6.4: Opportunities and Possibilities

Threads of Resistance

“Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate a taste.” -Nikki Giovanni^[49]

Laying in the darkest recess of our closets reside the necessary elements to resist authoritative norms. Articles of clothing can become political statements. Whether it be the symbolic hoodie that has now come to represent the tragic loss of Trayvon Martin and countless others, cultural forms of resistance can be manifested and expressed in various modalities. From the hoodie to Louis Vuitton, fashion creates a more profound cultural significance when Black bodies intersect with haute couture. This section will explore the theoretical framework of dandyism within the work of Harlem’s own Dapper Dan (Daniel Day). The reimagining and redesigning of European fashion house collections for Black consumption is a radical action that confronts white sensibility through hypervisibility. Luxury brands have become status symbols codified to resemble upward mobility and wealth. The power of aesthetics through the refashioning of luxury brands shifts the pendulum of hegemony by exposing the inequalities and underrepresentation of the Black voice within haute couture. This research will employ the theoretical concepts from Fred Moten and others to expand upon the notions of self-liberation through the reinterpretation of the utilitarian function of clothing by highlighting that “objects can and do resist.”^[50] By showcasing Dapper Dan's brilliance, this section will expose the hidden elements that bespoke tailoring confronts and the authoritative body's tactics to suppress revolutionary thought.

The radicalization of Dapper Dan’s work addresses the boundaries in which street culture (lowbrow) meets haute couture (highbrow). It is this clash between these social hierarchies that reveals the underlying racial tension that is present in the fashion industry. Dan revolutionized fashion design by taking luxury brand logos and creating monogrammed, one-of-a-kind signature pieces for street entrepreneurs and Hip Hop artists. Dapper Dan provided the wardrobe that propelled the Hip Hop aesthetic. Indeed, the most radical element of Dan’s legacy can be seen on the album cover of Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid in Full. The Hip Hop duo graced their classic album in costume-made Gucci jackets, signifying Harlem chic and the power and sophistication of Black wealth. This iconic image provided a counter-narrative to the imagery being propagated by Reagan's racialized rhetoric towards welfare queens and the War on Drugs. The Black body's positionality within luxury labels creates a powerful statement that modernity is not exclusively reserved for the white European. This positionality will be a focal point in this research. It will also examine how Black fashion creates the space necessary for the existence of alternative realities that run counter to white authority.

Witnessing the profound impact Dapper Dan has had on the fashion industry is inevitable. However, Dan's success in catapulting Black visibility within a fashion culture that often denied equal representation is a cautionary epic. Ironically enough, the success of social movements can be measured by the amount of resistance they receive from law enforcement. When authority deems a person or organization a threat to order, that rebel force usually bears the entire weight of the judicial system. Dapper Dan experienced this response with his iconic Harlem boutique's subsequent raid and closure. He would later be prosecuted on charges of counterfeiting. This arrest of Dapper Dan posed a larger question that this chapter hopes to answer: why is a Black person in a Louis Vuitton, Fendi, or Gucci coat so threatening to authority? If clothing signifies success, Dapper Dan's targeting was a tactical move to silence a leader of Black fashion. The once-deemed counterfeit, illegal, and lowbrow creations of street culture have now been appropriated into the current European fashion house repertoire. Dapper Dan inspired designs can currently be seen during New York and Paris Fashion Week.

Dapper Dan's life and work are critical elements that bridge the theoretical realm of dandyism and its practical application. We often do not consider fashion's social impact on the political body or the concept of modernity. Fashion, like theory, is an ever-evolving discussion of the self and provides a space to envision alternative possibilities that can challenge the current mode of thought. This art form offers the realm of self-governess akin to Immanuel Kant's theories of enlightenment. Monica L. Miller's Slave to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity will provide the backbone and genealogical history necessary to explain fashion's social significance as an extension of Black identity. This element shows that Dapper Dan's fashion designs were a way to confront the authoritative white gaze and the status of Black respectability. This section aspires to engage Black fashion as a means to critique societal norms by aligning figures such as Dapper Dan with Fred Moten, simultaneously raising the consciousness and significance of street culture. We will utilize philosophy to answer how and why a simple monogrammed jacket can be construed as a revolutionary action through the power of aesthetics.

