A master artist instructs apprentices. But a master haberdasher does just that and more. He interprets values, attitudes and beliefs.
“Reason I stay relevant for so long — I don’t dictate fashion. I translate culture,” iconic fashion designer Dapper Dan said.
Culture is something often transmitted through family. And it’s through family that Dapper Dan and I could very well be connected.
“Everybody in Bishopville is cousins, second cousins and third cousins,” said Dapper Dan. Shortly after I told him that my paternal grandparents were born and raised in Bishopville, South Carolina, Dapper Dan told me his mother and aunt were from there, crediting his ancestry to the rural Lee County town.
Further suggesting a likelihood that Dapper Dan and I have close ancestral ties, “Bishopville — between three- and five-thousand people,” Dapper Dan said.
Discovering that our families inhabited the same small town was a journey in itself. Considering where it took us and where we were chatting, it was an anecdotal sojourn to the American South reminiscent of what Black journalists like Charles Blow and Adam Mahoney call the “Reverse Great Migration.” The Reverse Great Migration, also known as the “New Great Migration” is the significant increase in Black Americans migrating to the American South from the Northeast, Midwest, and West within the past 50 years. This is an inverse trend that of the Great Migration, a mass exodus of Black Americans from the South to northern and western cities, from 1910 through 1970, in pursuit of economic and educational opportunities.
For Dapper Dan and me, the Reverse Great Migration route was par for the field. We sat just a few hash marks shy of the 25-yard line at MetLife Stadium during the 2022 Historically Black College and University New York Classic. The classic, hosted in New Jersey, is an annual college football game that featured historically Black university and college Howard University and Morehouse College, a men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia.
A voyage to the South with a generational griot was not only apropos but convincingly by design — divine design. After all, I did migrate from Georgia to New Jersey for graduate school and a job — further economic opportunity. And it was my affinity for my alma mater, Morehouse College, that lured me from New Brunswick, New Jersey to the East Rutherford sports venue, right next to Dapper Dan.
Three months before our serendipitous encounter, I finished a sports, entertainment and lifestyle public relations course at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. In a research paper, I examined the public relations strategies that the legendary Staten Island rap group Wu-Tang Clan employed for its “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album — the most expensive piece of music ever sold. Intent on marketing music through stories, here I was just a few rows behind a reputable and storied salesperson (to say the least).
“Hey, Dap!” I shouted.
Catching his attention, wanting to seize the moment and learn how to sell intriguing stories, I scaled over the backs of empty seats and approached Dapper Dan. I told him that I write about music and make promotional videos for music artists.
Telling captivating stories can be profitable. But breathing life into a storyteller is priceless. I told Dapper Dan about my blog, Rappurview. “Life and Time Thru the Lens of Rhyme” is its slogan.
“Tell a side of the story that hasn’t been told before,” he exhorted.
Dapper Dan was plenty familiar with storytelling from a young age and on the side of liberation and atonement. He recalled that as a high school student in 1968 he wrote for a publication called 40 Acres and a Mule.
Amid the social consciousness and historical acknowledgments at play through the football classic, Dapper Dan taught me a lesson on publicity and brand recognition.
He later imparted, “When you create lyrics … only way you know who it belongs to is when they become famous.”
This was an allusion to the power of social media and how one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people could enter another level of immense fame through microblogging.
“Before Black Twitter, nobody knew Dapper Dan. If it wasn’t for social media, nobody would know my influence on fashion. Black Twitter, and especially Black women, put me where I am today,” he said as his two Black women assistants flanked our right, on-looking the football game.
On knowing “who it belongs to” and becoming famous, Dapper Dan seemed to be referring to a 2017 Gucci fashion show. The May 2017 show in Florence, Italy featured a jacket that closely resembled a 1980s Dapper Dan design originally commissioned for 1984 Olympic gold medalist Diane Dixon. The jacket for Dixon was emblazoned with Louis Vuitton insignias instead.
Dixon, in a May 2017 Instagram post, petitioned for Gucci to give Dapper Dan his due credit. According to Dixon, not only did Dapper Dan customize the puffy sleeved, brown mink coat, but he also snapped the photograph Dixon used to corroborate him 28 years later as the original designer. The social media eruption that followed Gucci’s 2017 fashion show, rife with accusations that Gucci stole the design from Dapper Dan, formed new fertile ground for Dapper Dan and the luxury Italian fashion house. As a result, in 2017, Dapper Dan scored his own Gucci menswear collection and, in partnership with Gucci, a new atelier on Lenox Avenue — Dapper Dan of Harlem — Harlem’s first luxury fashion store.
Such success, however, is not without tribulation. And the business of art can be expensive.
When Dapper Dan was advising me on my pursuits in music marketing, he said, “Fashion is going through the same thing as music. You can end up broke — worse than music.”
