In 2002, stylist Rachel Johnson walked into a Burberry store in New York to request some clothes for a photoshoot. Her client was Ja Rule, then promoting the follow-up to his Grammy-nominated, triple-platinum album Pain is Love. It was the kind of exposure that brands generally love, but Burberry refused to help.
“They didn’t want him to wear their stuff,” Johnson later told Newsweek. “People have this stigma with the urban community.” She bought it anyway and after she draped her client in the brand’s house check, his fans did too. A few months later, Burberry sent Ja Rule a letter of thanks.
A decade and more on, the brand has a different stance on hip-hop style. It’s dressed Skepta and Nicki Minaj and recently collaborated with Chinese rapper Kris Wu. Like the rest of the fashion industry, Burberry coincidentally overcame its distaste for rap just as rap became the loudest sound on earth; in December, Nielsen research found more people listened to rap than rock for the first time. Now it’s brands like Burberry that come knocking, and rappers who rebuff them.
“With hip-hop being the de facto sound of youth and rebellion, a lot of the prominent artists – be it Beyoncé or Kanye West or ASAP Rocky – are now like, ‘Why am I giving people free press?'” says Jian DeLeon, editorial director at Highsnobiety.
Luxury logos have always been signals of success hip-hop, but rap’s explosion has shifted expectations. “They understand that they are now brands and they understand the power that their brands have. They’re not just using it to promote these symbols that they’ve made it. They know that they’ve made it.”
Ever since DJ Kool Herc’s first block parties, hip-hop has been a voice for the marginalised. Its look mattered as much as the sound, partly as an expression of self-identity, partly as shorthand for success. For those pioneering black artists who grew up amid crime and violence, whose music helped them transcend their place of birth and their lack of opportunities, European luxury brands were the original flex; a middle finger to a society that had written them off and a diamond-dripping, mink-trimmed embodiment of the American Dream for the people who bought their records.
Read more here