Additionally, this section aims to showcase the power that resides in marginalized and overlooked communities. By examining ordinary objects like fashion, one can extrapolate a side of cultural production that most academics often neglect. This section will construct a genealogy of Black dandyism while examining how the philosophies of the Enlightenment period are displayed through fashion. It is in the gaps within research where insight and change are present. The main ambition of this chapter is to change how we discuss Hip Hop fashion while paying homage to the creativity of Dapper Dan.

Transcending to Maturity

The maturation or evolution of oneself mirrors the ever-changing seasons that describe fashion and Daniel Day. Black dandyism utilizes fashion to rethink societal norms while demonstrating one's maturation to full personhood. The act of being “fly” then transcends the notions of wealth and encompasses a life outside of Plato's cave. A reality free from the shackles of bondage where the light reveals an alternative possibility of becoming. The dandy transforms the body into a mobile canvas that conveys a message of arrival. Due to clothing’s proximity to the body, Susan Fillin-Yeh states, "It is not surprising that dress has its somatic reverberations in disguise and displacement, and the that it can be the material of self-transformation and artistic transformation.”^[51] For the white European bourgeoisie, dandyism allowed the individual to assert one's individualism and status in opposition to the Eighteenth-Century aristocracy. Clothes not only became the barometer to gauge success but also a vehicle in which to self-define one's individuality. However, the dandy must permanently reside in a constant loop of revolution that continually pushes the boundaries of the present as a means to separate or distinguish oneself from the masses.

The dandy is an innovator by necessity; to stand apart in the sea of conformity, the wearer must embrace modernity and the tide of progress that washes away the old forms of the past. Roland Barthes implies that dandyism is more than a fashionable endeavor; it is an ethos, a way of life that is stitched into the fabric of one’s essence.^[52] Barthes describes the intentions of the dandy by stating that:

The dandy is condemned to invent continually distinctive traits that are ever novel: sometimes he relies on wealth to distance himself from the poor, other times he wants his clothes to look worn out to distance himself from the rich—this is precisely the job of the ‘detail’ which is to allow the dandy to escape the masses and never to be engulfed by them; his singularity is absolute in essence, but limited in substance, as he must never fall into eccentricity, for that is an eminently copyable form.^[53]

This loop of progress exemplifies the fluid state of fashion and extends inward into the individual. If the fabric is a personification of the individual, then the continual need to reinvent can be seen as a process of personal maturation. For white Europeans, dandyism allowed the newly minted bourgeoisie to congeal and establish an identity that rebelled against the authoritative norms of the crown while creating a space that distanced itself from the proletariat. Fashion simultaneously allows the individual to discover one's uniqueness while creating an "imagined community.” Dandyism is not defined nor limited by borders. Instead, it generates fraternity that allows its members to reject the rule of the sovereign in favor of self-determination.

Maturity for the enlightened is forged through the rejection of the predestined. The ability to decide one’s fate is the marker of personal development. Philosopher Immanuel Kant writes that “there are only a few who have managed to free themselves from immaturity through the exercise of their own minds.”^[54] For Kant, maturity coincides with the ability to think and reason freely outside the pressure of the sovereign. The Kantian equates immaturity as a yoke that needs to be shed so that the individual can grasp their true self-worth.^[55] The Enlightenment brought the necessary tools for the neophyte to climb out of the darkness and claim the freedom that was denied by the authoritative body. Kant believes the act of reasoning is the primary indicator of liberty. In contrast, Charles Baudelaire so eloquently states that the outward expression of this liberation can be manifested through one's performance within dandyism by saying:

The idea of beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run ends by subtly penetrating the very feature of his face. Man ends by looking like his ideal self.^[56]

However, transcendence during the eighteenth century was limited to white European males. The radical notions of liberty and self-governance were deliberately left in the hands of white males to justify the enslavement of Black souls and to secure the necessary bio-power to fuel the fires of imperialism. The liberating words and thoughts of the Enlightenment may have freed the bourgeoisie from the crown's weight, but the "foreign other" was trapped in the imaginable.

