{"id":1179,"date":"2018-02-28T11:42:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T11:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/?p=1179"},"modified":"2021-11-01T15:25:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T15:25:23","slug":"complex-history-hoodie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/complex-history-hoodie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Complex History of the Hoodie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The garments and accessories chosen were wide-ranging, from luxury items, as in a Hermes Birkin handbag, to everyday pieces, like a pair of Levi 501s, to those with religious, cultural and historical significance, like the sari, the kippah or the pearl necklace. But one of the most notable pieces on display was item 050, a red Champion hoodie<\/a>. Although worthy of inclusion for its ubiquity alone (after all, other items included flip flops, a backpack and a Gore-Tex jacket), Antonelli also saw the hoodie as having a potent significance. As she<\/a> put it, the hoodie\u2019s \u2018a great design, but also it\u2019s become this tragic political symbol\u2019, in direct reference to Trayvon Martin.<\/p>\n\"champion\n

The hoodie became a symbol of the defiance, unity, and deep frustration<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Martin, an unarmed 17 year old student, was fatally shot<\/a> by George Zimmerman in February 2012 while returning to his father\u2019s fiance’s home in a Florida gated community. Martin\u2019s killing sparked outrage; the shooting itself was widely seen as racial profiling, many criticised the Sanford police department\u2019s handling of the case, and Zimmerman\u2019s subsequent acquittal<\/a> of the charge of second-degree murder was extremely contentious.<\/p>\n

Martin was wearing a hoodie<\/a> when he was shot, and Zimmerman, in the call he made to police shortly before the killing, used this fact in his description of \u2018a suspicious person\u2019. The notion that Zimmerman shot Martin, in part because of the perceived inherent threat of a black teenager clad in a hoodie, was instrumental to Zimmerman\u2019s successfully plea of self-defence. In the protests that followed Martin\u2019s death the hoodie was worn in solidarity. Senators and NBA players alike donned hoodies, and a \u2018Million Hoodie March\u2019 took place in New York in March of the same year. The hoodie became a symbol of the defiance, unity, and deep frustration that came in the aftermath of Martin\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\"treyvon-martin-hoodie-everpress-political-history\"
Million Hoodie March<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All items of clothing are coded; the suit, the leather jacket and the must-have pair of trainers all derive their status from their respective aesthetics and histories. However the hoodie, and its close cousin the tracksuit, has one of the most complex socio-political meanings of any garment in recent times. Of the 111 items in the exhibition, it\u2019s hard to think of any which has been used so much as a shorthand for criminality, aside from maybe the balaclava (which let\u2019s face it is worn almost exclusively to commit crimes). This narrative of hoodie wearers as anti-social, working-class, aggressive and criminal is multinational. In the UK in the era of the ASBO the hoodie was banned from different schools and shopping centres<\/a>. The US saw similar measures put in place, and the NBA implemented<\/a> a 2005 dress code that counted the hoodie among its prohibited items.<\/p>\n

Artists relied on the hoodie to help them steal paint and tag cars and without getting caught by police<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These bans illustrate not just that hoodies are charged and stigmatised, but what the attitudes to their perceived wearers are. The reason given for the bans is never that the hoodie is inappropriate in itself, but rather that the wearers of hoodies bring with them a certain \u2018kind\u2019 of behaviour. The subtext of the hoodie bans is that the behaviour associated is banned too, a logic that almost melds hoodie with wearer. In the UK the hoodie was so closely associated with a popular conception of anti-social youth and a certain \u2018kind\u2019 of person that the word hoodie started being used to describe the wearer too, as in then-Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s (arguably cynical) \u2018hug-a-hoodie\u2019 speech in 2006. If businessmen wear suits, ASBO-deserving youths wear hoodies, or simply are hoodies. Though on-screen depictions of \u2018hoodies\u2019, in films like La Haine<\/a>, Kidulthood, Attack the Block and Top Boy have been more positive, or at least nuanced, than mass media portrayals, all depict the same faithful uniform; wearer becomes synonymous with garment.<\/p>\n

