Hip Hop Culture

Still holding strong to its hip-hop roots, urban wear is branching out in new directions. Apparel gets the update straight from the mouths of urban wear legends. Ask Phat Fashions founder and CEO Russell Simmons what urban wear is and he'll tell you he doesn't know. Ditto, Damon Dash, co-founder of Rocawear. Ditto Daymond John, founder and CEO of FUBU. Marc Ecko, founder and CEO of Mark Ecko Enterprises, will tell you "urban" as a label no longer makes sense.

For something that so eludes definition and is perhaps a misnomer, urban wear represents a hefty $10 billion slice of the apparel marketplace - and it has made all four of these men very, very rich. Regarded as exclusively "ethnic" or "inner city" when it first hit the streets in the early '90s, urban wear (a.k.a. hiphop or street wear), following the trajectory of the hip-hop culture from which it sprung, has moved rapidly from garage shops to the major malls of mainstream suburban America. More surprisingly, it rose to this commanding position virtually without awareness or interest from many major U.S. retailers and brands.

Retailers have been paying attention as well. In the late '90s, for example, PacSun, a leader in skate- and surf-inspired apparel, launched its d.e.m.o. stores to cater to what it describes as the "fashion influence derived from hip-hop music and the personalities associated with the lifestyle." The division has grown from 15 to 169 stores as of April. Along with to the big-name urban brands, d.e.m.o. carries its own private label, Anisette.

Perhaps the reason that urban wear is so difficult to pin down is because it is a moving target that is at once obvious - to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, you know it when you see it - and elusive, the label resting as much on the people who make it and wear it as the clothes themselves.

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