Dapper Dan was talking from experience. “Hip-hop’s master tailor,” as he’s described by Dazed Digital, had notable guests like Salt-N-Pepa, DJ Spinderella and Mike Tyson in his Harlem, NY shop. But it was one special visitor who drastically changed the course of Dan’s enterprise. In a 2021 interview with Vogue, Dapper Dan shared how, in the early 1990s, now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor came to Dapper Dan’s 125th Street store and issued him a compliment for his work on a coat for Brooklyn hip-hop artist Big Daddy Kane. Sotomayor said that Dapper Dan was good enough to set up shop in Downtown Manhattan.
“All of a sudden, everything came to an end,” Dapper Dan told Vogue.
Sotomayor raided his store. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Sonia Sotomayor was an attorney with Pavia & Harcourt LLP, a business law firm that represented the Fendi fashion company. It was trademark violation that did Dapper Dan’s store in.
Resilient, Dapper Dan regrouped and toured cities with significant Black American populations along the span of New York and Chicago, restocked his inventory, returned to New York and headed down to Atlanta. Without much more elaboration on the particulars, he owed this strategy to maintaining a 20-year underground renewal operation.
With a cardinal yellow vest draped over his head, Dapper Dan explained to me what it was like to customize clothing during the late 1980s for golden age hip-hop artists like Eric B and Rakim, Boogie Down Productions (BDP), consisting of KRS-One and DJ Scott LaRock, and the Jungle Brothers.
Dapper Dan was in the business of creating bespoke product for music artists. So was I.
Dapper Dan asked, “What do you represent?”
This question helped him decide design theory, mete out product and exhibit culture.
For BPD, “We’re into Rasta culture.” “I created a look that would state Rasta culture,” said Dapper Dan. “Eric B. is swag. Rakim is Five Percenter Nation.” For the Jungle Brothers, they’re “into African liberation,” Dan said.
For them [the Jungle Brothers], Dapper Dan made a style consistent with African freedom.
Our conversation then traversed design, value propositions and entrepreneurial endeavors. We indeed entered a space fit for storytelling, branding and buy-in. But more, our talk was about purpose – intrinsic whys from which all creation derives.
“It’s not only what you are here for. It’s what you stand for,” Dapper Dan said.
An artist famous for producing fine aesthetic and exquisite exterior, Dapper Dan told me just what he’s here for and what he stands for — his intrinsic whys.
“My mission in fashion is not just to dress young bodies. It’s to dress young minds. … You want to change young people. But how do you formulate a platform for change? … The mission is to get inside,” he said.
Inside, that’s where you find imagination, the courage to change and the audacity to create. As for dressing minds, it appeared to involve a shedding process and a fight for freedom — a jailbreak in football terms.
“Freedom of the known. In order for you to know what you need to know, you need to free yourself of what you already know,” Dapper Dan said.
There was a clear urgency to Dapper Dan’s mission and incurred risk if it went unaccomplished.
“If these young people don’t know we need to be inside, we’re in trouble,” he said.
Through innovative fashion, he demonstrated a knack for helping music artists express their core values. And, if I wanted to be the go-to resource for those artists, there was catechism to consider.
“Know these primary questions: ‘Why should I buy from you? How do you create a reason for them to buy?’ [And] Satisfy a need,” he said.
While our exchange took a turn toward religion and science, he offered more knowledge about creating something special for someone.
“If I was you, everybody ain’t ready for the truth,” he said.
This made me wonder if a client is ready for their truth — their core attitudes, their values and their beliefs. And, if so, are they prepared to wear them?
Dapper Dan reminded me why I was there. I was not there for football. He didn’t seem to be either. Clad with a diamond surface repeat of cardinal yellow and royal blue squares and white ovals, his focus was almost completely aimed at me just over his right shoulder. We were there for education.
“You gotta study everybody. You understand what I’m saying? Everybody and everything. Why, why, why,” he said.
There I was with the enduring task of examining purpose — all those whys. With this, I could march forward and use Dapper Dan’s knowledge and decode a music artist’s innermost treasure.
While the journey onward is thrilling, another chance encounter with another Black artist, three months prior, was every bit as enlightening as this one. Mid-way through a master’s program and mid-stroll on College Avenue, I learned one of the most important lessons about art without ever setting foot in a classroom. There was no syllabus nor curriculum – just free expression and brotherly connection.
That summer evening, I had just retired from an assignment for that sports, entertainment and lifestyle public relations class when I encountered a gentleman seated rather cozily on chrome metal chairs.
Surprise in my voice, I said, “Oh, hey, what’s up, man?”
It was Nafi, a photographer and event curator I met through Black-owned, New Jersey music showcase Billion Barz Club. Nafi asked me what I was studying.
“Communication and media,” I said.
Nafi, with an ever-affirming head nod, precisely paired the discipline with the music artist interviews he saw me shoot regularly at Billion Barz Club. After we talked about the bevy of creators, like Nafi, and the retail vendors who help bring Billion Barz Club to life, Nafi lent me a three-word gem.
“Fashion is communication.”
Three months later, it was the perfect accessory to my conversation with fashion designer and teacher Dapper Dan.
Special thank you to Daniel R. Day, Ashley Stephenson, Tony Blayloc, Nafi, Dr. Andrew C. Kennis and Professor Mark Beal.