are simple, classic, clean-cut, and refined. Their jeans aligned with other items from Tommy Hilfiger, carry the meaning of high-fashion, with their tasteful, chic, and polished clothing style. Their targets are more mature people from relatively higher class rather than young people. Tommy Hilfiger, founded in 1984, is among the earliest hip hop fashion lines, yet after over 20 years’ growth, it became less hip hop and more high-fashioned. Although Hilfiger Denim, a branch line under Tommy Hilfiger, targets mainly young people in their advertising campaign (2007, 2009), and infuse passion, rebellion, and energy into their interpretation of jeans, they still follow Tommy Hilfiger’s chic and classic style, and their prices for the jeans are as twice as the prices of jeans from hip hop fashion labels such as Rocawear and Sean John.

FUBU, in the contrast, presents more of a street wear style. Their jeans are characterized by deviant and oversized look with passion and physicality. Two major sources of FUBU apparel inspirations are sport and rappers. FUBU’s design and advertising are closely connected with hip hop.

FUBU’s campaign:

Both Tommy Hilfiger and FUBU find themselves hard to be recognized as hip hop fashion brands, with the former being drifted away from hip hop’s street urban essence and the latter being less famed and remembered. Both labels are hardly found in a hip hop fashion label website. On the contrary, Rocawear, Phat Farm, Baby Phat, and Sean John are known as famous hip hop fashion brands in the public, though their styles are not necessarily street.

Rocawear is founded in 1999 by American rapper Jay-z and former partner Damon Dash with its annual sales of $700 million. Rocawear embraces sportswear style and their jeans are mostly designed for young people. Their jeans are casual, self-expressive, and full of life. Their men’s jeans are more energetic looked with natural fit and informal style, whereas their women’s jeans are more fashionable and sexy. The passion and creativity entrenched in the label design reflect hip hop’s dynamic and the vigour in young people.

Rocawear’s campaign:

Another well-known hip hop fashion line is Phat Farm which is founded in 1992 by hip hop impresario Russell Simmons. “Phat” is an acronymic slang in hip hop for “pretty hot and tempting”. Mixing the sporty urban fashion and Ivy League preppy style, Phat Farm enjoys its popularity among young people. Phat Farm resonates hip hop culture by epitomizing the American lifestyle with its urban aesthetics, youthful energy, and breaking down of stereotype and ethnic boundaries. In 1999, Phat Farm expanded its fashion business and launched Baby Phat, which mainly comprises women’s wear and children’s clothing, as another division of Phat Fashions. Phat Farm and Baby Phat upholds their stylish and urban fashion, magnetizing people towards their aspirational lifestyle.

Phat Fashions campaign:

The last hip hop fashion label studied in the paper is Sean John, launched in 1998 under the name of it founder, hip hop mogul Sean John Combs. Sean John is a hip hop fashion line specializes in urban fashion style. “Mr. Combs created the line to fill the void in the market for well-made, sophisticated fashion forward clothing that also reflected an urban sensibility and style”.

Hip hop culture encompasses various values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. It could be a medium for creation and self-expression; it could be a means of bridging gaps between different races and classes; it could be a way rebellious youth make themselves to be heard. Jeans from those selected hip hop fashion lines represent hip hop culture by their abundant imagination and creation, bald self-expression, mixing of different cultures, and accommodation of new trends. Oversized and exaggerated style of jeans could hardly find their appearance in designers’ drafts. The days when big baggy jeans are the symbol for hip hop are still remembered, but today, trendy hip hop jeans are becoming more and more high-fashioned, sophisticated, well-tailored, and classic looking. Formal and classic style dressing is now encroaching hip hop fashion world. As today’s fashion industry is becoming high-end fashion world, so is hip hop fashion.

Hip hop fashion labels are trying their best to attract larger consumer demography, and at the same time, highlight their unique style that separate them from their counterparts. They make their jeans as well as other fashion items classic and easy to be embraced. Yet it is almost an irresistible trend that every corporation pursues high-end fashion and high profitable fashion strategies. After all, business is business. Hip hop fashion as a whole is becoming expensive. Extravagant designers’ clothes dominate the market. Long ago, hip hop clothes were highlighted and advertised by the great influence of hip hop; today fashion items from hip hop fashion labels promote hip hop culture to outsiders by their overwhelming glamour and style.

Jeans and hip hop fashion is an uncultivated land for research. Analysis of both fields as well as their intersect are worthwhile since the study of popular culture and fashion could shed light on many social, political, and economic agendas. Further research could be done in studying more hip hop fashion labels and their print advertisements as a means to discover hip hop culture and dressing more in depth, and to examine more social, political, and economic issues within hip hop culture.

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