Sometimes, the most important fashion show isn’t on the runway.
Take Dapper Dan, whose eponymous Harlem boutique provided gangsters,
hip-hop moguls, athletes (Mike Tyson was an infamous customer), and New
York’s wanna-be hustlers with a sense of identity irreverently constructed
from leather garments screen-printed with luxury logos and tricked out
with fur.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, Dap’s store was a fashion capital unto itself,
open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until the luxury companies caught
up with him and a raid (led by future Supreme Court Justice Sonia
Sotomayor) ended the store’s reign.
Last year, Dap, along with author Emily Spivack, chef Marcus Samuelsson,
and Orange Is the New Black author Piper Kerman, celebrated the Spivack’s
released book Worn Stories, a collection of first-person essays about the
memories behind our clothing, at Ginny’s Supper Club in Samuelsson’s Red
Rooster Harlem.
Vanity Fair spoke to Dap about the 2015 fashion week, dressing for the
occasion, and the first thing he notices about a person’s outfit.
VF Daily: Do you follow New York Fashion Week?
Dapper Dan: When you’ve been excluded from the class, and they’re going
on a trip, you usually don’t follow along on the trip. So I never really kept up
with what transpires there.
In fact, my whole thing in fashion was that the runways and shows are never
allowed to inspire me. . . . [I would] go to all the major trade shows that had
all the latest [screen-printing and leather treatment] technology and see how
I would take it and do it as opposed to runway shows. I was open 24 hours a
day for nine years straight. So my constant exposure to living this day in and
day out allowed me to isolate everything else and just think about what I can
do, how I can change this?
I was catering to gangsters, and gangsters have these huge, huge egos. So one
gangster crew would come in and order X amount. There’s 12 of them. So the
other crew would come in and say, “What did they get? How much did they
spend?” So now I have to be more creative, you know.
So that’s why eventually I say, “You know what? I did his motorcycle, you want
me to do your car?” “Well, he got a Louis Vuitton jacket, but I’m gonna make
you a Louis Vuitton jacket that reverses, so you can wear the Louis side one
time and then reverse it while you’re in the party and really floss and wear
the mink side. So I needed desperately to know new frontiers, all the time, all
the time.
Are there neighborhoods you enjoy going to in New York to study the style?
I like to go to clubs where a particular type of people go. I like to go to a club
that’s designated the gay club, see what they’re wearing. I go to a hip-hop
club, see what they wearing. Because I know in those locations, people are who
they really wanna be, and how they really wanna look. I go to a neighborhood;
they might be dressed for work. But when they go to that club, that’s who they
are.
What article of clothing on a person do you look at first?
With a female: shoes. With a male, a black male, uptown: jacket. With a white
male or an uppity black male: tie and shirt. The tie and shirt tell me if they
want to be in tune with the times.
Uptown, the guys are really into jackets. Sneakers count a lot, but the jacket
—if they’re really into fashion, that jacket’s gonna match the sneakers.
[A customer] comes to your table and says, “Oh, man, that’s hot! Let me go see
if I can get some sneakers to match.” If you can’t get no sneakers to match, it’s
a dead sale.
The market follows the color scheme of Jordans. Look: all you got to do is know
what color Jordan is coming out with, which sneaker is gonna be hot, and you
make a jacket to go with that. The sneaker sells the jacket.
I know women are fetishistic about shoes. Looking at a woman’s shoes is like
being a palm reader.
What are you wearing tonight?
I dress for the occasion. I don’t really get to do Dapper Dan because I play the
crowd. I have a basic, generic suit because I knew I was gonna run into a basic,
generic crowd.
What does it mean to “do” Dapper Dan?
To do Dapper Dan means to be, “Goddamn, how he did that?” If you don’t say
that, I was not there.
Do you think fashion is a means to permeate a subculture? In other words,
can you dress yourself into a certain culture?
I think fashion can escape a subculture. It’s that thriving, that beat within you
to say, “I feel trapped. I gotta do this, I gotta be outside of this.” That’s what
fashion is to me. It’s a manipulative thing, too, because to me, there is no right
or wrong in fashion. It’s just weak and strong. If an artist is great, that’s
strength, and you can use his power.
What draws you to a particular logo over another?
I’m heavily into symbolism. When I first started doing Louis Vuitton, the first
thing I did was look up the symbol. I saw that the symbols were a manifestation
of symbols that came out of the east, which was a variation on the cross.
And I like to play with things. That’s why my most inspiring designer is Versace.
He did it: with the Greek key and the Medusa head, which he didn’t own but he
just made that so powerful, so symbolic. I like that! Originally I play around
with Louis ’cause there was a lot of things involved . . . but none of that touches
Versace. So much there. He did it all: the colors, the time period things he used.
What’s the hardest thing about being a man?
Understanding the nature of pain. You gotta know what pain is. If you’re a man,
you gotta know what pain is. The process of taking care of your family is to keep
them free of pain, whatever that means to them. The height of masculinity is to
be able to take pain, even if it’s vicarious.