For the Europeans and their American counterpart, modernity was only achievable amongst the white population. Whereas Indigenous and Black subjects were then relegated to a life and status of subhuman, unworthy, or incapable of reaching enlightenment. Emmanuel C. Eze explains this notion of inferiority by postulating that:

European Enlightenment thinkers retained this classical ideal of reason along with its categorical function for discriminating between, in their terms, the civilized and the savage. In fact, Enlightenment's declaration of itself as "the Age of Reason" is predicated precisely upon the assumption that reason could only come about as a result of the maturity in a white Europe: those geographically inhabiting the spaces outside Europe, or deemed to be of non-white racial origin, were considered rationally inferior or savage.^[57]

This assumption of savagery is often reinforced by the difference in cultural garbs that early colonizers documented during their military conquest of Afrika and the Americas. In Slaves to Fashion, Monica L. Miller notes this Eurocentric ideology by referencing how "early European accounts of contact with Africa often emphasize nakedness and equate the lack of clothing with barbarity."^[58] From the earliest points of contact, clothing has played a pivotal role in signifying one’s humanity and acceptance into the modern realm. These European notions of "othering" are only strengthened with the commodification of the Black body. Once the Atlantic slave trade was secured and the profits of human trafficking were procured, the notions of humanity for the enslaved were reduced to a dim flicker on the shores of the Americas. If clothing were used as a tool to justify the labeling of Black individuals as uncivilized, then clothing would also hold the keys to unlocking freedom, for clothing in the hands of the enslaved signified a step towards physical freedom, full personhood, and agency.

One can argue that dandyism in the hands of the children of the Afrikan Diaspora takes a more profound significance than Baudelaire's notions of the ideal self. The white European was fighting for individuality and mental freedom, whereas the Black dandy was trying to escape physical enslavement. Miller notes that enslaved Afrikans would steal "clothing not only because it was portable or their only material possession, but also because better clothing allowed them to pass more easily for freemen and to enter the market as consumers."^[59] Additionally, clothing was used to separate the division of labor on southern plantations. Often, “house servants” were given higher quality attire, which indicated status and hierarchy. As white elites became aware that enslaved persons were stealing clothes as a means of escape, laws began to be passed barring “Black extravagance.”^[60] Miller writes that “these laws were designed to stop the performativity of identity with clothing, to arrest the exploitation of sartorial semiotics.”^[61] Unfortunately, throughout time, the Black individual will always be ostracized for one's choice of clothing. Whether it be a black beret or a three-piece suit, the Black body will constantly be deemed a threat to white superiority.

As more enslaved Blacks gained their freedom either through self-purchase or by escape, clothes became the outward reminder of the trauma they had left behind. The scars that marked their flesh would always be a constant reminder of their captivity and bondage, but the shedding of one’s clothes was the first step to a new reality. In Dandy Lion, Shantrelle P. Lewis remarks that:

The type of clothing a Black man wore could literally mark him as free or enslaved, “Slave cloth” was inexpensive and rugged -- made for labor, not comfort or style. Enslaved men and women did not have the privilege of fashion. However, when they left the plantations as freedmen, they needed new clothing. And choosing one’s outfit everyday was a significant act of freedom for the newly emancipated. They could create a new identity as free person as they wore (and often made) their own suits and dresses.^[62]

Choosing one’s clothing may seem trivial in the current scheme of life, but these were the first steps towards Kantian maturity for the former enslaved. Moreover, Lewis hints at the adaptability and agility that Black men and women cultivated when fashioning their clothes. These Black dandies had a more prosperous relationship with the fabric than their white European counterparts, who merely purchased an ensemble. For the freedman, their sweat, blood, and tears can be felt during the entire fashion process. No fiber has escaped the calloused hands of the Black laborer. From the sowing to the sewing, the fashion industry has been propagated off the theft and consumption of Black bio-power. Therefore, the design and development of Black fashion play a critical role in establishing emancipation and cultural resistance to white supremacy. No longer are the threads of liberation hoarded in the hands of white elites. The racialized trope of the foreign savage was beginning to be stripped away with every hemline of a well-tailored suit. With freedom came new opportunities and new horizons to traverse. One such destination was formal education and self-improvement of the Black individual.

