Urban Fashion Clothing
Take a stroll down any street in urban America, or for that matter any suburbia, and you'll be struck by how common urban fashion clothing is out there. Whether tweens, teens, seniors, or in-betweens - they're all sporting the hottest urban designer clothing of the day. Urban clothing designers like Sean John, FUBU, Maurice Malone, Phat Farm, Mecca USA, Wu Wear, Ecko Unlimited, Enyce, Karl Kani, and Triple 5 Soul are making it big both on 125th Street in Harlam as well as Seventh Avenue.
Indeed, the hip looks of urban clothing design has caught on in a big way, especially with America's white, young suburbanites, who view inner-city black youth as independent and savvy, and are keen on emulating their dressing style along with the attitude that goes with it. Brightly colored, baggy clothing have become mainstream in the street fashion of America, which has resulted in making small fortunes for designers creating this stuff.
These designers keep their ears close to the street, hence know exactly what the urban fashion conscious customer desires and wants - stylish and innovative attire. Practically everybody's embracing the cult of rap, and that oversize, logoed, vibrantly colored look has caught everybody's fancy.
So much so, that in order to widen their appeal further, many urban fashion designers are making a conscious shift away from labeling their stuff 'urbanwear' and using 'metropolitan' or 'contemporary' instead. That's because the term 'urban', as far as fashionable attire is concerned, has outgrown its definition. There has been a blurring of the lines of clothing that was meant for that particular market. While it started out with basic T-shirts and oversize denim, it has now evolved into including tailored clothing for women and men's wear collections. Hence, today's urban fashion clothing runs the whole gamut from denim suits to T-shirts to tailored suits plus furs and luxury leathers.
Today, amongst urban clothing designers, there is a perceptive shift toward Generation X - the talent is more youthful and certainly more street savvy. Gen X designers are therefore getting more creative. That's because they are aware that the urban fashion conscious consumer is equally savvy, taking the best creations of a designer and mixing-and-matching them to create a look all their own.
Hence, the same disaffected youth who used to consider bohemian chic and the grunge look the last word in using clothing as a weapon in the politics of rebellion is beginning to realize that the true sprit of fashion is not just about breaking rules just for the sake of it, but exploring how the rules can relate to the way they see themselves in the world they live in, and how they can be used to express their individuality.
In other words, today's urban fashion consumers have developed a very sophisticated and mature understanding of how clothing ought to fit and how fashion works. Hence designers, responding to this new maturity in consumers, are designing men's lines that are actually taking into account how pants should hang from the waist and reach just above the shoe to create a clean cut. Many urban street fashion companies are including traditional dress shirts and tailored clothing in order to provide something for anybody looking to make a trendy statement.
These are individuals who still like the idea of urban fashion, but may not necessarily be into loud stuff (although the bright colors are also offered alongside). These are the people who are finding new ways to stand out from the crowd by finding new ways to assert themselves by taking the best in denim wear and mixing them with traditional sportswear and chic and cheap labels to create an individualized look.
Here are some suggestions for uber trendy urban fashion clothing:
- Check out graphic t-shirts. Instead of wearing the cliched skulls on tees, t-shirts with complex graphics on them make quite a fashion statement.
- You could try out jeans that have nothing on them - just comfortably fitting jeans which say 'quality', and can be worn just about anywhere. Check out monochromatic colors like gray, black or white.
- How about wearing something other than khakis or jeans? Cotton pants can make a statement that is both unique and understated. Team it with an olive green military denim jacket and unostentatious T's.
- Contradiction is still cool in urban wear. So go ahead, buck the trend, destroy a t-shirt beyond recognition and team it with a nice pair of clean-cut jeans. Or vice versa.
