Word: cools
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whites have always bitten off black culture (the beatniks, rock 'n' roll, everything Quentin Tarantino has ever done). It gives them that cool, outsider image they so desperately need. But over the past few years, black kids have been taking fashion cues from the whitest of the white: ski gear, polo shirts, hiking boots, N.H.L. jerseys. The gold chains and dangling clocks of the '80s have been replaced with sweaters in bright primary colors with polo embroidered on the front. Jeans are in, but the baggier the better. Ski jackets are pumped up to Michelin Man proportions. Things have...
...past three years this baggy-preppy scene has been dominated by giants like Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, but now more than two dozen tiny African-Americanowned labels are beginning to steal some of their cool. And even a little bit of cool can be worth it: it may look like merely oversize jeans and hooded sweatshirts, but the $5 billion male urban-clothing niche is growing faster than any other apparel category except, perhaps, lingerie. And how long before Hilfiger offers low-slung panties with his name on the butt...
Even more than hard work, luck or an agreeable mom, FUBU's success was due to a strategy straight from Phil Knight's playbook: it got the ubiquitous LL Cool J to sign an endorsement deal. The trick to hip-hop-fashion money, even more than offering slick styles, is somehow to get a rapper--preferably one on heavy rotation on MTV--to wear your stuff. Dr. Dre is dipped in Karl Kani, Mase gets giggy in Mecca, and Busta Rhymes is decked in Ecko. "Videos are hands down the best advertising you can have," says Mike Clark, the chief...
...white guys who make up a big hunk of the hip-hop clothing market. FUBU was surprised to learn that as fly as it may be, one of its top markets is Washington State. Even those who take their fashion tips from PBS are joining on: when LL Cool J appeared on the Charlie Rose Show wearing a FUBU T shirt, the company received phone calls the next day from viewers asking where they could buy one. And the best barometers of mainstream America, Japanese junior high students, are buying the look almost exclusively, dragging their wide-bottom jeans through...
...have all these cool, funky clothes that are in the back of my wardrobe that I wouldn't pull out here," she says. "I did freshman year, `cause I didn't want to change. But Harvard did change...