The correlation between education and fashion constantly intersects within the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois. In the seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois paints a cautionary narrative of the division of two different worlds, segregated by race and opportunity. In the chapter titled “Of the Coming of John,” Du Bois utilizes the two Johns to compare and contrast individuals with the same name and educational background. Both boys left their respective homes to embark on a journey of self-discovery and maturation that lay in the northern foreign lands. This chapter is akin to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," tracing modernity and enlightenment through education, which can be seen as leaving the cave. Du Bois focuses on Black John's appearance as a barometer of his educational progress and maturity by writing that "he grew in body and soul, and with him his clothes seemed to grow and arrange themselves; coat sleeves got longer, cuffs appeared, and collars got less soiled."^[63] This description alludes to John's growth out of immaturity in the Kantian line of thinking. Additionally, Du Bois explains that "now and then his (John's) boots shone, and a new dignity crept into his walk."^[64] John's newfound stroll could no longer be hidden upon his return home. Now fully equipped with a suit of armor and awakened to what Du Bois calls the Veil or Double Consciousness, John can fully see the two worlds he navigates. A world that for the Black body is drastically different from its white counterpart, a divide solely erected upon racism and hatred. Du Bois describes a world divided by lines and where a resemblance of freedom lay behind a veil just north of the Mason Dixon. This freedom for many southern Blacks began with the Great Migration, which led to Harlem, the sight and birthplace of a new Renaissance, and a tailor named Dapper Dan.

The Birth of Cool

Instilled with a new sense of opportunity, Harlemites began to organize and mobilize around a freedom no longer stifled by their Southern past. Harlem would be the new Mecca for Black American culture. This enclave would be the home to the world’s greatest artists, intellects, musicians, poets, and writers of the Twentieth Century and beyond. Harlem represented a new beginning and an opportunity for Black Americans to showcase their talents globally. The Harlem Renaissance marked "an artistic movement demonstrative of black cultural arrival.”^[65] This new arrival brought the luxuries of modern opulence and fashion. The Black Dandy reveled at the opening to utilize style as a subversive tactic to signify to white elites their grasp and control of the modern world. The Black body would no longer be invisible to the white masses. The Harlemites chalked their presence loud and clear in a message wrapped in special cloth. This fabric and attitude carried over for generations in a lineage that can be witnessed in Dapper Dan's creations.

Dapper Dan’s transcendence from hustler to fashion icon embodies the hallowed ground that is Harlem. Dan's bravado and style can be attributed to his upbringing in a city known for Black excellence. Born with hustler's ambition, Daniel Day had to think quickly on his feet to survive in a place neglected by white bureaucrats. As a child, clothing was a maker of abundance or lean years in the Day household. Dapper Dan’s memoir documents how, as a child, he would shine the shoes of Harlem's godfather, Bumpy Johnson, who ran the numbers racket for the entire city.^[66] The Renaissance was but a distant memory for Harlem residents. The Black dandies of the past were now replaced by the hustlers and gangsters that strolled the streets. The hustler was the new celebrity, the pinnacle of fashion and style. Dan illustrates how he idolized these street figures by stating that:

I worshipped the ground Bumpy and his crew walked on, the way kids might look up to the athletes or entertainers now. We wanted to walk like them, talk like them. And most of all, we wanted to dress like them. Gator- and lizard-skin shoes. Continental pants-wide-legged with no cuffs.^[67]

The hustler can be seen as a lector of Fred Moten’s “undercommons,” whose maroon students study the subversive style of Black fashion.^[68] Clothes once represented freedom for the enslaved, but for their descendants, it meant the possibility of being recognized. By hook or crook, Dapper Dan would not fall prey to invisibility. Dan may not have realized that his passion for being “fly” was cut from the same cloth of dandyism.

