Tyler The Creator’s GOLF Line Reinvented Streetwear
Hip-hop has at all times had a uniform, in a technique or one other. Variations of rap’s varied aesthetics have been locked into standard consciousness far lengthy than the tendencies themselves had been embraced by the style’s followers in actual life.
Image a rapper in your thoughts. Maybe you imagined a Nineteen Eighties b-boy, replete with a Kangol bucket hat and Adidas tracksuit. Possibly your envisioned rap star has on saggy denims, sagging just under his waistline, paired with an undershirt and Timberland boots. Or maybe they’re extra trendy, decked out in modern couture, with colourful braids and facial piercings.
The purpose is, there’s at all times been a selected “look” — till somebody comes alongside and disrupts the established order. This technology’s disruptor is Tyler The Creator, who defied rap’s sartorial conventions — and every thing else about modern hip-hop tradition — from the second he and Odd Future thrashed their approach into the highlight, proper up till now, together with his GOLF clothes line redefining hip-hop’s search for a a lot preppier set of rebels.
GOLF — additionally affectionately referred to as “Golf Wang,” a spoonerism of “Wolf Gang,” a part of considered one of Odd Future’s provocative mottos — distinguishes itself from the normal streetwear mainstays with its focus on clear fundamentals and traditional staples, usually in pastels or laid-back patterns that counsel throwback casuals with out getting caught in outmoded mindsets about fashion. The appears take inspiration from the best way Tyler attire himself, and are sometimes even instantly designed by the multitalented rapper and producer.
The ensuing kinds stand out towards the backdrop of the perceived studied shagginess of hip-hop style, regardless of which period you examine it to. Quite than outsized hoodies, GOLF adherents don button-up cardigans with traditional prints of looking canines that appear like the wearer is draped in a portray straight from the wall of the Artwork Institute of Chicago.
The recognition of GOLF has manifested itself — and propagated itself, like a perpetual movement engine — in additional collaborations with the legacy manufacturers it was influenced by, like Lacoste and Levi Strauss & Co., in addition to streetwear mainstays comparable to Converse, Vans, and Japanese sandal model SUICOKE. Such is the demand for Tyler’s distinctive eye for established silhouettes with fanciful particulars that GOLF was spun off in 2016, providing higher-end merchandise; in 2021, it was spun off into its personal standalone luxurious model.
The model additionally updates style staples, cleverly calling again to the Golden Period whereas updating long-respected mainstays with a youthful edge. As an example, there’s maybe nobody who defines hip-hop extra totally than the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, and a signature of the Staten Island product’s fashion has at all times been Clarks Wallabees. GOLF has collaborated with the 200-year-old shoemaker for a whimsical tackle its traditional moccasin, with dainty pastels and embossed coronary heart patterns.
This can be a reflection of their creator — pun meant — who has lengthy drawn from the historical past and core tenets of hip-hop, whereas imbuing it together with his personal irreverent humorousness and whimsy. Take, for example, the presentation of his most up-to-date album, Name Me If You Get Misplaced. Whereas it’s offered as a hardcore venture within the vein of DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtapes, it additionally attracts musically from the breezy fashion of Nineteen Sixties huge band jazz that’s maybe finest acknowledged by trendy audiences because the soundtrack of 007 spoof collection Austin Powers.
Tyler usually cites BET fixtures comparable to Rap Metropolis and 106 & Park as main inspirations, but additionally freely admits to lampooning their model of hip-hop, if not outright rejecting the archetypes offered on BET throughout his childhood. And why wouldn’t he? If you understand you’re no 50 Cent, Fats Joe, or Jay-Z, you have got two choices: Both attempt to be them, or turn out to be one thing completely different.
Rising up in LA County as Tyler did, the choices would have been much more constrained. In any case, the closest factor to a mainstay on mainstream radio and tv from the West Coast within the early 2000s was The Recreation, who loudly espoused his gang ties — one thing that’s nearly as harmful to mimic in LA as it’s to embrace. So Tyler, who discovered solace in skate tradition and the burgeoning style scene within the Fairfax district, determined to do issues his personal approach.
Now, to go to considered one of Tyler’s live shows or his fan-favorite musical pageant, Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, is to go to a GOLF style conference, with 1000’s of younger rap followers adorned in floral prints and pastels, the place the same old rap present uniform may need consisted of throwback basketball jerseys or fresh-pressed Dickies work pants and plaid button-up shirts. GOLF’s designs carry a pop of prep, however right down to earth, like The Creator himself, who usually eschews the trimmings of rapper wealth — huge, glittering chains and ostentatious, name-brand styling — in favor of the form of cozy garments he may need been seen in driving his bike down Fairfax.
That ingenuity and dogged individuality ultimately paid off for him, each within the musical success of Odd Future and within the prevailing recognition of his GOLF model — which, fittingly, facilities across the flagship retailer on Fairfax Ave, the middle of the strip the place he started his defiant journey of self-definition. That there are such a lot of followers of GOLF worldwide is a testomony to how actually relatable that story has been.
