Street Savvy : Fashion: Avoiding the arty and upscale and exploring the inner cities, designers have translated the styles spawned by rap and world music with little adaptation.
Even the most haute of fashion designers admit they find inspiration on the city streets.
Yves Saint Laurent made history with the motorcycle jacket he restyled in costly crocodile in 1963. This fall at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld took the black Lycra headbands Paris girls are wearing and recast them in quilted leather, to match those signature handbags.
But a newer generation of designers, especially in London and Los Angeles, has wholeheartedly embraced original street styles. Instead of slick adaptations, they show clothes that are all but literal translations.
In part, the rise of world music and ghetto-rooted rap music have sparked this designer fashion movement. From the track suits of rapper L.L. Cool J to the “world fashion” outfits (African pendants, Jamaican dreadlocks and American sneakers without laces) of Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B, street styles offer a whole new take on taste.
Other sources are the ubiquitous activewear ads that feature super-hero athletes dressed in squeaky-clean uniforms and high tops, a look some rappers imitate.
And finally there are the authentic ‘60s thrift-shop outfits, including hip-hugger bell-bottoms, crop tops and tie-dye T-shirts, that are the latest salute to style-not-fashion by trend-setting downtown night owls.
To research these looks means avoiding the arty, upscale neighborhoods and exploring the inner city instead; outdoor basketball courts, schoolyards and neighborhood clubs, as seen on television news, if no other way. Most of the designers who do so have never met, and live in different cities, yet they all seem to be on the same wavelength.
Londoners Nick Coleman, Rifat Ozbek, Jasper Conran and Katharine Hamnett, Paris-based Martine Sitbon and Martin Margiela, and Angelenos Henry Duarte for Sqwear, Maggie Barry and Stephen Walker for Van Buren, and Elisabetta Roggiani are all members of this international pack.
New York has its proponents too, galvanized by Patricia Field, whose downtown shop is filled with exclusives made especially for her by young Manhattan designers. But the New York contingent doesn’t get as much media attention because the designers don’t show their collections side by side with mainstream names at the semiannual ready-to-wear shows the fashion press attends.
Most can’t afford to. The price of showing in New York--about $50,000 in a designer’s showroom or as much as $100,000 in a hotel--prohibits it. In comparison, London designers pay $38,000 to show during press week, and Los Angeles designers who take part in group shows at the California Mart pay less than $1,000.
Tightly budgeted as most of these designers may be, their labels do not come cheap. Prices range from about $200 to $1,000 per item, which is comparable to more traditional ready-to-wear collections. Yet the clothes themselves, well-made of quality fabrics such as rayon, silk and Lycra, velvet, leather and cashmere, have little in common with traditional ready-to-wear styles.
Coleman’s fall line includes shiny black track suits with white piping. Conran zips quilted baseball jackets over large white T-shirts. Hamnett puts unitards under track team jackets. Sitbon shows athletic color-block leggings with jackets, and the Van Buren label appears on Lycra and leather leggings, as well as hot pants.
More retro-inspired for fall, Margiela, Ozbek and Roggiani use modern stretch-blend fabrics for their bell-bottoms, mini tent-dresses and poor boy sweaters that are all but identical to vintage models. Along with thrift-shop finds, Duarte’s preference is for remakes of uniforms styled for city workers, or inmates of the county jail.
This fashion trend “comes from rap, acid, and hip-hop, the music that’s in the streets and in the clubs,” says Van Buren’s Maggie Barry.
Van Buren designs for Bobby Brown, who won a Grammy for best R&B; vocalist of 1989. “The clothes are not about ‘I’m rich,’ even if you are,” she says. “The look isn’t pretentious, it’s more about coolness and hip.”
Coleman runs the Solaris nightclub in London, as well as his ready-to-wear fashion business. And like Van Buren, he designs stage clothes for musicians-- Soul II Soul, among other London-based groups. Along with track suits, he is showing blanket plaid jodhpurs, cut short so they graze the top of the ankle, and worn with black leather motorcycle jackets.
He describes his collections as “urbanite sportswear” with international overtones, and he lists his sources: “Hells Angels in L.A., black kids in the Bronx and tribal looks from Africa.”
Coleman says that designers on his wavelength are conscious of the sharp contrast between their style and that of the best-known names in the fashion business.
To him, quilted leather headbands and crocodile motorcycle jackets contain no more than a faint echo of the city streets. And even then, “they’re so refined the edge is missing. All the guts are kicked out.”
In contrast, he explains, “Our clothes are not made to look expensive, even though they can be quite expensive.”
Ozbek’s crushed velvet bell-bottoms, psychedelic tie-dye tops, stretchy minis and activewear evening jackets round out his fall collection.
“These are clothes for young sophisticated women who don’t want to dress like their mothers,” explains the designer’s New York-based partner, Robert Forrest. “They’re not for women who shop the couture. I can’t see Ivana Trump dressing in them.”
Many of the designers who share this attitude say that Los Angeles is their best U.S. city for sales. Forrest explains why.
“It’s basically a new city where people are open-minded, not set in their ways. They want the new. It’s not like Paris, where people think they’ve got to live up to the couture image.”
This idea about dressing didn’t develop overnight. Hamnett started exploring it in the early ‘80s with her oversize silk T-shirts printed with modern, graphic protest messages.
She captured world attention when she wore one to meet British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The message she wore that day read, “58% Don’t Want Pershing,” referring to the American missiles stationed in Europe.
Parisian Jean Paul Gaultier, who stormed the Establishment in the mid-’80s with his skirts for men and his girdle and bra dresses for women, also helped set the stage.
So did Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, based in Paris, whose dark, sooty, asymmetric jackets, skirts and shirts of the later ‘80s were inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s “little tramp.”
Azzedine Alai, creator of working women’s suits that consist of skintight minis and motorcyle-style jackets, has a prominent place on this family tree.
And Vivienne Westwood of London, the brains behind the rough, raw, but comical punk look of the ‘70s, is certainly the grandmother of them all.
For the ‘90s, however, music and videos are the driving force behind these streetwise styles.
“The inner-city look is definitely part of rap music,” says Ted Demme, producer of “Yo! MTV Raps,” a talk and music show that is one of the highest rated on MTV.
“There are quite a few ways for the average B-boy and girl (rap musicians and their fans) to dress now,” Demme says, describing the looks all in terms of the musicians who wear them.
“There is the hippie look of De La Soul, with loose-fitting clothes, psychedelic patterns, and boots.
“The jock look, with clean as a whistle, very slick warm-up suits, sometimes worn with a professional sports team jacket, like you see on Public Enemy.
“The reggae-ragamuffin wears dreadlocks and knit caps, or pimp hats and thrift-shop sunglasses, like (Yo! MTV Raps host) Fab 5 Freddie.
“The tribal, Afro-centric idea includes lots of beads, maybe a walking stick. Queen LaTifah wears it.
“And the ‘major Motown star look,’ the one MC Hammer does. Gold chains, crazy jackets, patent leather shoes. It’s the Temptations look.”
Demme’s capsule descriptions suggest what urbanite sportswear may look like in fashion seasons ahead.
Stores that carry one or more of these designer labels include Barney’s in South Coast Plaza, Ecru in Los Angeles, Gallay Melrose in Los Angeles, Madeleine Gallay in West Hollywood, Maxfield in Los Angeles, Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills, Roppongi in Los Angeles, Fred Segal in Los Angeles, Theodore in Beverly Hills, and Traction Avenue in Los Angeles.
