Stylish gangster legend and street fashionista: why rappers love Dapper Dan and what you need to know about the man who cut Gucci and Louis Vuitton clothes

In the second decade of the XXI century, the main style icons are not only models and actors, but also representatives of hip-hop. They are not afraid to go overboard with diamonds and monograms, love designer brands and flaunt luxury at every opportunity. Migos on the slippery track isn’t shy about telling the girl that they paid him to buy Gucci. Meanwhile, Future states that he had sex while wearing a Gucci Flip Flop, and Pop Smoke hints that he bought a suit-fitting Louis Vuitton bag. And that’s not all. Over the past decade, Italian brand Gucci has been featured on the runways more than 12,000 times, and Louis Vuitton nearly eight times.

What is the reason for such tender love of the main gangsters of the rap scene for luxury brands with a century of history? To understand everything, you will have to delve into the history of the “streets” from which many legends come. Originating in the poorest neighborhoods, hip-hop is obsessed with the idea of ​​wealth. Hence all the name drops that rappers began to practice long before brands started asking them for ads. But perhaps none of this would have happened without Harlem “couturier” Dapper Dan, who brought his signature style to New York’s most crime-ridden crime scene.

The street fashion legend turns 78 today. And if you haven’t heard from him until now, it’s time to fix it. We tell you how Daniel Day (the designer’s real name) “married” luxury to rap and created a whole new level of luxury.

So who is Dapper Dan and why has he been so loved and admired until now? In short, he cut out fashion brands’ items (and later learned to make logo fabric) and created new works (practically art) from them with monograms of Gucci, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and MCM. And no, these weren’t fakes, they were fashion hacks of the most extravagant kind (knockouts, not knockouts) that would later be referred to as “dressing, not fakes.” “I embellished everything that the designers did not have. I made these outfits look good on us. I adapted it to a place where it would never be accepted,” Dapper says in an interview.

Dan’s design from the 80s is a combination of luxury and streetwear. He sewed secret pockets for bandits and smugglers on jackets and bombers, added fur, leather and brought luxury to an unimaginable level of absurdity. By the way, everything was made to order and was even more expensive than the original. This did not bother anyone, however, and soon pieces from the Dapper Dan collection became objects of desire for every wealthy resident of Harlem.

It all started by sheer coincidence – a Little Man salesman showed up at the Dapper Dan boutique on 125th Street with a companion carrying a brown leather Louis Vuitton bag with the gold LV logo. It is not surprising that it immediately attracts the attention of all visitors. Then Dapper Dan came up to them and said, “Do you like this little bag? And imagine a whole jacket. So he got his first order. To carry out his plan, the designer went to the Gucci boutique, where he bought a bag for clothes decorated with monograms. From it the first masterpiece was created. It wasn’t Little Man who came to the boutique the next day, but his boss, James Jackson, and he didn’t just come in with a claim: “Damn! How can you let my subordinates look better than me?” So Dapper Dan got a second order, and then a third, fourth order – and we’re off.

In the 1980s, mobsters, dealers, rising music and even sports stars would dress up in boutiques. One of his first celebrity clients was hip-hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, who wore signature jackets with massive Gucci monograms on the cover of their Paid in Full album.

He’s also been approached by Salt-N-Pepa, LL Cool J, Olympic champion in women’s track and field, Diana Dixon, and even Mike Tyson. Because of the incident with the latter, fashion brand lawyers drew attention to the boutiques.

In 1988, a fight broke out between Tyson and his rival, Mitch Green, which all the New York papers immediately wrote about. A few days later, they raided the boutique with a Louis Vuitton check. “A group of armed inspectors burst into my room and started pulling clothes off the hangers as if they were their own. The lawyer gave me his documents, explaining that the goods were confiscated due to the illegal use of the Louis Vuitton brand, ”Dan says in an interview. After the “visit” came Dan Gucci, MCM and Fendi. As a result, in 1992 the boutique had to be closed.

But this fairy tale has a happy ending, and with the closing of the boutique, nothing is over. In 2018, the Gucci brand announced a collaboration with Dapper Dan, giving him not only complete creative freedom and essential materials, but also a 5,000 square foot three-story workshop.

At the same time, Gucci released a capsule collection based on Dan’s hits from the past years, and the designer himself starred in an advertising campaign.