‘Hood Business, what d’you want to know / You gotta be with us, keep it on the low to know […] So what if your trousers’re droppin’ low?’ – we can hear Vienio and Włodi rap in Molesta’s Hood Business. Simply wearing the merchandise of a given hip-hop subculture was not enough to be part of the group, to have real street credibility. You had to earn your authenticity in the eyes of others not only with your look; this becomes even more true when we consider hip-hop fashion’s rapid commercialisation. That’s why many people attached to the earlier subcultures often kept their distance from rap – creating a punk uniform required a lot of dedication: you had to rip up the clothes, sew them together, dye them, customise them with trinkets and chains. Maciej ‘Magura’ Góralski said in 2002 on the pages of the magazine Wprost (Directly):
I don't consider hip-hop as any sort of spiritual development but as a primitive model of struggle for survival in the urban jungle
Do You Remember How?
The punks got their fashion insights from Western album covers and press snippets. Eventually the first Western artists started coming to Poland too, but not everyone could afford to go to their concerts, after all. Where did the first generations of hip-hop culture in Poland get their own insights? From music videos, films and newspapers; some went abroad. The skateboarders were the avant-garde that first introduced wide trousers and oversize T-shirts with big company logos. Loose clothing flooded Polish bazaars during the post-communist transition period, and the first businesses quickly began to emerge. The most famous of these in 1993 was created by Ryszard Lenar, author of the iconic ‘lenars’ – wide saggy trousers with pockets hanging low, trimmed all around with white thread and adorned with a distinctive elliptical logo.
If you haven’t seen it, you never will,
You’ll never see those first lenars,
And black tracksuits from the Alpha brigade,
You'll never see the guys on walkways,
You won’t get the chance, no way.
[‘93', ‘94’ by DJ 600V]
He put the first batch of 10 up for sale in one of the stalls in Warsaw’s Banacha Bazaar, and they sold out almost immediately – they became the stuff of dreams among skaters, skateboarders and rappers. More and more were made, and Lenar expanded his offer to include baseball caps, hoodies and other products. Interestingly, despite being one of the pioneers of hip-hop culture in Poland, Lenar was not involved with this environment. A gymnastics teacher at the Academy of Dramatic Art, he took up sewing as a hobby. With the money he earned, he financed the construction of one of Warsaw’s first skate parks under the ski jump in Mokotów. He even sponsored his own skate team, which advertised his clothes. ‘I taught them a bit how to flip and tumble. I’m a gymnast after all. We agreed that they would skate in my Lenar Prof line of clothing’, he said in an interview with Bartek Chaciński, published in the magazine Polityka. At the beginning of the 21st century, he shut down his business, embittered by the number of knockoffs and exhausted by the ever-growing competition.
Other legendary Polish brands of the time include Łó-based B3 (Befree), Mass DNM, Wroc Clinic MFE, Warsaw's MORO and skate-head Malita. A comprehensive history of the first Polish hip-hop clothing companies was presented by Filip Kalinowski of newonce music portal. Rappers and brands lived in symbiosis, advertising each other. A contract with a clothing company may not have been worth a fortune, but it increased recognition among the public (at the beginning of the 21st century, there were six nationwide rap monthly magazines and two TV shows) and allowed them to stay afloat in a tough market. Polish clothing brands gained the trust of rap fans not only through image but also quality. rest assured they're made in Poland / Outfits by the real ones are Moro, Fokus and Stoprocent’
Joanna Tyszkiewicz, a Szczecin-based rapper and music journalist, said in an interview published in the Anthology of Polish Rap:
When I felt the cloths of Reserved and of Mass17 and compared them, Mass had the kind of workmanship and T-shirt weights that made me confident they would last for years, unlike the other brand. It became apparent quite quickly that those involved in hip-hop had more credibility and were more concerned with quality. People appreciated that, including those who accidentally bought some rap clothing and saw that it’s the real deal. I believe in that quality, regardless of sentimentality.