theconcretearchives:

Right on 125th street in Harlem USA, sat a custom high-end clothing boutique owned by Mr. Dapper Dan.&nbsp; Before Kanye, Juelz, Fabolous and some other well known rappers wore Gucci and Louis Vuitton, Dapper Dan in the 80&rsquo;s and 90&rsquo;s planted the seed for fashion in the hip hop culture. He created one of a kind customized high-end clothing that incorporated highly recognizable accessory logos like those of Gucci and Louis Vuitton, featuring them in non-traditional ways.&nbsp; His pieces were sold for thousands of dollars, and created a sense of what&rsquo;s cool, what&rsquo;s new in the streets and in hip-hop.
Dapper Dan, who was born and raised in Harlem, recognized the selling power of luxury.&nbsp; He would take authentic&nbsp;material from brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and create masterpieces for Street Kings and rappers in that era.&nbsp; &ldquo;My customers were all gangsters, the rappers wanted to be like the gangsters.&nbsp; They would wait for the gangsters to leave the store then come in and ask what did the gangsters buy&rdquo; (Words by Dapper Dan).&nbsp; Gangsters like Alpo and Rich Porter were some of his clients &ldquo;I used to have so many gangsters around the store that the feds used to park in front of the store.&nbsp; They were there for 3 weeks until I finally went up to them and said everyone knows you&rsquo;re here&rdquo;.&nbsp; Rappers like Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and even Salt n Pepa were also some of his clients &ldquo;Biz Markie would stay in the store for hours telling jokes&rdquo;.&nbsp; Dapper Dan also said &ldquo;Big Daddy Kane never changed, I had the most respect for him.&nbsp; L.L Cool J still owes me $2,200, They ain&rsquo;t have the money like that back in the day the budget for videos then was $5,000 so a lot of times the rapper owed me&rdquo;.&nbsp; Athletes like Mike Tyson would stay in the store for hours.&nbsp; Dapper Dan&rsquo;s boutique would be open 24 hours a day for 8 years.
