Analysis
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.
Image from http://www.thesource.com/2009/08/back-2-school-block-party-and-fashion-show/6780_140662144545_623984545_3309794_2827305_n/
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”.
