Hip-hop has long been synonymous with jeans big enough to upholster a sofa, with throwback sports jerseys draped to the knees, with out-rageously priced, limited-edition sneakers and with the diamond-barnacled hardware that entered the vernacular as "bling bling."
But now the generation that made these trappings a perennially adolescent uniform is pushing 35. As fans mature and ascend the ranks in the work force, they find themselves looking for a new sartorial statement. The musical stars who set the trends like Jay-Z and P. Diddy, backed up by major hip-hop brands like Ecko and Sean Jean, are ready with a simple proposition: The time has come to put on a suit.
On Tuesday, during New York's Fashion Week, which began on Friday morning, Ecko will be presenting a fall 2004 collection that largely dispenses with its trademark tracksuits and sneakers, and arranges its new image around that staple of Everyman's wardrobe: the blazer. Tonight, at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, few fans of Pharrell Williams, who has been nominated for six awards, are likely to be shocked if he appears in one of the Perry Como sports jackets he wears so rakishly.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
"This generation is getting older," said Wyclef Jean, 34, the founder of the Fugees.
"When you mature, you realize that it's fine to wear your comfortable throwback jersey in the studio, but when you go out with your girl in a restaurant, you want to look clean cut and mature," he said.
Designers at a number of urban-wear labels share that opinion and are staking a healthy proportion of their future business on the prospect that the hip-hop generation will want to turn in its oversized baseball caps and sweatpants and get suited up.
"I hate the word, but the consumer has matured," said Jeffy Tweedy, the chief executive of Sean John, a label known for its high-end jeans and costly sweatclothes, but which stumbled upon a bonanza when it sold 200,000 striped shirts with French cuffs last year.
"Blazers and wovens are going to be a major part of our business now," Tweedy said. "You can tell the consumer is ready if you go to the lounges and hipper clubs in New York City and around America and they all have signs at the door saying `Dress to Impress' or `No Athletic Gear Allowed,'" he said.
Hip-hop is "becoming more Wall Street," said Tiffany Reid, 21, an employee at H272, a store on Lafayette Street owned by the hip-hop artist DJ Honda that is a certified pipeline for street fashion's early adopters.
Reid's work colleague, Johanna Barnes, agreed.
"I notice a lot of guys who come in and want button-down shirts with stripes like Jay-Z wore in a video," Barnes added.
"A lot of rappers now aren't as much street as they used to be," she said.
Last November when The Black Album by Jay-Z was released, the rapper made the point succinctly.
"And I don't wear jerseys, I'm 30-plus," Jay-Z rapped.
"Give me a crisp pair of jeans," he intoned, "Button up."
As early as last August, Jay-Z signaled a shift in his sartorial direction by wearing a jacket with roped shoulders and vents to the MTV Video Music Awards.
Jerseys, whether the vintage-inspired throwbacks or those celebrating sports stars of our day, "are over," according to John Moore, the fashion director of Vibe, whose issue this month features an eight-page pictorial devoted to younger men wearing suits.
"This ain't your daddy's suit," reads a caption and, while the high end "kicks," or sneakers, and gangster do-rags worn by Vibe's models would not have cut it at the water coolers of an earlier era, the chalk-stripes and superfine woolens from Hugo Boss and Dior Homme were classic Wall Street garb.
"The whole bling-bling thing has left," maintained Moore, a change attributable perhaps to general shifts in taste and just as inevitably to workplace rules that have seen employers distance themselves from casual attire.
"Education-wise and work-wise, people of color and African-Americans are a force," Moore added.
"They're sophisticated consumers and they increasingly want to be taken seriously," he said.
Most market analysts point out that it has been some time since the hip-hop market was largely black.
"The hip-hop generation is demographically broad-based," said Marshal Cohen, a senior analyst at the NPD Group, a market research company.
"What's happening is that the designer market is not driving the business anymore. Consumers and celebrities are," he said.
"You have this age group from 25 to 34 that grew up with the music and is now migrating away from the hip-hop lifestyle and getting more conventional," Cohen added.
"At the same time, they're bringing the lessons of casual hip-hop dressing forward so they wear the suit in a way that says they're willing to be part of the establishment but not necessarily to conform," he said.
Customers at the leading edge of the hip-hop generation are eager to dress up, said Lenny Rothschild, who operates 10 men's haberdasheries in the Midwest.
"They have money, they've outgrown labels and branding, they understand what style and fashion is all about," he added.
"They're hugely influenced by Jay-Z, and they don't want jerseys anymore," he said.
What they want, Rothschild said, is shirts with barrel cuffs and point collars: "I've gone through 500 of them this month."
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