A popular hip-hop fashion brand is reminding us of its heritage: To celebrate its 30th anniversary, FUBU has tapped Black Fashion Fair founder Antoine Gregory to design a collection inspired by its archives.
Building on their previous collaboration on the Museum World Tour, FUBU and Black Fashion Fair are coming together again to celebrate the streetwear brand’s birthday.
“[FUBU] “Our logo is deeply rooted in Black culture,” Gregory says, “and I wanted to pay tribute not only to our founders, but also to the generations of Black designers whose influence is largely undocumented. I chose to highlight the logo because the message, ‘For us, by us,’ is still relevant today.”
The streetwear brand and multitalented outfit dug into the FUBU archives to create a collection that reinterprets the label’s heritage for a modern audience. Pieces like the red and black sweatsuit, available on the Black Fashion Fair website, feature an updated version of the FUBU logo in crystal script, a style that will resonate with Y2K enthusiasts.
Is there anything more quintessential streetwear than FUBU? Launched in 1992, the brand was founded by Daymond John, Keith Perrin, J. Alexander Martin and Karl Brown with the goal of creating a stylish clothing line that was “made by the wearer.”
The Queens-born quartet was dedicated to connecting Black consumers with Black-produced clothing, and their vision revolutionized street fashion, hip hop, and pop culture as a whole. FUBU’s influence was felt throughout its heyday in the ’90s, positioning the brand as the go-to label for Black hip hop and R&B artists and becoming one of fashion’s first streetwear powerhouses.
A quick look at where FUBU has appeared in pop culture shows that this is no joke brand: Solange’s song “FUBU,” a partnership with LL Cool J, and a collaboration with Pyer Moss featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” exhibit, to name just a few examples of FUBU’s influence.
Two years after the protests of summer 2020 forced brands to issue performative pledges of solidarity, that promise has faded. Still, Black Fashion Fair remains true to its founding promise: From the start, its goal was to create a platform for Black designers and a space where their contributions to art and culture could be seen by all.
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Gregory explains why collaborating with FUBU was a natural fit: “My goal is to elevate Black people in fashion. The FUBU story has been so enriching to our culture, and telling this story is an essential part of the legacy that Black Fashion Fair is building.”
Thirty years on, FUBU has firmly established itself as a culturally shaping force. It goes without saying that modern streetwear would not exist without FUBU’s contributions, and the Black Fashion Fair serves as a reminder of that. As Solange articulates, “Something has to happen.”
