Making Culture, Making Influence -- Dapper Dan in Silicon Valley

“You cannot be IN it… and not be OF it.” Dapper Dan a.k.a. Daniel Day shares his remarkable history and story of defining an era of fashion and cultural influence in this special episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on his conversation (also available as video here) with Ben Horowitz around his memoir, Made in Harlem. Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the early 1980s, remixing luxury brand logos into his own designs for gangsters, athletes, and musicians, dressing cultural icons from Salt-N-Pepa and Eric B. & Rakim to Beyoncé and Jay-Z along the way. Going on to define an era, his work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, The Smithsonian, and more. But he began as a hungry, fast learner in Harlem who became a gambler; spent a brief stint in a foreign jail where he nourished himself with reading; and then studied the market to build his fashion business, trendsetting the concepts of logomania and later, influencer marketing. Today, Dapper Dan has a unique partnership with Gucci and reopened his boutique in 2017. From “the struggle” when not given the privileges and opportunities that others have to the struggle of building and then losing and then reinventing oneself again and again, this special episode offers inspiration for all kinds of makers -- including the power of “studying the game”; the power of listening to your customers (not in the cliché way!); and the power of cultural influence… and voice. photo credits: Alain McLaughlin

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Sonal?

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the A6andZ Podcast. Today's episode is hosted by A6andZ co-founder Ben Horowitz, interviewing special guest Dapper Dan. Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the early 1980s, remixing luxury brand logos into his own designs for gangsters, athletes, and musicians, dressing cultural icons from Eric B. and Rakim to Jay-Z. He went on to define an era, and his work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, the Smithsonian, and more. But Daniel R. Day, aka Dapper Dan, began as a hungry, fast learner in Harlem, who became a gambler, spent a brief stint in a foreign jail where he nourished himself with reading, and then studied the market to build his business, rising to the top,

• 0:45Sonal?

  falling to the bottom, and rising again, reinventing himself over and over. The conversation is based on an event that we hosted for the launch of his memoir, Made in Harlem, where throughout, Dapper Dan shares inspiration for all kinds of makers, from the struggle, especially when not given the privileges and opportunities that others have, to the power of studying the game and the power of listening to your customers, but not in a typical way, to what cultural influence and leadership really means, especially because, quote, "You cannot be in it and not be of it." It is a story of the OG hustler and spans 70 years, with the first 30 minutes of this episode focused on his growing up in Harlem, visiting Africa and cultural influences at the time,

• 1:30Sonal?

  and then 30 minutes in, going into his trend-setting in fashion, including the concepts of logomania and later influencer marketing. And finally, the story ends where it begins, with reopening his boutique and his partnership with Gucci, which involved the power of voice, including that of Black Twitter.

• 1:49Ben Horowitz?

  So I'd like to thank everybody for coming out, and this is probably one of the most difficult introductions that I've ever had to do, because how do I explain Dapper Dan? That's like, almost impossible. And, you know, I didn't know who Dapper Dan was really. I knew Dapper Dan, but I didn't know until I read the book. "Dapper Dan Made in Harlem." And so I thought to introduce him, there were a couple of things that were sent to me leading up to the event that were like, right on point. We put like a tweet out, and this came tweeted back from David Dosswell. Is David Dosswell here? Oh, all right, what's happening? Thanks for coming out. So he tweets, "Such a legend. When I was young, I thought his name was a term. I didn't know he was a person."

• 2:36Ben Horowitz?

  And then the second one is from my business partner, Marc Andreessen. You guys know Marc? Yeah. Soft reads the world, he invented the browser, all that. So Marc's from Wisconsin, and he didn't really know anything about Dapper Dan until he read the book. And he sends me this. He says, "I read Dapper Dan's book. I got a couple of reactions. One, he is an actual entrepreneur and an innovator. Parentheses, tech twice over, once screen printing onto leather. The other, using a hospital badge machines to fabricate credit cards." Number two, similarly, in another life, he'd have a major, national, global apparel

• 3:20Ben Horowitz?

  brand by now worth billions of dollars. And I was like, "Yeah, that's right." So that's Dapper Dan, and without further ado, I welcome Dapper Dan.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:42Ben Horowitz?

