July 17, 2018: Italian Luxury brand Gucci has launched its Gucci-Dapper Dan collection, an homage to the celebrated designer. Gucci has re-created designs that display Mr Dan’s style, his curiosity and cultural adventurousness, which is now amalgamated with Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele’s vintage vision.
The Gucci-Dapper Dan collection takes its cues from garments Mr Dan was known for – the jackets and luxurious track suits – and has ‘Guccified’ them in Gucci’s exquisite materials, and by replacing Dapper Dan’s decorations with Gucci designs.
The denims have washes prominent in the 1980s and 90s while canvas jackets use the GG jacquard with a gold light nappa leather. When Mr Michele asked Mr Dan to express some words which he felt should represent the collection, he responded with the quote in Latin, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” translating to “Out of many, one”.
Along with clothes, a plethora of accessories such as coloured backpacks and belt bags, baseball caps, bucket hats, and large eyewear with Swarovski crystals and a Dapper Dan logo on the arms highlight the collection. Gold medallion with woven gold chains feature lion heads and the face of a bearded Greek God.
To drive this new collaboration, photographer Ari Markopoulos did a special photoshoot. Inspired from Mr Dan’s history on new York’s Harlem Street, where the brand has a store, the pictures are also shot in the streets of Harlem to maintain the aesthetic of the original photographs. The Gucci-Dapper Dan collection is available online and across stores with a special packaging of a yellow Gucci logo and web stripe background.