The street has an innate ability to dampen or elevate one's persona, so to cut through all the ambient sound, one must transcend above all the rest. In Dan's words, the hustle could be broken down into five simple elements, with flyness being the most important.^[69] Dan describes this crucial element as:

Flyness wasn’t about how handsome you were, although that helped, or about how expensive your clothes were, although that helped, or what brand they were. Brands weren’t important. It was about something intangible. It was about style and how you carried yourself in the street. It was about your shoes, the way you wore your hat. It was about the car you drove and how fly your girl dressed. It was also about taking some new fashion risk that everyone else on the streets would be copying. Power was fly, and fly was power.^[70]

In Harlem, flyness was an armor that one could wear, a type of aura that protected an individual from the harshness that lurked in the shadows. On many occasions, Dan's flyness rescued him from certain doom, whether from a drug raid or a dice game that has gone wrong, his ability to adapt kept him from the grave. Nevertheless, the hustler was not the only fashion icon who strolled the streets of Harlem during Dapper Dan's youth.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Paid In Full Album Cover. (CC BY-SA; DJ Bobby Drake/ Hiphop Archive & Research Institute via Harvard University Hip Hop Archive)

One could inhabit two worlds in Harlem, one above ground and one below. Day had the canny ability to navigate between both. Not to be outdone by the hustler, the preacher had a flair of their own. Day’s first experience at a fashion show did not occur in Paris or even uptown, which could seem like another country altogether. It happened every Sunday on Seventh Avenue, which the residents nicknamed the Stroll.^[71] Dapper Dan would remark that the stretch of land was “the greatest runway in the world.”^[72] Monica L. Miller explains how religion and fashion have intersected for generations by affirming that:

For those attending church services, a smart three-piece suit, a hat, gloves, and maybe even a pocket square communicates self-respect, community pride, and an appreciation of the joyful solemnity of the occasion. The spiritual has always had a sartorial dimension for black people in America, as many slaves were allowed to dress in their finest clothes but once a week, on Sunday.^[73]

The term "Sunday best" takes a profound significance when fashion collides with elements such as self-respect and community pride. The way one carries themselves in the eyes of white authority is indicative of the entire race. This notion is confirmed by the documentation of early white colonizers to the police officers that patrol the streets currently. These agents of terror make quick assessments based frequently on one's skin color and attire. The notion that clothes can indicate a level of respectability and combativeness creates a paradox for the Black community. The most significant threats to white sensibility during the Civil Rights era were not dressed in baggy pants or hoodies. They were draped in suits and ties armed with holy scriptures preaching equality and inclusion, whether it be a bow tie or a sweatshirt; the Black body is policed in a way that confirms a constant state of fugitivity.^[74]

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Bisa Bulter's "I Am Not Your Negro." (CC BY; Ryan Dickey via Flickr)

As Dapper Dan tried to ascend from a life supported by illegitimate means to a fashion entrepreneur, he was met with opposition with every step. The Black community of Harlem viewed Dan as a blight or stain on 125^th Street because his clientele catered to the hustler.^[74] However, from Day's experience, the hustler had the expendable capital necessary to build an empire. The hypocrisy is that none of the fashion houses of Europe were ever scrutinized for outfitting the aristocracy of the old world, which inflicted more damage upon the Black body than any street hustler. Every monogrammed jacket that Dan produced was like a bullet fired at white supremacy and Black respectability. The white fashion houses saw Day as an outsider and a nuisance to the Black Harlemite elites. Dapper Dan was a fugitive operating with no allegiance but to himself. Fred Moten states that “Blackness is unchained to the struggle for freedom to which it appears that black bodies, insofar as it seems to be the case that there are such things, have been relegated.”^[76] The rejection from both the Black and white elite arena gave Dapper Dan full autonomy to evolve his style and appeal to the masses of Harlem. Dan suggests that the key to his early success was that the Black community was invisible to the European fashion houses; they were an untapped market clamoring for luxury products.^[77] In the beginning, Dapper Dan was able to buy directly for the whole seller and undercut the prices being sold at the white uptown department stores, a tactic he acquired in the drug game. However, this success was short-lived, as the department stores caught on, and they pressured whole sellers to only sell unfinished material. However, like any hustler worth his salt, Dan adapted and reinvented himself. The solution to Day’s problem lay not in the harbor of New York but across the Atlantic on the western banks of Afrika.

