Pharrell Miscredited for Early 00's Trucker Hat Fad

A Bathing Ape gets a mention in a Hampton Roads article on Pharrell Williams of N.E.R.D. / Neptunes / hip-hop fame. Pharrell is from the Norfolk-Virgina Beach area and is heralded as a style-maker in the article, which celebrates his fashion spread in he new issue of GQ mag. The story claims that Pharrell introduced America to the ultra-hip Japanese brand A Bathing Ape, a claim with which we don't exactly concur.

The item also says the rapper-producer was the force behind the trucker hat fashion phenomenom a few years ago. Sorry, but we disagree. That's a style that came from the underground up, from over-educated, under-employed urban hipsters fashioning an iconic white-trash artifact into a new style with an ironic, knowing smile. Sure, by dint of his fame, Pharrell may have helped spread the style after adopting it, but the same could be said for Ashton Kutcher, Paris Hilton and half the people under the age of 30 living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between 2001 and 2002.

Actually, Ashton Kutcher probably deserves more cred for spreading the style because many months after the blue-collar mesh-foam baseball cap emerged among the indie kids, Ashton was the first celeb we saw actually wearing truckers hats on TV -- this was when he hosted the series "Punk'd." Apparently, others have made a similar observation.

No dis to Pharrell -- he does have great style and a sense of putting nice things together and looking good. He was one of the first hip-hop stars to champion BAPE, but lets not give the guy too much credit for starting a headwear fad that most of us would rather forget ever came and went.

Posted by Supercore at February 23, 2006 11:11 PM