Hip-Hop Fashion. A Growth in Mass Appeal That Led to a Cultural Movement

This thesis centers around hip-hop fashion and its emergence into being mainstream. Hip-hop fashion is entrenched with hip-hop culture, which originated through hip-hop music and rap. The popularity of these music styles propelled fashion styles from this culture to diffuse to American society, and around the world. This research focusses on how the appeal and diffusion of hip-hop fashion has evolved over time in the United States from the 1980s to the present day. Fashion is entrenched with consumerism and follows developments and changes in society. It also has the power to change society through its link to culture. Hip-hop fashion’s appeal is around the sense of identity that it gave to its founders, minority youth in urban neighborhoods in New York City, as well the link to success and wealth that it enabled for them to portray and/or achieve. Advertising and marketing played a big role in the diffusion of hip-hop fashion. As consumers, hip-hop artists created their own fashion lines and advertised their clothing through various forms of media. Mainstream and luxury designers picked up on the consumer appeal of these styles and included them into their collections, which propelled them into the mainstream. These developments induced the evolvement of hip-hop fashion to lose some of its connection to hip-hop culture and instead be synonymous with streetwear, as depicted by the mass appeal and consumption of sneakers.