I started to worry about whether I’d made a promise that I couldn’t keep. No wonder none of my customers liked to spend their money down here. I was the only black person in there, and I felt the place tense up when I walked in. The drive to the Louis Vuitton store was only a couple miles, but it was a world away from Dapper Dan’s Boutique. Luxury goods were becoming status symbols, and European heritage brands that nobody had ever heard of, like Louis, Fendi, and Gucci, were entering the mainstream. Wall Street was booming, and the drug game was booming, ushering in a new period of conspicuous consumption all over the city. New York fashion was going through a lavish era.
To make good on my spontaneous promise to Little Man, I threw on my best suit, hopped in my Benz, and rode down to Fifth Avenue, watching the neighborhoods transform within minutes from crumbling buildings and vacant lots to immaculate townhouses and gleaming storefronts. I was too tired to even realize the extent of what I’d offered. Really, though, I had no idea how I was gonna do that. Right: Dapper Dan at his boutique in 1985, wearing one of his own creations. Left: Olympic sprinter Diane Dixon wearing a custom mink-and-leather jacket, 1988. “You can do that?” “Hell yeah I can do that,” I told him. “Yo,” said Little Man, his eyes lighting up. “You excited about a little bag?” I said to Little Man and his girl. Most of all, I was fascinated by the excitement it was creating among my customers. As someone who knew all about leather, I marveled at the stitching and the way the ink rested on the skin. It was a beautiful bag made with amazing craftsmanship. That was the first time I’d seen a Louis Vuitton up close. When I walked over to see what all the commotion was about, the girl held up a small brown leather clutch with a repeating pattern of gold letters-an L overlapping a V. Everyone in the place started crowding around her. One day, I was working in the store, sleep-deprived as usual, when Little Man, a hustler who worked for the Harlem boss James “Jack” Jackson, walked in with his girl. Daniel “Dapper Dan” Day revisits the shop that brought the runway to the street, and the street to the runway. In 1982, a gambler turned clothier started sampling old-money status symbols, remixing the trademarks of Europe’s top fashion houses for Harlem’s biggest rappers, from Salt-N-Pepa to LL Cool J-even a future Supreme Court justice came knocking. His designs have been exhibited at major museums in New York and beyond.Dapper Dan in a recent photo. Since 2010, he has experienced a resurgence in the fashion world, launching a store on New York’s Lenox Avenue in 2017. Day ultimately found his niche in fashion design, selling items to gangsters, hip-hop artists, and athletes from the trunk of his car then opening his groundbreaking Dapper Dan’s Boutique in 1982, which was shut down after ten years. His story, told here with author Awake, winds through Harlem and local neighborhoods, travels to Africa, which ignited a spark of African pride and style, and running a credit card con throughout the Caribbean, which led him to doing prison time in Aruba.
Born at the end of the Depression, Day grew up on the streets of Harlem hustling dice games and using drugs and alcohol but maintaining a strong sense of family and loyalty to childhood friends. Street hustler, con artist, and breakthrough fashion designer Harlem native Day, better known as Dapper Dan, has seen and done it all.
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