If you asked a kid growing up in the ‘70s, what do you want to be when you get older? He’d say, “I want to work for the post office, or be an electrician or a plumber, work for the board of education or become a fireman.” And that was pretty much it. Our visions were kind of blurry at the time. K.K.: For a kid on the streets, hip-hop gave me hope. WWD: Did you ever think hip-hop would have this kind of impact on overall culture? Sean “Diddy” Combs sporting a full Karl Kani outfit. But now this is their sweet spot and we’re going to cater to those guys even more now. The skinny jean thing wasn’t really cool for the big guys. And I feel it’s gonna be here for a minute because people want change, they want difference in their lives and fashion makes you feel different with the baggy look, especially for bigger guys. Fashion has a way of circling itself around and now’s the time that it’s coming back. K.K.: Look at every European runway fashion show - every top designer is back to baggy now. WWD: Why do you think urban fashion is still relevant today? But I felt like the new generation wanted to be different. A lot of times kids don’t want to dress like their parents. So we went through five or six generations of kids going through high school and were very successful. They don’t want to wear the same thing they wore when they were young. But normally when kids go to college, that may change. You could get a kid from junior high school through high school, and he’ll probably rock the same brand. The baggy jeans phase kind of outgrew certain generations. And 20 years later, a new trend started coming in - the skinny jeans trend - and that changed the game somewhat. K.K.: Baggy had a great run - we established a look and a fit that identified who we were and made us feel comfortable. WWD: That baggy fit definitely epitomized the look back then. And we just paved the way for so many other designers who wanted to live this dream. We had people lined up around the corner, trying to buy our clothing. That’s when we established ourselves here at the MAGIC show - we tore the house down. and teamed up with Cross Colours we became partners in 1991. Once we created this look, I decided to move to California in 1989 and take this thing seriously because we needed some manufacturing. But I started selling clothes to a lot of my friends and I was making the clothes more baggy than what was in the stores because they didn’t have the fit we wanted. I started wearing this outfit and all my friends asked where I got it. K.K.: My father used to get his clothes made by a tailor in New York and I asked him to make me an outfit too. WWD: How did that lead you to create your own brand? And that was my first take into being a fashion whore. And that’s all I needed - that feeling of buying something and securing it for yourself meant everything to me. At 12 years old, we were able to afford to buy something on our own that our parents would not buy for us. So we turned it into a business, and as soon as we got $30, we ran to Glenwood Flea Market and bought our first pair of Pumas. And she said, “I’ll pay you to do it.” She gave me $5 to shovel her snow and then other neighbors started coming to us asking us to shovel their yards as well. Then my neighbor asked me if I could do her yard. So during the big winter snowstorms back in 1973/‘74, I was shoveling the front yard and my cousin was shoveling his yard. My parents allowed me to buy maybe one or two pair of sneakers for the year. K.K.: My journey in fashion started at a young age when I was like 12 years old. WWD: What about you, when did you get into this business? Every kid played that record back-to-back and knew every single lyric of those songs. K.K.: It was Grandmaster Flash and the Sugarhill Gang.
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