Take Dapper Dan, whose eponymous Harlem boutique provided gangsters,
hip-hop moguls, athletes (Mike Tyson was an infamous customer), and New
York’s wanna-be hustlers with a sense of identity irreverently constructed
from leather garments screen-printed with luxury logos and tricked out
with fur.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, Dap’s store was a fashion capital unto itself,
open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until the luxury companies caught
up with him and a raid (led by future Supreme Court Justice Sonia
Sotomayor) ended the store’s reign.
Last year, Dap, along with author Emily Spivack, chef Marcus Samuelsson,
and Orange Is the New Black author Piper Kerman, celebrated the Spivack’s
released book Worn Stories, a collection of first-person essays about the
memories behind our clothing, at Ginny’s Supper Club in Samuelsson’s Red
Rooster Harlem.
Vanity Fair spoke to Dap about the 2015 fashion week, dressing for the
occasion, and the first thing he notices about a person’s outfit.
VF Daily: Do you follow New York Fashion Week?
Dapper Dan: When you’ve been excluded from the class, and they’re going
on a trip, you usually don’t follow along on the trip. So I never really kept up
with what transpires there.
In fact, my whole thing in fashion was that the runways and shows are never
allowed to inspire me. . . . [I would] go to all the major trade shows that had
all the latest [screen-printing and leather treatment] technology and see how
I would take it and do it as opposed to runway shows. I was open 24 hours a
day for nine years straight. So my constant exposure to living this day in and
day out allowed me to isolate everything else and just think about what I can
do, how I can change this?
I was catering to gangsters, and gangsters have these huge, huge egos. So one
gangster crew would come in and order X amount. There’s 12 of them. So the
other crew would come in and say, “What did they get? How much did they
spend?” So now I have to be more creative, you know.
So that’s why eventually I say, “You know what? I did his motorcycle, you want
me to do your car?” “Well, he got a Louis Vuitton jacket, but I’m gonna make
you a Louis Vuitton jacket that reverses, so you can wear the Louis side one
time and then reverse it while you’re in the party and really floss and wear
the mink side. So I needed desperately to know new frontiers, all the time, all
the time.
Are there neighborhoods you enjoy going to in New York to study the style?
I like to go to clubs where a particular type of people go. I like to go to a club
that’s designated the gay club, see what they’re wearing. I go to a hip-hop
club, see what they wearing. Because I know in those locations, people are who
they really wanna be, and how they really wanna look. I go to a neighborhood;
they might be dressed for work. But when they go to that club, that’s who they
are.
What article of clothing on a person do you look at first?
With a female: shoes. With a male, a black male, uptown: jacket. With a white
male or an uppity black male: tie and shirt. The tie and shirt tell me if they
want to be in tune with the times.
Uptown, the guys are really into jackets. Sneakers count a lot, but the jacket
—if they’re really into fashion, that jacket’s gonna match the sneakers.
[A customer] comes to your table and says, “Oh, man, that’s hot! Let me go see
if I can get some sneakers to match.” If you can’t get no sneakers to match, it’s
a dead sale.
The market follows the color scheme of Jordans. Look: all you got to do is know
what color Jordan is coming out with, which sneaker is gonna be hot, and you
make a jacket to go with that. The sneaker sells the jacket.
I know women are fetishistic about shoes. Looking at a woman’s shoes is like
being a palm reader.
What are you wearing tonight?
I dress for the occasion. I don’t really get to do Dapper Dan because I play the
crowd. I have a basic, generic suit because I knew I was gonna run into a basic,
generic crowd.
What does it mean to “do” Dapper Dan?
To do Dapper Dan means to be, “Goddamn, how he did that?” If you don’t say
that, I was not there.
Do you think fashion is a means to permeate a subculture? In other words,
can you dress yourself into a certain culture?
I think fashion can escape a subculture. It’s that thriving, that beat within you
to say, “I feel trapped. I gotta do this, I gotta be outside of this.” That’s what
fashion is to me. It’s a manipulative thing, too, because to me, there is no right
or wrong in fashion. It’s just weak and strong. If an artist is great, that’s
strength, and you can use his power.
What draws you to a particular logo over another?
I’m heavily into symbolism. When I first started doing Louis Vuitton, the first
thing I did was look up the symbol. I saw that the symbols were a manifestation
of symbols that came out of the east, which was a variation on the cross.
And I like to play with things. That’s why my most inspiring designer is Versace.
He did it: with the Greek key and the Medusa head, which he didn’t own but he
just made that so powerful, so symbolic. I like that! Originally I play around
with Louis ’cause there was a lot of things involved . . . but none of that touches
Versace. So much there. He did it all: the colors, the time period things he used.
What’s the hardest thing about being a man?
Understanding the nature of pain. You gotta know what pain is. If you’re a man,
you gotta know what pain is. The process of taking care of your family is to keep
them free of pain, whatever that means to them. The height of masculinity is to
be able to take pain, even if it’s vicarious.
