I’ll be explaining how hip hop changed over time.

How Hip Hop Fashion Changed Over Time

Hip Hop fashion changed over time with 5 things that played a role in it happening:

  • Change in sound
  • New talent for the genre
  • Emerging Companies
  • The Redefinition of priority
  • A shift in industry leaders’ offered products

Changing the sound: how it literally influenced fashion for hip hop

The sound changing in hip hop could easily be a contributor to why fashion in the genre shifted too. You could look at artists that could be considered innovators and did things sonically that wasn’t done before. It’s tougher to say it’s the exact reason why, but I can add that personally as a musician myself, I tend to match the music I make.

Whether it’s subconscious or not, I’ll tend to dress similar to the messages I’ve been working on. I didn’t meta analyze it, but the concept would be where I would wear mostly black when I feel I’m in a dark place for example. Adding on to the point, I have to add that regions played a role in this shift too. When other areas were succeeding musically, the fashion did too.

We can look at the Billboard 100 and similar award charts to compare sounds of the times. From there, look at music videos and maybe magazines that captured the looks of these artists. It’ll prove itself to be true. People from the New York area and DMV seemed to really push the jersey look in the mid to early 2000s as my reality recalls it. That’s another example though.

New Talent For The Genre

New talent absolutely has an influence on hip hop fashion. There’s a new class that’s observed and shown to emerge as the years go on. They’re discovered in concerts for example. Think of the last time you went to a concert and discovered someone that opened for a headliner.

You never heard them, but you give them a shot based off the look they presented. That includes everything aesthetically that you could picture. All of that likely played a role in liking them. As they grow. You 100% remember their style. It plays a role in how you dress too eventually.

We end up gathering new talent that presents itself through the assistance of game shows. There’s been shows on MTV, BET, and so on that specifically focused on finding some of the best talent in rap. The beginning of every artist’s career gets attention, and that almost always includes the way they dressed while working their way up to the top.

Emerging Companies

Emerging companies are yet another way that hip hop fashions got to see shifts in style.

You get to where there’s new companies at the time where they specialized in creating accessories that would catch artists attention. It became and is still going to prove is an insane experience. These companies would get the approval of rappers that would ultimately increase the business they’d earn. It showed itself in the likes of watches, grills, and even cars!

There’s other ways it would work. One method that sticks out most is how the hustle of other companies and individuals would be studied. We would see something close to like a stimulus get exercised in where companies that would be successful particularly in fashion that compliments hip hop would have started off in other industries. The time there would only be short lived to take the geniuses to their real calling for fashion that supported hip hop.

This might be from a relatively biased lens being the millennial I am, but I’d even argue that the elevation of academic standards ended up favoring the longevity and popularity of hip hop icons who would go on to influence hip hop.

Redefined Priorities

Redefining priorities in hip hop impacted the state of fashion too. You look at how there was a parity of representation when new eras would look to get the torch of hip hop passed down to them. There’s publications like XXL that would keep a trend going in where we as consumers would get a broad view in spectrum of what different rappers would be available for discovery across the country.

Another phenomenon that would contribute to this occurrence could be the hard resets of whatever previous agendas would be pushed. I’d be lying if I were to tell you that I fully understood what each of the founding fathers were pushing for to complete 100% understanding, but it clearly would get scrapped and replaced with a new one as another wave would emerge.

Industry Shifting Priorities for Products

Industry shifts from other companies that produced successful products elsewhere would go on to also find success in fashion. You look at the likes of Rocawear, Sean John, the Cactus Jack collab with Nike, and even Kanye’s partnership with Gap. It shows wherever the genius is, the other person’s idea can get taken to the next level.

I’d hate to get lost in the message, but if we stick to our recording artist example, it can get meta-dissected in where we look at it as music would be the expected product. But as great as some artists are, they see their time in that market for a brief time to only go to the next level, whatever that may be for them.

Kanye had an interview in where he mentions how these collaborations happen, but because the best person at the time co-signs the move, it ends up working out.