  All right, well, let's get into it. So, the book starts with Harlem in the 50s. And that was like a very different Harlem. The Harlem that you grew up in, then the Harlem that came after it, and for sure, the Harlem of today. So what was that like?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Well, the Harlem that I grew up in was a village. Now, the Harlem you find today is like a little city. The difference between a village and a little city is like, I grew up, I'm the first generation of the great migration that came from the south. So when I, my family, my mom and my pop got to Harlem, they were still...

• 4:22Speaker 02

  And it sounds crazy, there were still horses and buggies in the street.

• 4:27Ben Horowitz?

  Wow, so cars hadn't quite gotten there.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't many, but they were there. All the neighborhoods was comprised of, mostly in Harlem, even though it was sectional, you see like, one, this neighborhood here, everybody be from a particular part of the south, and the next neighborhood, a particular part.

• 4:44Ben Horowitz?

  So people knew each other, so that a different kind of community.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I think the most warming thoughts that I have of Harlem then is like, 11 o'clock Sunday morning, 11 o'clock Sunday morning, you see everybody leaving out their houses, everybody converges on the church. And my family went to the church, we had a little storefront church we used to go to, the congregation was like 23 people, and 18 of us was in the same family.

• 5:10Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  And yeah, we called it Hallelujah Sunday, because you know, even though we was poor, I think, um, nothing made me feel as good as, you know, leaving church on Sunday, you know, we was poor, so food wasn't plentiful back then, but we used to, uh, you know, after church you get them meals.

• 5:30Ben Horowitz?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, true.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and today, that still goes on today, like the big churches on Sundays, they still have, they serve meals. But, oh, you know what, the most significant thing about Harlem that you won't see today in Harlem was that, I grew up with, uh, the diversity, you know, I didn't even realize how diverse Harlem was until I began to travel like, places like Detroit, Chicago, and I, and I always had different ethnic groups as friends of mine, you know, and I think that cultural part, that like gumbo of, of culture was what made Harlem the way it is.

• 6:09Ben Horowitz?

  So then, you know, your father came to Harlem, um, when he was just 12 years old.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  My father, you know, it's like, it's hard to imagine, because we tend to think that, you know, slavery was a long time ago, but, you know, it's been like maybe 153 years, and...

• 6:28Speaker 02

  My father left home when he was 12 years old. My father was born in 1898. That's 33 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. My father's father was born a slave and later free. So when my father came here, this is the Reconstruction era in 1910 when my father came to Harlem. He was 12 years old, but at 12 years old, and 10 and 12 years old, young blacks was leaving the South because they didn't want to put up with that. And that's what made Harlem so unique. In every aspect, what made Harlem unique is that we had the most revolutionary spirited people that you could find, the ones who was not going to tolerate like the Jim Crow and

• 7:09Ben Horowitz?

  Right, right.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  and the hangings and things that was taking place in the South at that time.

• 7:13Ben Horowitz?

  And so do you think that's one of the things that made Harlem such a center of culture? Was that the people who came out were the people of the strongest will? The hardest people coming out to Harlem?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you look at, when you look at like the, what happened to us with the slave trade? First, you get captured. I read in the, before the Mayflower, they talked about sharks used to pick up the slave ships on the coast of Africa and just follow them across the ocean. And that's how many slaves were thrown off. So you had to survive that mental passage. Then you had to, then your family had to survive 300 years of slavery, alright? And then you had to tolerate the Jim Crow-ism. And so we had the most strongest blacks that were leaving the South to go north. So I'm a product of those powerful people.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  So when, when I got, the people who were in Harlem was the ones that stayed and put up with it? That wouldn't go back, they were really, they were really the strongest of the strong. So I learned from the people who were the best hustlers and people like my father's who were

• 8:24Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  the best workers. Because my father worked 15 years straight for the city and he was, he was never absent and he was late once and that was the great snowstorm of 47.

• 8:37Ben Horowitz?

  Wow, nobody was at work that day.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  And that's because he walked to work and was, the snow was deep.

• 8:45Ben Horowitz?

  Wow.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 8:48Ben Horowitz?

  And you and your father had an incident that changed your life in Ripley's department store.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that was like...

• 8:54Ben Horowitz?

