Image: Lil' Kim, Misa Hylton and Mary J. Blige at the premiere of "The Remix: Hip Hop x Fashion" at Tribeca Film Festival in May 2019

Netflix’s newest documentary The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion takes a deep dive into the kind of streetwear that’s fallen to the wayside in terms of recognition, despite long standing influence. One only need to look at Cardi B and Megan thee Stallion’s “WAP” video to see the monochromatic influence of Lil’ Kim and her stylist Misa Hylton, and that’s before we get to the countless runway shows whos styling was influenced by the stylist’s iconic looks for the Hardcore rapper.

Speaking to Lisa Cortes, who co-directed The Remix alongside Farah X, the reason for creating the documentary was obvious. “I've seen a lot of stories about the contributions that men have made to the culture, but I just always saw that there was this gap and recognizing that from the beginning of hip hop's inception, women have always been there,” she says. In looking to redress this imbalance, the documentary shone a light on several designers who’d been kept out of the streetwear gold rush.

One such designer was April Walker. Speaking to Wax Poetics, she spoke about her beginnings and using Dapper Dan as a template. “I was just in awe of his business and, I think, once I stumbled upon his business, I decided that this was something I wanted to do. I used his formula to create my own custom shop in Brooklyn.” Three years after she created her own store, she launched Walker Wear, which was worn by everyone from Tupac to Mike Tyson.

The documentary shone a light on how Walker Wear and other brands that were shoved into the urbanwear category were perceived by the industry. Magic trade show, which was then the premier event in the industry, had accepted Walker Wear to show its wares. April Walker recalled being told by the organizers that they couldn’t find the right room for her brand on the floor because there was no market for such a brand, so she’d have to take a side booth alongside Karl Kani and Cross Colors. The three brands, noticing the obvious reasoning behind this, turned the space into a makeshift jail cell, sending out invites with the phrase ‘serve your sentence.’ The plan worked, with each of the three brands bringing in around $2 million in orders.

As the Magic tradeshow debacle showed, race was a large part of why she was received that way. Speaking to Farah X, the throughline in terms of the treatment the stylists and designers shown in The Remix typically boiled down to two things: race and gender. “Do you have double oppression? I do think that race played a huge part in it [alongside gender],” she says. “Because had this [range] been done by someone of a different race or non-person of color. I don't think we'd be telling the story. I do believe race was a huge part, but also [sexism].”

Image: April Walker showcasing Walker Wear designs

The fact that it’s taken this long for a documentary on this topic is telling in itself. There’s been no shortage of documentaries about the era of ’90s hip-hop, but this specific topic has remained mostly ignored. Even mainstream streetwear publications overlook this era, despite there being a direct throughline in the styling influences still seen in the biggest brands. One look at Supreme’s latest lookbook showcases a clear delineation to the likes of Walker Wear. The issue is that the former has become exalted in the industry, while the other remains largely overlooked.

It doesn't take much critical thinking to see that calling Supreme “streetwear” and Walker Wear “urbanwear” is a line so thin, it’s basically imperceptible. For Lisa Cortes, the reasons behind the creation of these categories showcases a specific way of thinking. “Streetwear, urbanwear, high culture, low culture—that's the language of colonizers,” she says. “I don't think there's a difference. It’s the language that has cultural stigmas attached to it.”

This is a line of thinking within fashion that’s often mentioned but rarely explored. Kim Jones said it was time to retire streetwear as a term in an interview with *Highsnobiety last year. “I get so bored of that term ‘streetwear’” he said. “You wear clothes in the street, so everything’s streetwear. You can wear a couture gown down the street and that turns it into streetwear.” He later went on to describe Undercover’s designs often being lumped into that category saying “it’s just good design.”

Image: Tupac wearing Walker Wear in 1994's "Above the Rim" (left); a recreation outfit recreated by April Walker for the Tupac biopic, 2017's "All Eyez on Me"

“Good design” is, arguably, all that matters. The rest is simply used to push brands into boxes, often for the sake of keeping elitism alive. Throughout history, categories and delineations have existed solely for this purpose across industries, with music using the word “genre” instead of fashion’s classifications, but the purpose is still the same. The word “genre” itself comes from the French and originally Latin word for “kind” or “class.” The latter phrase lays bare what most of fashion’s categories mean to do.

What happens if you were to take this original meaning and apply it to fashion? Imagine saying class instead of fashion—high class, low class, urban class—the resulting categories become more clearly elitist than before. If good design is the goal then the need for these delineations cease to exist. But if elitism itself is the goal, then the need for these categories remains.

Often fashion marks the type of clothing by the person who’s wearing it. So the fact that the likes of Walker Wear was predominantly seen on black rappers, athletes and the youth that looked up to them meant it needed new classification. The difference between Walker Wear and Balenciaga is often just the acceptance of a high-minded principle rather than anything in the design.

Farah X notes this, saying “I don't think the person who's wearing it should define its category. But the minute you put something on a black or brown body, it's called street or urbanwear. If you take it off the person, what is the clothing?”

This is the question that’s still being asked today and often seen in the reaction to black designers, something even if critics can’t be as explicit in asking it as they were in the ’90s. For Lisa Cortes and Farah X, creating The Remix was a chance to showcase a story often undertold. “Women of color have existed in this arena since the very beginning, but the stories of those women have not been told,” says Farah X. The response to their work has, so far, mostly come from communities of color. “A lot of the response I've been receiving has been from women of color and even younger men of color seeing the value in their creativity, the value in their existence and just seeing themselves in history,”

A documentary like The Remix does something subtle, but important—allowing people to see themselves in places that they’d typically be shut out of. “As people of color, we obviously learn a very different history than what our own history is. It's time to go back, rewrite the narrative and incorporate our stories that have always been there and just haven't been told.”

The Remix: Hip Hop x Fashion is available to stream on Netflix now.