Designer April Walker said that when she created her menswear line Walker Wear in 1988, she decided not to shout to the rooftops that her streetwear line was run by a woman, for fear it would be discarded.
Walker went to his father, who worked in the music industry, for advice. «I remember talking to him,» Walker said in an interview for «50 Years Fly: The Rise, Fall and Revolution of Hip-Hop Fashion,» a new NBC News documentary, «and asking him, ‘I want to do this line. I want to call it Walker Wear. Do you think people should know there’s a woman behind it? Because I was a little skeptical that if they knew it was men’s clothing, they would be able to say, ‘I won’t buy a woman clothes. What does she know to do? men’s clothing? And he just posed the question. He said, ‘If you have to ask the question, you already answered it.’
Walker dressed many black celebrities in his designs, including tupac, Notorious BIG, Run-DMC, and Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson, who once wore custom shorts from Walker Wear’s track line. In addition to collaborating with other brands, Walker is now a assistant teacher at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
“Giveback for me now is empowering the next generation of leaders, of creatives, of streetwear brands and giving them the tools they need with the knowledge so they can go on and design the lives they envision,” Walker said.
As hip-hop’s 50th anniversary approaches, the effects the genre had on black culture are undeniable. And the designers, similar to the female rappers who entered the music industry in the early ’80s and ’90s, refused to be sidelined.
Like Walker, Kimora Lee Simmons became a pioneer in the world of hip-hop fashion after launching fantastic baby from Russell Simmons’ Phat Farm in 1999. Known for its signature crop tops, jackets, sneakers and jeans, Baby Phat flourished in the early 2000s and became one of the most successful streetwear streetwear brands of that era, reaching $265 million in revenue for 2002.
Lee Simmons, who landed her first modeling contract as a teenager, said the brand’s identity was born from her belief that women’s fashion «should be sexy and dynamic.»
Lee Simmons said that another important aspect of the Baby Phat brand was providing consumers with affordable fashion while being accessible to women of all colors, shapes and sizes.
“I started to take it in another way and create something different, which is what I thought women would want,” said Lee Simmons. “Young women like me, young women from where I was from, young women from all over the United States.”
This is often not the case in the fashion industry, where some designers refused to select black models for photo shoots.
Lee Simmons, who is Korean, Japanese and black, said she remembers a designer once refusing to choose black models. She also recalled struggling to be accepted by others «outside the circle» in her teens due to her biracial background and her tall stature, another reason she wanted to be inclusive of her brand.
“I’ve worked with as many young women as I could name to this day who came to me and said, ‘This is my last casting call,’ ‘My agency said my hips are too big,’ or ‘My breasts are too big.’ said Lee Simmons. “What Baby Phat represents is different to many people, but it embodies the same spirit of a beautiful life.”
Phat Farm, Rocawear, FUBU, Karl Kani and other urban streetwear brands emerged at a time when black consumers were «tired of giving credit» to brands that were «ashamed» of them and wanted to create brands for their own community, Lindsay said. Peoples, editor-in-chief of The Cut. By purchasing and using these brands, Peoples said he felt he belonged to a «community and culture that really cared about me.»
«I think even then, I felt like I wanted to support a brand that’s not just here for the moment, that’s actually here, because they care and care about black people,» Peoples said.
Brands like Baby Phat “created so much space for women to feel like they belonged in “everything that was going on in hip-hop culture,” she added.
«I so remember Baby Phat feeling like ‘If I put this on, I’m going to have the time of my life,'» she said. «Like ‘This is, this is going to be the time.'»
Despite the success of these brands, the fashion industry can still feel «like a mountain» to blacks navigating it decades later, Peoples said. That’s why he co-founded the Black on the Fashion Council in 2020 to help create a more equal working environment for blacks in the fashion industry. The organization works with brands like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Tiffany & Co.
“I think a lot of times it seems like people want to, you know, jump in and out of black culture when they feel like it suits them,” Peoples said. «And that’s why it seems like inclusion is still not really at the forefront of the industry as much as it could be.»
More than three decades after the launch of Walker Wear, Walker said she continues to face challenges in the business, particularly as a woman of color.
“When it comes to conversations, when it comes to opportunities, when it comes to my male counterparts,” Walker said, she is still sometimes seen as an afterthought within the fashion industry. «You know, that’s just a reality I’m used to.»
Despite these challenges, Walker said she wants to continue to empower the community with her brand.
“If I had sat in self-pity, I wouldn’t have started,” Walker said. “I really wouldn’t have gone ahead and moved on. … Society is going to be society. You just have to do what you love and be who you are. And I’m thankful that I don’t do it for the accolades. I have never done this for validation from others. You know, I do it for my community, but I also do it because it feeds my soul, it feeds my livelihood, and I’m committed to the process and my purpose.»
“50 Years Fly: The Rise, Fall and Revolution of Hip-Hop Fashion” premieres Thursday on Peacock and will air on NBC News NOW at 10 p.m. ET, as well as on NBCNews.com and the NBC News YouTube channel. .