Come through Sir. Dap

I remember when Sir. Dap was vilified and persona non grata.

When he collaborated with Gap, he shared this with Vanity Fair, “I want to destigmatize the impressions people have of people of color with a hoodie on,” the legendary fashion designer explains reimagining the brand’s classic arch-logo hoodie.”

As hip-hop was defining an era in the early 80’s and 90’s, Dapper Dan, who was born Daniel Day, was designing it. While he originally envisioned opening a luxury haberdashery, Day was met with the unjust reality that larger fashion houses refused to sell to him, so he turned to repurposing luxury fashion logos. Soon he was dressing some of the biggest names in hip-hop during a time when Black celebrities were not afforded the same access to high fashion houses, and in the process became a trailblazer in American style.

“I said to myself, I'm going to do what they did, better than they did it. That's what started it all, but even doing what I did—what they did—better than they did, didn't allow for us to have the recognition in the spaces that we should have had representation, so we always in the community had this feeling that we had to be better than whoever was doing it to get anywhere anyway, so that forced me to embark,” Day says from his Harlem brownstone. “I didn't have the regular outlets to move ahead in the industry, to go up that staircase, to reach that high ceiling. I had to create a staircase for myself.”

Let’s keep giving him his 🌹 now.