Fashion Killa

Becky Miller in conversation with Sowmya Krishnamurthy.

Dapper Dan’s Boutique at 43 East 125th Street was open 24/7 and drew everyone from LL Cool J to drug dealer Alpo Martinez to a pre-fame Naomi Campbell. A haven for flashy and bespoke clothes, the businessman Dapper Dan was also a designer, responsible for silk-screening Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi, and MCM insignias onto velour and mink coats, occasionally adding bulletproof lining or a pocket deep enough to conceal a firearm. 

Dapper Dan’s garments were so popular that Harlemites in the ’80s would shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a custom outfit. MTV appearances (Salt-N-Pepa’s matching polychrome jackets in the “Push It!” music video, for one) and album covers (Erik B. and Rakim’s 1987 Paid in Full and 1988 Follow the Leader) proudly featured Dapper Dan creations, cementing the boutique as the trademark look for the burgeoning genre of hip-hop. Atop the mountain Dapper Dan remained until the luxury houses began to continually raid him for counterfeiting, causing him to shutter and go underground in 1992. 

Sowmya Krishnamurthy, longtime music journalist and author, devotes her 2023 book Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion (Gallery Books) to providing a retroactive payday to hip-hop and fashion’s unsung heroes like Dapper Dan. The book’s genesis was a 2018 XXL article where Krishnamurthy wove testimony from designer Misa Hylton, stylist Kyle Luu, and rapper A$AP Ferg, among others, to dissect fashion and hip-hop’s “cozy pairing.” 

Expanding the topic into a book, Fashion Killa takes the time to delicately unravel the relationship between rappers and their clothes with a great deal of respect for the past and the future. Only recently, we learn, have faces like A$AP Rocky’s peppered the pages of Vogue. Fashion Killa focuses on economics, politics, and status in equal parts. A balanced, sociological look at the intersection of rap and fashion for the last 50 years, Krishnamurthy tells the story of rappers and hustlers inventing trends and watching them skyrocket from the margins. — Becky Miller

Becky Miller: Can you talk about the book’s cover art? 

Sowmya Krishnamurthy: I was very set on what I wanted this book to look and feel like. I submitted a mood board to my publisher that had different fonts I pulled from luxury houses, but I went even deeper—where would this book fit in somebody's life? Is there a Byredo candle nearby? Is this the type of person who might have a Telfar bag? I think I got maybe 10 or 12 mockups, and there were two with skulls, and I just gravitated towards the skull. It very much reminded me of [Alexander] McQueen and their affinity for skulls. I did a little bit of crowdsourcing, and I asked Pusha T and Lenny from Roc Nation, people who I know are very much aesthetes, and everyone just gravitated towards this skull design. It’s a great nod to the title. I like to joke that whether you open the book, you just flip through and look at the photos, or you don't even read one word, having the skull on your coffee table or on your bookshelf is a good look. 

BM: Dapper Dan is the book’s anchor, he is the person you start with and end with. Why do you think his story is so essential to the narrative Fashion Killa is telling?

SK: Dapper Dan truly is the godfather of hip-hop and luxury. He was somebody who was known within the hip-hop world forever, but when it came to high fashion, it truly was only after his controversy with Gucci and his reopening in 2018 that he was amplified within the high fashion sphere. Having him in the beginning as well as his new atelier at the end, it shows, of course, this full circle moment for hip-hop, but also the full circle moment for him and how that's very analogous. 

Now, in many ways, Dapper Dan is an insider, but it took a whole journey to get here. The fashion industry is sometimes still playing catch up. Even when it came to this notion of Gucci copying Dapper Dan’s design, it was Twitter, and specifically Black Twitter, that evangelized him, advocated for him, and enabled him to truly get his flowers. I think that's where the story still is, where hip-hop is in many ways, that someone can have insider access and respect, but still rely on fan advocacy to maintain their place in luxury fashion. 

BM: In your Pharrell and Karl Lagerfeld chapters, I found myself wondering about what a Creative Director actually is. Do you think Pharrell or anyone else has reinvented that term recently, given it more specific meaning?

SK: It's tricky. That's one of those terms that's very sexy, but behind the scenes, it's still a black box. Lagerfeld was somebody who showed that the Creative Director can become a celebrity in and of themselves, but Lagerfeld also knew fashion. When somebody comes from a non-fashion background, whether it be music, sports, or just general celebrity, and becomes a Creative Director, the term takes on a different spin.

