by the time we hit the 20 0s, it was, like, wow, you got to watch the trends because of all of the traffic and the activity that was happening online. before, when our influences were confined to what was at our reach and now, with the expansion and the power of the internet, i have access to every fashion, look, brand across the world. so i can be whoever i want to be. we re in a space where they re exchanging so many ideas, that i think that you re getting back into individual looks. it s no longer, like, urban
because you grow up in a world where fashion is so important. a lot of people in hip hop have aspirations and aspiration is can you go in to the store and buy that brand? when you think of versace, ralph lauren, it seems like it s far away. it s a dream. somewhere where you would like to go. those people could care less about you. but, it seems like if i can grab that and wear that, i m living a fantasy. low lives originated in brownsville and st. john in crown heights, two crews getting fly crews that came together and created a big brotherhood.
being in new york with so many people walking past each other on the street every day, you get a chance it s like a runway, you know what i sneen all the streets were like runways for different clothing brands. there was always all sorts of different flavors in the hood. there wasn t one definitive sort of style. guy from brooklyn would have on shark skins, glasses with no lens in it and a crease like i don t know what. that was a brooklyn cat. he didn t have to say anything. you knew he was from brooklyn. a guy from harlem would have on, let s say a ve hour sweet sweat suit. whatever brand the sweat suit was from he would have the sneaker to match. the same thing with the bronx, a mix of harlem and brooklyn
and cross colors was in a fashion show and i saw karl jones and asked him how to get in to department stores and i want to get my brand out there and he said come to my office tomorrow and i will be willing to talk to you. i went to his office and he said i saw your stuff and i would be willing to help you out. he invited me to become partners with him in the business two weeks later. he was very selective in who he gave his clothes to. he gave it to tupacs, more sophisticated guys. cross colors was tlc, snoop dogg, things of that nature. we made sure they had a different vision and branding was slightly different in how we marketed the brand. i did a karl ad and that was the next cool thing.
we wrote $300,000 worth of orders out of this hotel room. we get turned down by 27 banks. we go to my house and get my furniture and sell what we can. the rest we cannot sell we burn oil drums. it takes two weeks because we want to get it out of there and we move industrial sewing machines in there and hire a staff. we slept in sleeping bags next to the machines and for a year we would crank it out of the house. that started to populate the stores and stores started to sell fleece and sweatshirts and people started to realize who we were. fubu was able to do what cross colors didn t in terms of max, at its peak, did 100 million and that was in 1990, less than seven years later, you are talking about a brand that