The fashion industry during the eighties was a void populated primarily by white elites. Cut off from the finished product, Dapper Dan was sitting at a crossroads, and failure was not an option. Throughout his time networking with wholes sellers, Day realized that the Black community lacked a presence in the mode of fashion manufacturing. As Dan's search for alternative manufacturing came up empty, he concluded that:

Our community did not have access to the means of production or manufacturing necessary for high-end fashion. There weren’t many Black students in fashion school, or Black-owned luxury-goods factories where I could just take my furs and leather skins and ask them to create my designs.^[78]

It was not until Dan passed an Afrikan arts and crafts vendor that the solution to all his woes came in the form of a flashback of a trip to Liberia some twenty years prior.^[79] On that trip to see Ali fight Big Geroge Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle,” Dan would be mesmerized by the Afrikan tailors who were able to translate his fashion visions into reality. Day would later employ dozens of skilled Senegalese tailors to transform his little boutique into the Mecca of Black fashion in New York. Like the Jamaican records that Paul Gilroy writes about, the little Harlem boutique on 125^th Street encapsulates the same “playful diasporic intimacy that has been a marked feature of the transnational Black Atlantic creativity.” ^[80] Once again, the hands of Black labor would revolutionize the fashion industry for decades to come. Except, this time, the product and profits would be kept in the community of its creation. Until the once-invisible sector of the forgotten is noticed again. With visibility and success comes another form of antagonism. No longer was Dan operating in the safety of the shadows of Harlem. Dapper Dan was now a label that haute couture could not ignore.

Hypervisibility and the Price of Fame

In its many forms, Dandyism from the bourgeoisie of the Eighteenth-Century to the Harlemite hustler of Dapper Dan's era was always in the pursuit of the next fashion revolution. Soon Dan's clientele was pushing for more unique designs that would garner envy and admiration in the streets they occupied. Living in the shadow of Wall Street, luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and MCM started to appear in Harlem. The hustlers who were always ahead of the game asked if Dapper Dan could create a signature style using these brands. Dan knew that "the key to staying relevant" was predicated on reinvention.^[81] Without hesitation, Day began to take orders for clothing designs that had yet to exist. However, he would later discover that Louis Vuitton and Gucci were a "leather-goods company" mainly focused on handbags and luggage with a minimal presence in the clothing sector.^[82] Once again, Dan would have to adapt. He noticed that Gucci sold garment bags, and with the help of the highly skilled Senegalese tailors, they created a revolutionary style that defined early Hip Hop style and inspired today’s fashion.^[83] It was not enough for the hustlers to wear fine leather jackets; they wanted to broadcast to the entire community that they had money. The best way to indicate success is with branding, by creating jackets that were dripped in exclusive logos showcased to the world that the owner had arrived. Dapper Dan's creation ushered in an era of excess, where jewelry and clothing became the symbol of power.

The hustler was not satisfied knowing that he was wealthy. Fashion became the weapon of choice to indicate one's wealth and power in the street. As more money came pouring in during the crack epidemic, the hustler embraced the trappings of success. Though white authorities like to describe the hustler as a shady character, his clothes and style declare otherwise. The hustler’s jewelry and wardrobe surpassed any bankers for Manhattan. Dan’s designs elevated the once invisible Black body into a hyper-visible entity that outshined any degrading trope that could be uttered or imagined. This hypervisibility is achieved by “the aesthetics of excess” that came in the form of fashion.^[84] Jillian Hernadez defines "the aesthetics of excess" as the miscegenated products of what happens when these appropriated innovators engage in the remix of crafting their own bodies and representation, which trouble, seduce, and sometimes capitulate with the desirous gaze of the Euro-American West.^[85] Some will argue that Dan was engaging in unlawful activity by recreating luxury brand logos for Black consumption. The law will say it was counterfeiting, but any jazz artist will reply that Dan was riffing. It begs the question: How can anyone counterfeit something that has not been invented before? In all actuality, Dan was developing a style that was all his own.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Queen Latifah. (CC BY; veritatem via Openverse)

