Title: Dapper Dan: Made In Harlem
Author: Daniel R. Day
Format: Kindle ERC
Length: 304 Pages
Date Of Publication: July 9, 2019
Publisher: Random House Publishing
Rating: 5 Stars
The story of a legendary designer who pioneered high-end streetwear, from a storefront in Harlem to the red carpet in Hollywood, dressing everyone from Salt-N-Pepa and Eric B. & Rakim to Beyoncé and Jay-Z along the way.
With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the early 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own flamboyant designs. But before reinventing fashion, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books, and, finally, a designer who broke barriers to outfit a whos-who of music, sport, and crime world celebrities in looks that went on to define an era.
By turns playful, poignant, and inspiring, and featuring two incredible eight-page color photo inserts, including the only existing, never-before-seen images of the notorious Mike Tyson-Mitch Green street fight, Dapper Dan's memoir is a high-stakes coming-of-age story, spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an ever-evolving America.
What People Are Saying...
PRAISE
“Dapper Dan is a dream maker from Harlem, who carved out a piece of its royal cloth, sewed it up, and shared it with all of us, creating stars through his vision. Dap was there with the hood heroes and hood horrors, the joy, sunshine, and pain; he survived it all, and finally his book is hitting the streets, letting us all know how.”—Nas
“Dapper Dan makes manifest through garments what Black flyness, Black intelligence, Black struggle, Black courage, Black hustle, Black progress, Black resistance and Black royalty looks like. Never did he rattle a beggar’s cup outside of a fashion industry designed to exclude him and all who looked like him. He took what he wanted from the establishment and built his own damn house. His life story is a wonderful tale of brilliance, hard work, perseverance, and hustle—America at its best.”—Michaela Angela Davis, writer and image activist
“Dapper Dan is not just the epitome of style and grace, but an international treasure. He is a cultural icon who has pioneered his own path through the fashion industry, one that will influence generations to come.”—La La Anthony
“Dapper Dan’s life is a saga of grit, glamour, hustle, vision, and wily, versatile intelligence. Watch him start out as a shoeshine boy and acquire the skills to outplay Harlem’s best gamblers. Then watch him acquire the skills to outwit Europe’s top designers. ‘I blackenized them,’ he says of the Louis Vuitton and Gucci samplings which, joined to his own designs, generated an entirely new kind of fashion. Dapper Dan is a creator and entrepreneur in the grand manner. And as this memoir shows, he is a grand raconteur as well.”—Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland
“Dapper Dan is one of the most influential figures from our community who has been doing it ‘for the culture’ since day one. Before it was trending. Before it was commercial. Before it was even recognized by the fashion world. His work has paved a way for us to own the seats we’re in. His success story is one of redemption and radical resilience. He is a purveyor of the American Dream. Now that he is sitting in his rightful place in history, how lucky are we to sit beside his throne and absorb the wisdom from his journey?”—Elaine Welteroth
My Thoughts
There's so much to be said for Dapper Dan as a book.
Because just as it is the autobiographical narrative of one man's life. It is also the narrative of a people, Harlem, and a way of life.
Dan's honest and sometimes hard to read introspective on himself, his family, and his community. Gives readers a very clear understanding of the effects of gentrification, drugs, and economic opportunities, or the lack thereof.
In the formation or degradation of a society's population and growth as a whole.
While never losing sight of fashions affect on all aspects of said population.
It is very hard to read this book, and not fall in love with its author, his experiences, and his life.
For his life in so many ways, echoes lives of so many others of color. Including myself. And all of this is even before the passion becomes an issue of note.
Dan's rise to fame in the fashion world. Seems almost a separate entity from the tapestry of his life as a whole. But it is a beautiful sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes triumphant, and always brilliant story.
Of how life changed a man. He changed fashion. And his fashion change the world.
About Daniel R. Day
Daniel “Dapper Dan” Day’s work has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum at FIT, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the City of New York, and London’s Design Museum. His eponymous boutique was open from 1982 to 1992, and reopened in 2017 in a major partnership with Gucci.
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