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Proudly sharing this wonderful article at Serpent Urban Clothing Reviews. This Article was published on The New York Times on 7 Mar, 1994.
MONICA Lynch, the president of Tommy Boy Records, was in her office the other day in New York giving a telephone interview about the nuances of black style -West Coast rap, hard core, hip-hop, rump shaking in Miami - when the latest nuance suddenly appeared on her television screen. "Here's Wutang Clan now," she said. Wutang Clan, for those who don't know, is a hip-hop group from Staten Island. "That's different," Lynch said. They wear Ninja masks and are considered influential in the underground music scene. "Hey, you know what?" The record producer was still engrossed in the TV. "They've got on one of those hats I was just talking about, the black and white wool ones with the little brim." Lynch has been tracking these hats all winter. First they were in black, then brown, then blue and now - plaid. She sounded pleased. "There's always something new." How true. Ever since RUN DMC put on Adidas track shoes back in the mid-'80s, fashion has come increasingly under the influence of urban black style, to the point where new ideas are played out almost from the moment they first appear on MTV. "Six months ago it was baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts," said Wendy Ezrailson, a Washington retailer whose store, Commander Salamander, is a hub for the easily bored. "Now it's retro '50s, striped shirts with zips in the front, sneakers and tight pants." And what about Cross Colors and other Afro-centric labels? "They're dead," she said. "The kids won't touch them." And yet just as the youth market was moving on to something else, Complice was jumping on the spring bandwagon of Afro- centrism with dashikis, bright colors and one regrettable reference to Mammy. Karl Lagerfeld tried on baggy jeans at Chanel, and the tracksuit found its way into the collections of Isaac Mizrahi and Anna Sui, though it had already been recycled by Laura Whitcomb in her 3-year-old Label line. But even Whitcomb, for all her close ties to street wear, finds herself on the run. "I can try out one of my dresses in a music video and before I've had a chance to produce it, some guy in Korea has knocked me," Whitcomb said. "It's like everybody is in a race to bring out something new." Five years ago it was easy to draw connections between what surfaced in clubs and what eventually found its way to high fashion, but as black dance music has stratified into narrower grooves - techno, gangsta, hard core - so too have their associated styles of dress. Veronica Webb, the black model, thinks that this constant progression of new ideas explains why designers look to black teenagers for inspiration. "Black culture is popular culture," she said. "Black people are not nostalgic. They're always moving forward." But it's no less true that the distinctions between black and white street cultures have become increasingly blurred by a crossover of language, customs and dress. So whose style is it? Richard Martin, curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, wonders, in fact, if the urban street look of the past few years hasn't bottomed out. "I don't think it's being constantly refreshed right now," he said. Martin and others point to the growing appeal among young blacks for classic clothing by Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and Timberland. Lynch suggests that what appeals to urban black youths about yachting jackets from Nautica and polo shirts from Lauren is that such styles have in the past represented exclusion. In other words, wearing them now is a way of acquiring status, and defying stereotypes. But Martin, the fashion historian, goes one step further. He thinks there's a connection to be made between the desire to appear traditional, or privileged, and the widening social implications of black conservatism, particularly as put forth by Louis Farrakhan. At the very least, said Martin, "what we're looking at is the burgeoning of the black middle class." Everything in fashion these days demands an appreciation of nuance. What appears retro or preposterous to one person may in fact be the beginnings of the next big trend. The other night, the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg (who, like many other gangsta artists, has had serious brushes with the law) was on television wearing a pair of khakis with a hockey jersey over a sweatshirt. His Afro was plaited, and while his hair has helped to revive Afros in recent months, nothing else about his appearance suggested that he was onto something new. And then one seized on the significance of the hockey jersey: Has hockey ever been a "black" sport? It was just the sort of irony that a fashion designer could appreciate. - Credits - CATHY HORYN is fashion editor of The Washington Post.