Despite moments such as those, it still took high fashion a hot minute to embrace hip-hop. Fashion trailblazer Lil’ Kim walked for Kimora Lee’s debut Baby Phat show at the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until over a decade later that rappers began regularly popping up on runways, when Black and POC designers made the changes themselves. By the early 2010s, as the great fashion/rap crossover was fully materialising, Hood By Air put a young A$AP Rocky on the runway, Nasir Mazhar tapped Skepta in 2015, and A$AP Nast even crashed the finale of an Off-White show in his own clothes in 2016. (Coolio, Tommy Hilfiger AW96 men’s, New York Fashion Week)
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