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esigner appeared on the scene at the annual MAGIC fashion trade show in Las Vegas to showcase a new line of urban streetwear that had never been seen before by national retailers—who were all hoping to capitalize on new and emerging trends.
Karl Kani was that designer, whose pioneering vision to deliver and present baggy denim, oversized shirts, and thick sweatshirts and hoodies from the street would soon take hold as the hip-hop style of the nineties would tectonically shift, due to his indelible footprint, from the urban street to main street.
At MAGIC in 1991, Karl Kani stood out as the singular black designer who came straight from the hood with no formal fashion training or education, showcasing apparel that was designed in the hood, sold in the hood, and worn with great fanfare in the hood, capturing all of the energy, spirit, and ethos of the hood from Brooklyn, to Chicago, to Detroit, to Los Angeles.
It's therefore no coincidence that publications from The Los Angeles Times to Vibe magazine to Forbes magazine have hailed Karl Kani historically as the quintessential “Godfather of Urban Streetwear” who blazed a trail and popularized a fashion lane that had not fully emerge until he created it in the early nineties.
But a question remains: How did this young, scrappy, black teenager, born of immigrants from Costa Rica and raised humbly in the Starrett City projects of east Brooklyn, rise like a phoenix from the ashes of socio-economic struggle and urban blight to fashion stardom and fame on an international scale?
To put it bluntly, he hustled. Karl Kani hustled to find his name; he hustled to find his fashion voice; and he hustled to build his brand through organic word of mouth advertising.
After a 30-year history garnering nearly half a billion dollars in sales, he continues to hustle, exceeding his own expectations by establishing the brand's presence internationally in twenty-five countries, with flagships in Europe and Asia.
It all started in the late eighties as Carl Williams became inspired by watching his father and a Haitian tailor work around the neighborhood - designing, fabricating, and selling matching linen suits.
And, so, Carl Williams decided he would sell clothing in the hood for the hood. People were buying his clothing and friends of friends were asking for more. It was until a skeptical friend that just couldn’t believe that the cutting edge clothing he was producing capturing the street, and often sold to Jamaican drug dealers, was actually his own. “Your name ain’t on it," one of his close friends, also from the projects, quipped.
Needless to say, this comment became a monumental tipping point, and he introspectively began to ask himself self-reflective questions on why his name and brand weren’t anywhere on the clothing he was producing? And, would he be capable of making an independent living doing what he felt a calling to do, making the community look fly and dapper in the hood?
“Can I do this on a larger scale? Can I really become a fashion designer?” Carl wrote down in his journal.
At just eighteen years old, he wrote this down over and over and over like a rap lyric or a mantra: “Can I? Can I? Can I?”
And then it stuck: Carl Williams would become Karl Kani, his new official name and the new moniker on his new clothing line.
Ambitious as ever, he would soon expand the brand to a larger mainstream audience by moving to Los Angeles, and was blessed by all the success that would soon follow, emerging before Phat Farm, Roca Wear, Sean Jean, and the many other hip-hop, urban streetwear lines that would all build off his success later.
And how did he find his hustle upon moving to LA in ‘89 at a mere twenty years old to scale his brand? He started by opening a shop named “Seasons” on Crenshaw Blvd.—gang central in the early nineties—and within months he got robbed. After that, with little money in his pocket and a series of evictions from other small apartments he doubled up as fashion warehouses and design studios, he began the difficult process of hustling anyone and everyone he could find to help him to get his brand off the ground.
Karl and his friend plus business associate Aze hustled factory workers outside of the Guess factory in Downtown LA, and they were successful in bribing one factory worker (placing a $50 bill on top of a stack of $1 bills) to hook them up with the information they needed. He told them where to buy fabric, where to locate and hire denim wash factories, along with other essential details they needed to begin scaling the garment business.
And Karl hustled to sell that newly minted baggy denim clothing and other new designs to advertise in a popular youth magazine called Right On! Magazine. Soon after the publication was released, phone orders started streaming in on the freshly minted apparel.
Karl knew he was onto something from the reception he was getting from the Right On! Ad, but he knew he needed further national exposure, so Karl hustled to cold call the merchandise manager for the retail chain Merry-Go-Round to potentially sell his line in their stores and malls around the country. And he fell in line and helped him further in getting his line in the stores.
