Filthy Dripped Art Couture streetwear is the first boutique of its kind to be opened in the San Francisco-Berkeley Bay Area. We have styles from the 80’s punk era to the 90’s hip hop scene, and everything in between.
Fashion is one of the things that allows you to instantly recognize a cultural group, and there are few places where it is more apparent than in an urban setting. Streetwear is a general term for any kind of fashion developed in an urban setting, instead of in some fashion design room. There are many kinds of streetwear, including retro, punk, and hip-hop, and that’s only counting a few styles.
Looking abroad you can find clothes inspired by anime, video games, music, and the urban setting it’s self. The key to developing a good look in an urban setting is observing the people around you, and then taking a look and customizing it for yourself. Urban wear is typically put together from a wide variety of sources, but since it has caught on in the last decade, you can find stores that serve as urban outfitters, and really give you a wide range of stuff to pick from in one place.
That said, if you are looking for a cool look without spending a load of cash, mixing and matching is still your best bet. Traditional urban street wear evolved from the Inner city in large cities like New York. Common aspects of traditional street wear include sneakers, baggy jeans, and darker colors. This is a great look if you live in an East Coast city and want to blend in to an inner city crowd, however the idea of street wear has evolved out into a lot of different places and ideas, and the label can be applied to a wide variety of fashions.
Hip hop fashion, as developed in the 80s, is one type of urban clothing, often times confused with traditional street wear, however urban outfitters often sell this kind of clothing, such is and example of the kind of overarching idea of street wear, which not longer applies to the sneakers and jeans style of inner city New York. Urban clothing has built up within American cities as well as abroad. In places like Japan, there is a whole different kind of street wear. Anime costumes and video game clothing are common in Tokyo, and much of Japan’s youth is infatuated with this sort of fashion. Places like London, England have also developed and unique style, with brighter colors and stark contrasts.
So make sure you know just what you are referring to when you talk about street wear, as some may assume you are talking about the traditional idea. Urban wear has been influenced strongly by the attitude and art found in the cities that it has developed in. In places like New York and Detroit, you will find Urban wear that draws heavily from graffiti art as a source of inspiration. On the west coast, hip hop can be cited as a major influence of fashion, and as stated earlier, Japan has games and anime to thank for much of it’s urban fashion. Street wear is a broad ideal, and a worldwide trend.
Let’s take the time to learn a little more how the hip hop culture evolved. Before there was the fashion style, there was music.
Hip hop rose to popularity in New York in the late 70s during the height of popularity of the so-called block parties. DJs usually played funk and soul music and later on tried to play only the break beats of the songs. It became a hit among block partygoers and the rest is history, so they say.
One of the famous DJs at the time was DJ Kool Herc, who is widely regarded as the godfather of hiphop. Aside from DJ-ing, he also began collaborating with emcees to supply the words to the music. A lot more DJs followed suit including hip hop legend Grandmaster Flash and helped develop the genre into what it is today.
But what’s hip hop without the emcees? Now popularly known as rappers, they supply the words to the music not by singing them but by rhythmically speaking them along the beat. The themes in the lyrics are varied ranging from partying, sex, drugs and even political ones.
As the music evolved, so did the art of rapping. Freestyle rapping is one popular form wherein rappers spit out lyrics spontaneously. This is also popular with rapping duels wherein two rappers go head-to-head and try to top each other in coming up with the best rhyme.
What could be considered as hip hop music’s golden age was in the 1980s when the genre was just starting to become recognized. Groups such as Run DMC and Beastie Boys, as well as solo acts like LL Cool J helped boost the popularity of the music was then limited to block parties.