Published: Wednesday - February 7, 2007
Words by Jorteh Senah
Lil Wayne (Photo: n/a)
The marriage between skater fashion and urban culture has produced a fly baby and it's called Skurban.
"Back in the day I used to be the only Hispanic up in here, now the crowd is much more diverse," says Moe Perez, a cashier at the hip skater/surfer apparel store, Stussy, in NYC's Soho neighborhood. Moe was amongst the early wave of urban kids that began incorporating skateboarding, and its distinct dress code, into their hip-hop-heavy lifestyles.
This was before skater-chic icon Pharrell Williams and Chi-Town skate curator Lupe Fiasco popularized this mesh between urban and skate culture commonly referred to as skurban. Skurban has now kicked and pushed its way up the ramp of hip-hop prevalence.
"Pharrell's BBC and Ice Cream lines make up 40% of our business," says Wilkins, who works at the veteran skate-retailer Union in NYC.
Along with Bape -- a Japanese line that Pharrell also made trendy -– Ice Cream and BBC have become the brands of choice for the skurban hipster. Even rappers such as Jay-Z and Lil Wayne have been rocking the skurban look, the style staples of which include: the graffiti-styled hoodie (with designs that use the secret skate language of images and icons), sneakers such as Nike's Dunks (a 1985 basketball shoe that has been adopted by skaters) and the alternative-styled graphic t-shirt.
Like hip-hop culture, there are also subtle nuances that define the skurban look: clothes are made and worn at smaller sizes than most typical hip-hop gear, and loud, wild color schemes run rampant and jeans are tucked tightly behind sneaker tongues.
With the high prices and exclusiveness of many of these items (BBC and Ice Cream t-shirts go for about $92 and designs are manufactured in small quantities) the hip-hop elite and their followers are increasingly rolling past the cheap-skate conformity of white tees and baggy jeans.
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