Sunday, February 7, 2016

Dapper Dan @ Vanity Fair

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.






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