(BBxBB video scrolling)
My first awareness of style was Kriss-Kross
and Bugs Bunny Basketball Bootleg Cross-colours Clothing,
wilding with Taz and Wile E Coyote, sometimes Daffy Duck… and Tweety Bird came in the picture somewhere too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=010KyIQjkTk
Kriss Kross- Jump
I noticed these two kids dressed alike, were Black like me, and were styled I thought similar to my beloved urban Looney Tunes. They were like me but different than me and my kindergarten class. Maybe the difference was from the clothes? I learned from commercials with Michael Jordan and Spike Lee that shoes can make you jump higher. “It’s gotta be the shoes.”
https://youtu.be/JFQXtAE7SiU?t=41
Lords Of The Underground - Chief Rocka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abr_LU822rQ&ab_channel=SoxFan10
(“wreck n’ shop” ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUAuCQN-AJI 21:45
Maybe I as a child who was just learning to put on my own clothes and struggling to tie my shoes was drawn to how they had their clothes on backwards and were doing great, jumpin’ around, playin’, kickin’ flows with angry eyebrows and full control of their faces. At that time, I thought smiling was just baring your teeth. Some things would return, others would almost disappear entirely.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2805/9298/files/ttd_1024x1024.png?v=1613159673
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp744M0u3Nb/?hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M32mOJYR3VM&ab_channel=PoraX
(Maxwell Street in bg)
Dressing came from my Uncle Donald, who shared names like Stetson, Dobbs, Pierre Cardin, and Salvatore Ferragamo with me in script, bold, and italic. Before that, I had only heard Calvin Klein and Karl Kani, Mecca and Cross Colours from my older sister, she rolled her eyes as I giggled at hearing the word FUBU. I had a vague sense that style was connected to names somehow. My uncle introduced to me the concept of being double-breasted, as it relates to being well-rounded and of course the suit jacket. He was born on Maxwell street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNYpFvBxOHA&ab_channel=TheArk420 in Chicago in the early 1950s, was shot in the stomach in the 1970s, moved to New Orleans in the 80s, and stayed fresh to death in the 2000s. He taught me how to tie a tie, and demonstrated various knots. Although I wasn't interested in the buttoned-down look of private investigators and mobsters that he grew up seeing in television, movies, and life, from him, I learned the idea of constructing your appearance in a rigid system, with everything in its place, and all the parts in order: from color, cleanliness, coordination, to crispness. Clothes would be ironed on Sunday, and any time they seemed to need disciplining. He and my grandmother instilled in me the notion of being presentable at all times...at least when you step outside of the house. I saw men parked on the corner with their trunks popped open, or I saw them posted up in front of the chainlink fence of various public parks, making an ad-hoc gallery, selling reprints of this photograph in various sizes. It reminded me of my uncle, split into four little boys, as though he was cast through a prism. This wasn’t the case of course, as the photograph was made almost a decade before my grandmother moved to Chicago from Louisiana, almost a decade before he and his sister, my mother were born. The cars, the cuts of the garments, so many things would shift. But the plurality of feelings in their gazes, and the imagining of the itchiness, weight, and gravity of the jackets and overcoats I imagine, he would understand.
