From NYC streets to Parisian runways, ‘Fresh Dressed’ examines the roots and impact of hip-hop style.
“New and fresh out of the box is an important part of the whole aesthetic of being fresh.” — Sacha Jenkins
Style and popular music have been inextricably linked since the dawn of the modern music charts. But while rock ‘n’ roll has had a somewhat complicated relationship with getting dressed (‘authenticity’ is often questioned once fashion enters the picture), there is no such debate when it comes to hip-hop. From Run DMC’s ‘My Adidas’ to Jay Z’s ‘Tom Ford’, style has always been an unabashedly celebrated element of hip-hop culture. And in the brilliant new documentary Fresh Dressed, director Sacha Jenkins takes a deeply comprehensive look at how the hip-hop lifestyle popped up from the NYC underground to not only infiltrate mainstream American fashion, but also the sidewalks and runways all over the world.
The sentiment that is drilled throughout Fresh Dressed is that after the music, looking fly was the most defining aspect of being a rapper, emcee, or B-boy. Cars could be broken down, and apartments dumpy, but if you dressed well, the rest didn’t matter. Or as Kanye West explains, ‘Being fresh is more important than having money. The entire time I grew up, I only wanted money so I could be fresh.’ It is an ideal that is repeated by nearly every face that appears in Fresh Dressed, including Pharrell, Nas (also one of the film’s producers), photographer Jamel Shabazz, and designers like Dapper Dan. In fact, it’s the designers who become the stars here; Dan, the Shirt Kings, Carl Jones (Cross Colours), Carl Williams (aka Karl Kani), Damon Dash, each of them recounting how their brands were born from high fashion aspirations but ended up influencing those design houses instead (without the proper credit of course, which is emphasized by the absence of folks like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren, who declined to be in the film).
Some of the most fascinating accounts from Fresh Dressed explain the origins behind many of the style trends of the 80s and 90s. For instance, fat laces came about when kids removed the laces from their sneakers, ironed, stretched, and starched them, and wove them back into their shoes. The customization of B-boy gear had its roots in the 70s street gang ‘outlaw’ look that featured denim jackets with sleeves cut off and hand-applied graphics and lettering. (The film Easy Rider is mentioned as an influence.) Sportswear airbrushed with twisted cartoon characters — think Wile E. Coyote with a 40 — came out of Jamaica, Queens, where the Shirt Kings transferred their art skills from trains to tees. Jenkins also introduces us to the Lo-Lifes, a Brooklyn street gang who specialized in boosting Polo gear through coordinated shoplifting sprees.
Punctuated by Hectah Arias’ dope animations, Fresh Dressed mostly focuses on the old school years, when you could tell what borough a cat was from just by what he was wearing. This was before the internet stepped in and made style more democratic (and arguably, more monotonous), when rappers wanted to be relatable in shell toes and Cazals, rather than name-dropping their European designer friends. It sort of makes you want to wave a cane from your rocking chair and tell the kids to get off your lawn.
Fresh Dressed is now playing in theaters across the US and is available to stream through Vimeo.