\"Kidulthood-everpress-hoodie\"
La Haine (1995)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The anonymity that the hoodie offers might go some way to understanding its status; in semi-concealing the face it can function almost like a balaclava. But there\u2019s an argument that the hoodie\u2019s history too comes in to play. Although the modern-day hoodie has been around since the \u201830s (with Champion claiming<\/a> to have created the first), it wasn\u2019t until the \u201870s and \u201880s that it was widely worn.<\/p>\n

Originally the preserve of athletes and labourers, the hoodie first took off among different street communities as sportswear was appropriated as streetwear. According to Rolling Stone<\/a>, hoodies first appeared on the streets of New York between 1974 and 1975. The story of the hoodie\u2019s adoption by skateboarders, graffiti artists and hip-hop communities is also the story of how these subcultures took off as outlaw pursuits. Graffiti culture was huge in \u201870s New York, with crews like the Rolling Thunder Writers and artists like Lady Pink and Daze using the whole city as a canvas. Graffiti writing even helped launch the now infamous Jean-Michel Basquiat into the art world, through his and Diaz\u2019s SAMO<\/a> character. Artists relied on the hoodie to help them steal paint and tag cars and without getting caught by police, and the extra warmth the hoodie provided enabled writers to work through cold New York nights.<\/p>\n

\"krooked-mag-hoodie-everpress-political-history\"
Source: Krooked Mag<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, several US cities had been imposing skateboarding bans since the mid-\u201960s, and the resulting lack of skate parks in the US in the \u201880s led skateboarders to seek increasingly creative, and illegal, terrain. The hoodie helped facilitate sneaking into disused empty swimming pools, and was more practical for tricks than other garments. Magazines like Thrasher<\/a>, which was founded in 1981, cultivated the outsider image that had been semi-imposed on the skate community. The \u2018Thrasher\u2019 hoodie<\/a>, which recently re emerged as a cult item, owes its existence to early Santa Monica skaters like Natas Kaupas and Mark Gonzales.<\/p>\n

The hoodie has an embedded counter-cultural cool, urban cache<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hip-hop crews\u2019 early adoption of the hoodie has been linked to their style emulation of athletes and sport stars. The hoodie, like the tracksuit, trainers, and basketball jersey, were all cool because of their association to success on the sports field. By the \u201890s, the hoodie was a de facto gangster rap item, with Wu Tang Clan\u2019s hugely successful \u2018Wu Wear<\/a>\u2019 clothing line consisting mainly of hoodies and t-shirts.The hoodie\u2019s dual properties of concealment and warmth meant it was popular with the underground, and this proximity to an anti-establishment stance in turn reinforced it\u2019s tough and cool image, and could play into how the hoodie is still Perceived.<\/p>\n

\"wu-tang-clan\"
Wu-Tang Clan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The peak of the hoodie as pariah item was the early 2000s. Now it occupies an interesting space; its sheer practicality has meant it\u2019s long been a likely fixture of any wardrobe, and it\u2019s recently re-emerged in the collections of high-fashion brands like Gosha Rubchinskiy<\/a> and Vetements<\/a> (Vetements\u2019 use of the Champion branding is particularly fitting given the hoodie\u2019s beginnings). Streetwear labels and outfits including Palace<\/a> and Wavey Garms also ensure its longevity outside of high fashion.<\/p>\n

\"everpress
Vetements x Tommy Hilfiger hoodie. Source: Mr.Porter<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the hoodie\u2019s long-standing perceived proximity might seem to make it an unlikely enduring item, it\u2019s the negative connotations that actually preserve it. In the same way that denim, plaid and grunge were taken up by fashion because of their associations to the working classes and subcultures, the hoodie carries meanings which can be co-opted and capitalised upon, and it\u2019s this which makes it enduring. In the same way that the movements that the hoodie was associated with early on have gone more mainstream, the hoodie too is newly acceptable. It\u2019s been oft-quoted that Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie<\/a> to board meetings as an exercise in asserting authority, the general idea being that if you can afford to be wearing as improbable an item as a hoodie in a business setting, then you must be in charge. What we know is that the hoodie has an embedded counter-cultural cool, urban cache, it\u2019s just unlikely that those on the periphery can benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tracing the history of one of modern societies most politicised fashion items, the hoodie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":1998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1179"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10820,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1179\/revisions\/10820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}