Urban Fashion Article

Urban Fashion

What is Urban to you?

The term urban fashion can be associated with styles such as street and hip-hop fashion. Descending from the early 70's, the introduction of hip hop and rap music played a big role in shaping the type of clothing seen as popular within the era. As this type of music spread vastly among the youth, you can only imagine the impact had upon the fashion world. Constantly bombarded with visuals and catchy lyrics the genre of hip hop and rap music soon became epic! Inspired and on a mission, teenagers and even young people set out to match the styles featured in the latest music videos.
This was all done in the hopes of achieving that same cool vibe the hip hop artists and rappers were giving off. Stepping out of the 60's, society encouraged this new found freedom which young people found  in the comfort of music. Soon after the new fad of 'looking like their favorite artists' was placed into action as designers set out to pursue the trend and give 70's fashion a whole new
look!
Brands such as Nike and Adidas prospered immensely through this era as Urban artists were the main feature of adverts and other marketing campaigns. One memorable trend set was by Hip-hops very own...Run DMC. The sensation that was 'My Adidas' plummeted in the shoe department as sales figures went up. Anybody who was anybody wanted to get their hands on their very own  pair of limited edition leather lined kicks with an imprinted Run DMC logo. Along with this came a drawn interest into the track suits, t-shirts hats and other clothes worn by the group.

The 80's and the Media 

The development of Urban Fashion paved the way for many other changes to take place within the 80's. Productions such as MTV were established and able to showcase the styles of urban wear and provide a vision for black entertainment. Magazines, televisions even the radio acted as a media outlet, pushing the current trends and flooding society with baggy clothes, hoodies and BLING. Urban fashion pretty much became an 'in your face' kind of style and required a hard attitude to come with rocking the trend.

    



Above you can see examples of the types of Urban wear present through the 70's and 80's, ranging from
the famous baggy pants worn by M.C Hammer to cool vibrant hoodies, high tops and even sports jackets. The 70's and 80's was a fun time era and it shows in the bright choice of colors and patterns most people chose to wear. You can also see that Fashion statement bling being rocked by the celebs in the pictures, it really did compliment that cool, edgy look to allow the street style to pop.  Speaking of cool accessories, wearing that perfectly rimmed bowl hat and base ball caps allowed a finishing touch to be placed on creating that desired Urban look.

A bit on the side...

Lets not forget the phenomena that was The Fresh prince, the hit comedy sitcom of the 90's starring Will Smith. Filling our  television screens with his variety of base ball caps (otherwise known as Snapbacks in modern terms) and vibrant prints The Fresh Prince displayed a variety of Old School threads trending in the 90's but...thats a whole new chapter in the Fashion Era! Queue Old School Fashion...


By Rhibee