From there, Karl took advantage of another fortuitous opportunity when he randomly ran into Ed Lover and Dr. Dre of Yo! MTV Raps on Melrose Ave. in LA. After introducing them to his designs and sharing his story, both figures became ambassadors of the brand where they pitched the brand with black hip-hop artists, rappers, athletic stars, and celebrities who visited him on his acclaimed, nationally syndicated show. And those black influencers not only wore the clothing, they talked about the clothing on the show; and they not only made the brand a significant feature of their image, but they even sang about Karl Kani threads in the lyrics of their hip-hop songs: from Jay-Z to Nas to Notorious B.I.G. to Redman to Snoop to Dr. Dre, and many, many others.
There was no hip-hop artist that promoted the brand more than the hip hop legend, Tupac Shakur, who voluntarily, free of payment, posed for a Karl Kani AD Campaign atop a netless basketball hoop in the projects of Brooklyn donning baggy sweats—an indelible image that would take the nation by storm, surging Karl Kani to new heights of popularity. All this promotion followed an improvised grassroots marketing scheme no one was doing at the time, utilizing black celebrities to don the clothing of an emerging black designer to thereby promote, sell, and popularize urban streetwear for a mainstream audience.
And the biggest hustle that put Karl Kani on the map was getting the hook up through friends to meet up with Carl Jones, the rare black president of another burgeoning streetwear clothing line, Cross Colours, that hadn’t quite tapped into what Karl Kani had forged with authentic, “baggy and colorful” streetwear. Jones had seen his work in Right On! and he knew Karl’s vision was onto something with his baggy and colorful streetwear style. He knew Karl could either be a lucrative partner with Cross-Colours, or he could potentially be a threatening competitor. And, so, Karl accepted a partnership and was subsequently signed on under the umbrella of Cross-Colours and Threads 4 Life in 1991. Within the first-year revenues surpassed $89 million with Karl Kani’s line contributing a whopping 40% of that revenue.
But success didn’t last long after that lucrative partnership that put Karl Kani on the national stage and onto the hangers of all the national retail chains, including Macy’s. Cross-Colours ran into production issues and filed for bankruptcy in 1993, leaving Karl to pivot and hustle again by joining forces with Robert Greenberg to launch a Karl Kani urban footwear line that was worn and promoted by NBA legends like Karl Malone, Derek Fisher, and New York Knicks #1 pick from 1996 John Wallace, utilizing black influencers like he had done successfully so many times before. But, like Cross Colours, that relationship came to a screeching halt when Karl refused to take the brand public along with Greenberg’s Skechers, insisting that he wanted to hold onto his brand, and his name, and not be beholden to Wall Street speculators who could, and likely would, sell off his brand for parts.
And so, it went. And the hustles and pivots and stopping at nothing to ensure Karl Kani remained relevant and legit and maintained by a visionary pioneer from the street has continued despite changing generations with different tastes, changing tastes in music, and the ever-changing ups and downs of fashion trends.
Yes, indeed, Karl Kani is still here after thirty years representing the urban streetwear scene, and his footprint can be seen everywhere in other new and emerging brands that are similarly popping and even eclipsing the original brand that started it all.
And why? Because quality craftsmanship and hustling with pride to bring the fashion of the street to main street doesn’t go out of style. Because consumers and fans still feel the clothing akin to feeling the music; they can still feel the same freedom, strength, and vitality akin to Tupac’s famous photo sitting atop that basketball hoop on a familiar inner-city court in the projects. They want to don threads from the pioneer, the originator, the visionary of urban streetwear who famously brought hip-hop to life through clothing; and there no doubt a profound yearning to appropriate and celebrate that nostalgic hip-hop spirit of the nineties.
As Karl has aptly stated regarding his legacy in carving out an indelible fashion lane that has withstood the test of time, “No one would dare say they started streetwear before Karl Kani. We were, and are, the originators of that intersection of hip-hop music and urban streetwear. And that impact we’ve made is much bigger than our company and that popularity wave we rode throughout the nineties. It started on the streets of New York, it took off in the partnerships and grassroots advertising campaigns forged in LA, spreading nationwide, and it has continued as a new and dominating worldwide force now in Europe and Asia. Not many independent brands have maintained for thirty years, but we have. And we aren’t stopping anytime soon.” |