Any individual born in extreme poverty can contest that to survive, one must embrace agility. Improvised communities constantly take forgotten relics of the past and breathe new life into the once departed. Over the years of oppression and exclusion, the Harlemite could unlock the hidden potential that lay dormant in the undercommons. Dapper Dan witnessed the flaw in the game of the great European fashion houses and extorted to the advantage of a community they have neglected for generations. When Day remixed the style of Louis Vuitton or Fendi, he simultaneously breathed new air into a stagnant industry. Dapper Dan's designs can be seen as an extension of the “anticipatory interpolations” that Fred Moten describes in Black Blur.^[86] Moten focuses on how Hip Hop artists take forgotten songs of the past and produce new sounds that the original creators could not have imagined, essentially unlocking an alternate reality and the possibility of being.^[87] Moten goes on to state that “the black radical tradition contains numerous other examples of such anticipatory interpolations, vicious revisions of the original that keep on giving it birth while keeping on evading the natal occasion.”^[88] Dapper Dan used fashion to resist and critique the limitations of the current status quo. Dan challenged what one can do with raw materials and vision. The government may have found Daniel Day guilty of counterfeiting, but he would be the first to say that the products were not knock-offs but knock-ups.^[89] Through the element of flyness, Dapper Dan was able to elevate a community, industry, and most of all himself. Dan's life is the epitome of dandyism, for he is a free radical in a constant state of revolution, searching for the next challenge to conquer.

To state that objects like fashion “can and do resist” is an underestimate.^[90] The Black dandy and hustler have shown how the right piece of clothing can free oneself from mental and physical bondage. Clothing can act like a conduit transporting an individual from the shadows into the light, where the world can witness the complete transcendence towards personhood. Fashion is a statement, a personal declaration to be heard. Daniel Day understood that calling and turned fashion into his mode of freedom. Clothing provided Dan with an opening to realize his full potential. The designs that flowed out of the boutique on 125^th Street exposed the beauty that had resided in Harlem since the days of the Great Migration. The legacy of his vision lives on with the new generation of Blak designers, such as Virgil Abloh, who is the director of Louis Vuitton's menswear.^[91] Through persistence and vision, Dapper Dan challenged the white fashion houses to fully recognize the Black body as more than flesh and acknowledge the humanity that was always present from the beginning. If the goal of the dandy was to weaponize clothing as a tool for liberation from oppressive rule, then Dapper Dan was one of its greatest generals and visionaries.

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Endnotes

[49] Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker, A Poetic Equation: Conversations between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983), 84.

[50] Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 1.

[51] Susan Fillin-Yeh, Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 3.

[52] Roland Barthes, The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford (New York: Berg, 2006), 62.

[53] Barthes, Language of Fashion, 62.

[54] Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” in What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 59.

[55] Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?,” 59.

[56] Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life: And Other Essays, ed. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1970), 2.

[57] Emmanuel C. Eze, "What Remains of Enlightenment?," Human Studies 25, No. 3 (2002): 283.

[58] Monica L. Miller, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 89.

[59] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 92.

[60] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 92.

[61] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 92

[62] Shantrelle P. Lewis, Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style (New York: Aperture, 2017), 10.

[63] W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri Hume Oliver (New York: Norton, 1999), 145.

[64] Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 145.

[65] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 191.

[66] Daniel R. Day and Mikael Awake, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2019), 29.

[67] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 29.

[68] Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses,” Social Text 22, no. 2 (2004): 105.

[69] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 30-31.

[70] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 31.

[71] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 12.

[72] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 12.

[73] Miller, Slaves to Fashion, 3.

[74] Fred Moten, Stolen Life: Consent Not to Be a Single Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 241.

[75] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 167.

[76] Moten, Stolen Life, 263.

[77] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 168.

[78] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 174.

[79] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 174-175.

[80] Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 16.

[81] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 170.

[82] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 180.

[83] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 180.

[84] Jillian Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 10.

[85] Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess, 10.

[86] Fred Moten, Black and Blur: Consent Not to Be a Single Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 30.

[87] Moten, Black and Blur, 30.

[88] Moten, Black and Blur, 30.

[89] Day and Awake, Dapper Dan, 189.

[90] Fred Moten, In the Break, 1.

[91] Farah X and Lisa Cortes, The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion (New York: Cortés Films, 2019), Digital.