Hooking Up

In 2009, all eyes were on Kanye West and his crew, in Paris to attend the men's fashion shows.
"Hip-hop has always had a way of asserting its domain — it shows up, it makes a scene, it seduces and cajoles, it is embraced, it takes over. Which makes it all the more vexing that, for decades, men’s fashion managed to resist its charms. I don’t mean style — hip-hop has always had signature style, defining looks that changed practically every year. But the higher end of men’s fashion long kept its nose in the air, old money letting new money know exactly where it wasn’t welcome. Since the days when Dapper Dan was cooking up flamboyant luxury knockoffs out of a Harlem storefront, hip-hop had its sights set on infiltration, and it’s finally making headway as an influence on the runway. But the silk ceiling was real, and so hip-hop made do, writing its own fashion codes, doing what it could with what was around. ..."
T Magazine: NY Times