Urban 80s

I started started seeing a shift away from baggy urban a while ago and this past year saw the emergence of a mashed-up urban look that took its influence from a combination of skate and the streetwear scene. Now the kids are turning more to an early-days-of-hiphop look. This fella here, who was kind enough to let me photograph him in Chelsea last week, describes his look as "80s urban." Cute, right?:


^^The glasses and the dookie chain are definitely throwbacks to the 80s, but...


^^...the skateboard and the neck scarf are most definitely new millennial updates.

The ever-talented Amy Larocca recently featured some kids sporting this look in her New York magazine LookBook column.

Here's what they had to say about their great style:

How’d you come up with it?

FLI GUY: We were watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Will Smith had some weird style in, like, ’86, ’87. We were like, Damn! We do the same shit just like him! And then we saw how he and Jazzy Jeff had a handshake, so we incorporated that and now we’re the Fli High Fli Guys, a.k.a. the Fresh Princes.

Indeed, Will did have some wild style, but then again, it was all so much freer back in the eighties. EVERYTHING is so much more conservative now, even how we choose to interpret the past.