Yall still rock Nautica ????VOL.....YACHT CLUB

The story of how Nautica, a clothing company which self-describes as “a leading water-inspired global lifestyle brand,” earned its place in the hip-hop fashion canon is hard to track down. At first glance, there appears to be no explanation at all for how the brand, founded in 1983 by a Taiwanese immigrant named David Chu and marketed exclusively to white people with boats, ended up on the the bodies –- and in the lyrics –- of the likes of Nas, Lil Kim, and Wu Tang Clan by the mid-90s.

Nautica is best known for its use of bold primary and secondary colors, its swooping wordmark, boat prints, and general seafaring vibe. Jordan Page, a Brooklyn-based vintage archivist and stylist commented on the brand’s clean, bold look. “When I think of Nautica I think of that big, bold Nautica font,” he said. “Classic jackets and knit sweaters with big logos. The colors never got too crazy, and everything was always in a good, clean line.” Their brand was and continues to be strongly American, in the most stereotypical sense: “You saw it in the ad campaigns,” Page continued. “Handsome white men with white women, very rich in appearance, smiling.”

Alongside Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica was one third of the holy trinity of luxury-casual Americana brands in the 1990s. “Nautica was the baby brother,” Page recalled. “It didn’t hit as hard as the other two brands, but its presence was felt.”

What set Nautica apart was its specificity. While Polo and Tommy embraced America-as-brand more literally, often incorporating the letters “USA,” or the flag and its palette into their garments, Nautica stuck true to its water-centric mission. In addition to the boat icons adorning every piece, often printed oversize on the backs of their signature windbreakers, many pieces included specific nautical references –- flags from historical yacht races, for example, or the geographical coordinates of their finish lines. The J-Class series of jackets, widely considered Nautica’s most iconic collection, is named after the vessel classification of that peak yacht-racing era, and have “1930 1937” printed on their chests and sleeves –- the only years in which J-Class yachts were manufactured.

The specificity of its mission, marketing, and target demographic is what differentiated Nautica from its competitors. It had the same preppy aesthetic and quality build as its peers, but was distinguished by its origin and iconography. That eccentricity is what allowed it to compete on the level of Polo, a much older, larger, and more established brand, within a decade of its inception. It was also an important part of the appeal outside of its target wealthy white demographic. As Emeka Obi, a Creative Strategist who grew up in Brooklyn’s East New York noted, Nautica signified a level of prestige that was deeply appealing. “If I’m wearing Polo, people will think of me as someone who can afford Polo, that I’m not like any of the other dudes on my block,” Obi said. “It’s socially aspirational -– you want to be seen as somebody who’s been to the Hamptons, even though you’ve never left the Bronx.”

“Nautica was a representation of a specific part of white America that most Black Americans didn’t know about or understand,” Page further explained. Rather than putting people off, the boat-theme was its appeal. “That’s how the fascination started,” Page said, echoing Obi. “It was aspirational –- wearing these clothes made black people feel like they were a part of that community.”

Though Nautica and its peers were established players in the luxury market by the late 1980s, their adoption in the urban market didn’t begin until 1992. Up to that point, European fashion houses like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Yves St. Laurent ran the game. These brands were scarce and expensive, which made them all the more desirable.

For the decade preceding the ascent of Polo, Tommy, and Nautica, the main supplier of European luxury garments for black people in New York City was a man named Daniel Day, better known as Dapper Dan. At his boutique on 125th street in Harlem, he custom tailored and retrofitted designs from the likes of Fendi, Dior, and Louis Vuitton to suit his black clientele. He’d dissect imported pieces from their collections and rebuild them as custom outfits for clients like LL Cool J, Mike Tyson, and Big Daddy Kane, maximizing the garments’ gaudiness by screen-printing additional logos all over them. He called this process “blackenizing,” and referred to his creations as “knock-ups” rather than knock-offs, because they were, in fact, made from the real thing.

Dapper Dan’s creations were painstakingly made by hand from already rare and expensive source material, and it was impossible to keep up with the demand. Day has famously claimed to have been awake and at work in his boutique 24-hours a day for eight years straight. He kept the gate up part-way at night, in case a rapper showed up in need of a fresh look. Still, he credits his downfall not to his limited production capacity but to MTV’s contemporary practice of censoring brand logos in music videos: His clothes were saturated with insignia, meaning Eric B. and Rakim’s heads would appear floating atop their entirely blurred-out bodies onYo! MTV Raps.

While a select few of Dapper Dan’s customers could pick up authentic luxury pieces overseas, most who could afford it were limited to what was available at the Gucci and YSL boutiques in Manhattan, which primarily sold accessories like wallets and handbags. When his boutique was raided by the FBI for copyright infringement and eventually shuttered in 1992, there was no one to fill that void.

In hindsight, it seems logical that, at the time, the most likely candidates to replace European luxury brands in the urban market were the newly founded black-owned fashion lines. Starting in 1989, designers and entrepreneurs like Carl Jones, Karl Kani, and Russell Simmons were looking to take the reigns of the urban fashion, and rightfully so, as its cultural pioneers. Though brands like Cross Colours, Phat Farm, and FUBU made a strong play for the market, they lacked the high-end appeal of their European forebearers. “Once people start learning that things were made for them, they just don’t want them anymore,” Obi reflected. These brands failed to capture the top-slots in the market specificallybecause they were designed to.

In the tradition of the Dapper Dan-era, wearing the brands that were beyond the means of your peers was the ultimate display of class. “If you wanted the good stuff, you couldn’t get it at Macy’s,” Obi said. “You had to travel outside of your neighborhood, go to Bloomingdale’s. It signified that you’re a little bit more worldly than your peers.” As had been the case with the European brands, the labels on your body were the key to your identity, and desirability was driven by scarcity.

“It was an economy of people living and dying by whatever the hottest thing was out,” Obi said. “Brands who came out of and marketed to the urban sector had a hard time -– no one feels like they want to be marketed to.” As a result, the best-dressed people in the hood weren’t wearing FUBU, in spite of its organic relationship the market. Instead, luxury department store brands were perfectly positioned to occupy that vacancy on the high-end. Enter Polo, Hilfiger, and Nautica.

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sckid20 said:

I got this in 8th grade i remember i was so happy lol.

Still wear it

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