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| Dapper Dan for Vanity Fair. 2015. |
FASHION'S #1 OUTLAW:
MEET DAPPER DAN
Meet the man who started out by looking to Louis Vuitton and Gucci for inspiration. Fast forward 25 years later and now Gucci looks to him for inspiration.
by Tierra Gabrielle
Wanna know the difference between a "knock off" and a "knock up"? Really simple. Ask Dapper Dan, the man who cultivated fashion for the hood in the most dapper way possible.
Dapper Dan -- or more formally known as Daniel Day -- is Harlem, New York's very own living legend and the man who single handedly brought high fashion to the hood. Dapper Dan noticed that luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and MCM just to name a few, were not catering to or fit its black customers. In an effort to fix this problem, Dan took matters into his own hands and started creating his own clothing out of these trademarked branded luxury symbols -- unauthorized. He started selling them out of his own boutique entitled, 'Dapper Dan's Boutique' which was shut down in 1992 due to the unsolicited printing of luxury labels being sold. His clothing soon began to gain high attention first in Harlem, second in the Hip Hop community -- in which his clothing played a major role, and lastly, with these designer luxury houses themselves -- and not the good kind of attention you would want. People from all over came to his shop that stood on 125th street in Harlem just to see what he was talking about, and it was pretty big talk.
