able to benefit from that. by the time he came on the scene, urban brands were starting to become a bit saturated in the fashion market. achd i think sean jean really injected the industry with a new pulse. i think for sean john, you know, my whole muse and motivation was what i grew up seeing in the streets, what i grew up seeing going into what i was seeing in my communities and taking it and combining it also to what i was seeing on the runways from all over the world. it was the embodiment of swagger, you know what i m saying? when sean first started doing fashion and having fashion shows, they were some of the most extraordinary moments during fashion week. everybody always asks me why i started designing clothes. see, i basically just wanted to
knowing what our culture want and how much money is made. when mainstream american culture discovered hip-hop, they began trying to sort of, you know, sell bits and pieces of it in any way they could. and this is when you got all of these, you know, fashion labels associated with rappers. at rocawear, i would try to show a lifestyle that people would buy into. that s what i was ultimately trying to do. you know what i m saying? i don t want it to be looked at as we re good for urban or black clothing. i wanted to compete with everyone else in the world. rocawear was around well before sean john, but it wasn t until we saw the numbers of sean john that rocawear was able to benefit from that. by the time sean john came on the scene, urban brands were
to 18 months but you re just taking away another designer s real estate that s really real about it and can give some really good product. you weren t going to wear shady. just were not. i mean, there s nothing that made you think that shady was into fashion. you know, as a consumer, you sort of just knew it was a money play. he put a million dollars behind all of these different brands, and because they had a hot song. you re as hot as your music. when you re a musician coming out with a clothing brand. you re never really serious about this. they re putting out t-shirts, this. you re as good as your brand, your music. if your music starts going south, so does the clothing. the fashion industry is fickle. it goes up and down just like the economy. what happened? a number of factors.
fresh to death like a million bucks. come on, we were big dreamers. all of us. hip-hop was based on that dream of getting it and coming up out the ghetto, the light at the end of the tunnel was always, you know, the pot of gold, the clothes, the fashion. said to me, your clothes are your wings. so, you know, if you want to fly, these dudes want to be fly so they going to put on something nice. and why shouldn t they? and by doing that, once we put it on, it s a whole different story. you know what i m saying? we put on your clothes and we take it to the next level.
come on, we were big dreamers. all of us. hip-hop was based on that dream of getting it and coming up out the ghetto, the light at the end of the tunnel was always, you know, the pot of gold, the clothes, the fashion. somebody said to me, your clothes are your wings. so, you know, if you want to fly, these dudes want to be fly so they going to put on something nice. and why shouldn t they? by doing that w the style that the street guys have, once we put it on, it s a whole different story. you kno what i m saying? we put on your clothes and we take it to the next level. the animal kingdom in the