Cross Colours is one of the first companies to make urban gear fashionable. It set out to harness the hip-hop craze with a line of street-inspired fashions for young men. Its products are sold by more than 3,000 retail outlets.
[4] The hype started with affordable brightly colored T-shirts, jackets and caps, each accompanied by messages like "Stop D Violence" and "Educate 2 Elevate." Hip. The Cross Colours product that was sold in more than 50% of "M-G-R" stores was no more. From there, Cross Colours started showing up less and less on the emcees and young urban kids that helped with its success.
And companies like Karl Kani, which was a part of the Threads 4 Life family, took over. Loose Threads: Cross Colours was once the clothing label of choice for the hip hop crowd. But the company's unraveling was as dramatic as its overnight success.
Intriguingly, Hip-Hop had yet to be tapped into and "used as a clothing look, trend, style anything" according to Jones. This would make Cross Colours one of the first streetwear brands to meaningfully engage with a black art form that is now seen as integral to the movement. Fashion company Cross Colours stepped in at a time when Hip Hop was taking off, drawing inspiration from West Coast and New York City style.
Los Angeles-based Cross Colours, founded in 1989, has joined forces with Black Radiance Cosmetics to launch a hip-hop-inspired makeup collection celebrating their shared Black American cultural roots. The standout lineup includes a cassette tape-inspired eye shadow palette featuring eight matte, metallic, and shimmer shades, a microphone-shaped volumizing mascara in black and blue, and a. Naming the Brand Carl Jones: This all started with a conversation that TJ and I had while working together for a surf brand that I owned called "Surf Fetish".
We wanted something for the culture and for people that were into Hip Hop. Cross Culture- that's how the naming of the brand started. TJ did all the artwork, the logos, we started to register the name.
TJ Walker: Yes, but then the. The True Business History Of Hip-Hop Fashion Pioneer Cross ColoursThe pair had fashion dreams but were needed a look. So the West Coast-based budding entrepreneurs took a trip to New York City, home of hip hop at the time to see what was popular in streetwear.
They noted the bagginess of the clothes and decided to play up on the style. Installation view. All images courtesy of CAAM and the Cross Colours Archive In a room towards the back, an early episode of Yo! MTV Raps (the very first hip-hop show on the music network and one that spread American hip-hop culture around the world) boasts bouncy entertainers in head to toe Cross Colours gear, including actress and queen of hip-hop soul herself, Mary J.
Blige. Many of the.