Hooligans To Hip-Hop: How Drake Helped The Stone Island Brand Conquer America

The standard hip-hop wardrobe hasn’t changed much over the years. While FUBU and Phat Farm may have faded into irrelevance, most elements have largely stayed the same, to the point that even your grandma could probably reel off a list of things that an archetypical rapper wears. Not among them: obscure Italian yachting labels like Stone Island. No one would name-check that one, really, because that’s simply not what rappers wear. Or at least it wasn’t until recently. But then, in the summer of 2015, pictures of ​Drake ​wearing Stone Island at Wimbledon, not to mention various other places, flashed all over world media. His repeated endorsements of the brand, which he’d been wearing since 2010, inspired a wave of imitators who have helped proliferate Stone Island throughout the hip-hop scene and contributed to its rapidly growing profile in the U.S., which is just one of the places where this storied yet niche label is experiencing a surge in cultural relevance. It was even at the centre of a ridiculous Instagram beef between A$AP Nast, one of the lesser-known members of A$AP Rocky’s crew, and fellow rapper Travis Scott, another Stone Island aficionado. Nast accused Scott of aping his style and staked a claim to being the first to import it into hip-hop fashion—which isn’t true, but the row illustrates the cultish devotion the brand inspires. Read more at Bleacher Report.