First and foremost, a celebrity is a celebrity. They're not going to come into an office, they're not going to sit there and have a 9 to 5 job, they're not going to do the boots on the ground work and it also wouldn't be expected. The whole idea of having a big name as a Creative Director is for them to bring their celebrity to the brand. Look at someone like Pharrell, his first show for Louis Vuitton, it had more stars than all of Fashion Week combined. He's the guy who's going to get Jay-Z, he's getting Rihanna, he's getting everybody to come out because he's so well-connected. Now, one could argue, is that more value to Louis Vuitton or should Pharrell be sitting in the office doing designs, making sketches, visiting suppliers, visiting retailers? It's debatable.

You need someone who lives and breathes and loves fashion and also understands that they need to sell clothes. But there is also value to someone who has a big name and can bring eyes to your brand and can help put you in rooms and in conversations that you weren't in otherwise. I think ideally you need both, but to find somebody who can humanly do both is very difficult.

BM: The book celebrates the risk-takers across fashion and hip-hop and those who are shamelessly bridging the two. How would you say that occupying the intersection of fashion and hip-hop today remains risky? 

SK: I think fashion has become, in many ways, part of the rapper starter pack. You sign to a label, you have maybe a record that's buzzing on TikTok and all of a sudden a fashion line wants to work with you. Sitting front row at Fashion Week, maybe you even get invited to the Met Gala. What I do think is interesting is this idea of entrepreneurialism. When we talk about Phat Farm, Baby Phat, and then ultimately Sean John and Rocawear, there was this notion of entrepreneurship and wanting to create your own brand. Financially, it's more lucrative, but also, why should I put somebody else's logo on my back when I'm the person moving culture? I want people to wear my logo. I feel that has somewhat dissipated when it comes to rappers. You see artists wanting to work within established brands, but there's not many people with their own lines. And if they do have lines, it's something more analogous to merch, I would say.

I'm not sure if consciously people just don't want to take the risk—I mean, it's expensive to start your own line, it's expensive to maintain a line, not to mention just understanding things like supply chain and logistics and buying, all of those boring back office things which are integral to fashion. I would love to see more artists move in that direction because I think that truly is where power is. It's one thing to get the invite to somebody else's fashion show, but it's another to host your own show. For better or for worse, Kanye had the whole fashion industry coming to Madison Square Garden to see the Yeezy show. There's a lot of leverage and power in that. 

BM: I was really loving the quote that you used from Dazed magazine that called Young Thug the closest thing we have to David Bowie in terms of gender experimentation. How much fashion inspiration from rock and pop icons, especially around androgyny, do you see in the hip-hop industry?

SK: I think it's huge. There was a moment in time—for me, it was around when Lil Wayne came out with Tha Carter III—when rappers wanted to be seen as rock stars. I remember I interviewed Lil Uzi Vert for probably his first print interview in 2016, in XXL, and he said, “I’m not a rapper, I’m a rockstar.” I asked him who his inspirations were, and he said Marilyn Manson. I thought it was very intriguing that this younger generation—younger millennials, older Gen Z—did see themselves analogous to those from the rock world, the punk world, basically non hip-hop inspirations. You see that with people like Playboi Carti, obviously Uzi Vert, and Young Thug, where they don't feel like they have to be stifled by any norms, whether it be the norms of hip-hop or the norms of masculinity, any norms. 

BM: You advocate for the work of print magazines in creating cultural ties across hip-hop and fashion. So where do you think that happens today with many more music magazines being digital or absorbed into other bigger publications or just dying?

SK: Yeah, RIP print publications. With the internet, this idea of boundaries and division no longer exists—you don't have to subscribe to a magazine, everyone has access to this website or to social media, so things are very pan-regional.

Now, anybody can be from Tokyo, Calabasas or Kalamazoo, it's all kind of nebulous. The cool part of that is that it doesn't matter where you're from, you have access to culture. But I do think that there is something missing insofar as individuality. There was something cool about going to a new city and seeing the way people dress or how they talk or what they’re listening to. In many ways, it feels kind of bland, everybody's dressed the same, everybody uses the same stylist, everyone's tagging the same brands. I think when it comes to discovering culture, discussing it, there'll always be some platform. The current iteration we're in now is leaning more towards social media, YouTube channels, Twitch channels, TikTok. Is that to say that the pendulum won't swing the other way and back into long form articles? Maybe. People do miss knowing about their favorite artists.

Artists are more exposed than ever, but how much do you really know about them? You know what they tell you, you know what they want you to know, but that's very different than a 2,000 word article where somebody spends a week with them and not just observes them, but contextualizes what's going on. That's something that I think still has value. 

You need places that are longer than 280 characters, because there's a reason why we don't have superstars anymore. I could go on anyone's Instagram and DM them—that's not a superstar, that's just your friend, right? If I see you every day, make me miss you. I see you too much. I want to see you on tour. But it’s a different paradigm, so we'll see what happens in the future.