This documentary is a must see for hip-hop heads and people who overall are into fashions as well as culture.
Fresh Dressed is a fascinating, fun-to-watch chronicle of hip-hop, urban fashion, and the hustle that brought oversized pants and graffiti-drenched jackets from Orchard Street to high fashion’s catwalks and Middle America shopping malls. Reaching deep to Southern plantation culture, the black church, and Little Richard, director Sacha Jenkins’ music-drenched history draws from a rich mix of archival materials and in-depth interviews with rappers, designers, and other industry insiders, such as Pharrell Williams, Damon Dash, Karl Kani, Kanye West, Nas Jones, and Andre Leon Talley. The result is a passionate telling of how the reach for freedom of expression and a better life by a culture that refused to be squashed, would, through sheer originality and swagger, take over the mainstream. — S.F.
The overview starts with African American styles of the 19th century, then goes on to include such bizarre flowerings as Melle Mel’s superhero costumes and the gravity-defying stovepipe coiffures of Kid ’n Play, as well as clothing stars such as Dapper Dan. He was the tailor responsible for all those late-80s garments emblazoned with YSL, Vuitton and other logos, and is credited with having introduced sampling to fashion just as the pioneer DJs introduced it to music.
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