  When you were a kid.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Growing up, like even a neighbor down the street from me used to laugh at us a lot because they was just doing slightly better than us. And a lot of the times, I had holes in my shoes, man. So we used to put paper in our shoes to keep our feet from touching the ground. Then we got more innovative, we stopped using linoleum because it lasts longer, right? But one day, man, my feet was hurting so bad because the borders of the shoe could not no longer hold the linoleum in, right? So I think I was like about eight. And I come on and say, "Ma, my feet is killing me. Ma, my feet is killing me, man." And before my mother could say anything, my brother was there. He said, "Don't worry, Ma." He said, "Come on."

• 9:40Speaker 02

  I go with my brother and we walked four blocks. And I never forget, we walked four blocks from 129 to 124, four or five blocks. He turned the corner and it was a Goodwill there. So we went in the Goodwill. And my brother said, "You see any shoes you like?" I saw some nice mahogany, split toes with the tassel. I said, "I like them right there." He said, "Try them on." I said, "They feel good." He said, "Okay, pick your shoes up." I picked my shoes up. He said, "Put them in the rack." I put them in the rack. He said, "Let's go."

• 10:25Ben Horowitz?

  That probably wasn't fair trade there.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Oh boy. I will never forget that. But you know, as years gone, you know, all our clothes was hand-me-down, right? But my brother, right older than me, he always got the first pick, you know? So he had the best clothes from Goodwill, so. So I wanted to go to school, man. I wanted to be fly, you know? I really wanted to be sharp because I could stand up front of the school with the girls and everything in front of the candy store.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  But my brother wouldn't let me wear his clothes, right? So I had to sneak him out. And he got to the point where he was sitting by the door where I had to go out. So I couldn't walk out with his clothes on. So what I did, I had my two best friends.

• 11:07Ben Horowitz?

  He shouldn't have taught you how to steal clothes.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  But my two best friends, Herman and Thurman. I told Herman and Thurman, wait outside the window. And I would take his clothes and I'd drop him outside the window. And I'd go in the hallway and change him, right? But then, by the time I was 13 now, right? My father's gonna take me to get my first suit. I'd never forget that. No, no, 13, I was already hustling, about 11 years old. So we was going to Ripley, Ripley Department Store. And my father gonna buy me a suit on credit, right? And I said, wow, I saw a charcoal brown suit with pinstripes. He said, Daddy, you gonna get me? I said, yeah, okay. He said, um, he gonna pay it on credit.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  But I had just learned mathematical equations to tell, you know, interest time, rate, and see how much he was gonna pay. And then when I read the contract, I said, Daddy, don't buy it. This is gonna cost, they're gonna charge you two and a half times what the suit worth. You know? So we coming down the steps from the store. And this is, this is the moment that changed my life. And we coming down the steps from the store. And my father stopped me. And he looked in my eyes, and I saw the tears well up in my father's eyes. And he said, boy, don't you know you could read? You could read, boy. You could read. But I, you know, I'm saying, I'm seeing how emotionally he getting, and I'm seeing the tears well. But what, what happened was my father only went to the third grade. And he had to teach himself how to read.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Because you gotta know, during, during times of slavery, and back then, you know, it was against the law to teach the slaves how to read, you know? And my father only got to go to the third grade. So he had to teach himself how to read. And from that point on, I learned something. I say, man, no matter what happened, or what kind of fix I get in, I'ma read my way out of it.

• 12:52Ben Horowitz?

  And that ended up being the key to almost everything you did after that.

• 12:59Ben Horowitz?

  So how did you get into hustling?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Life, life is about, life is about the tools that you get based on how you come up, you know?

• 13:12Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  It was seven of us, me and six siblings, and my mom and dad, and three bed, three had, we had three bedrooms, you know? So, my father and, and all the relationships, like, we have a people that's, that's aunts, these so and so, but, you know, it's just that, it wasn't a blood relationship, but the communal relationship that you take on those titles, right? But the ones that were in my neighborhood, they were all hustlers. My father's the only one wasn't a hustler, right? But my father used to have poker games, what we call rent parties. A rent party, a rent party is, is a circle of people. This one week, this give, this one give a party, have a poker game, you know?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Have red rice, chicken, collard greens, and they still dinners, you know? Like that. So, when my father, when they gave their poker game, and I used to stay up, and my, every time my father win, win a hand, this is first time I was exposed to gambling. Every time my father win a hand, he take all the change and put it in my pocket, and I'm just standing there, couldn't stand up no more, and, and, and take it away. So, the first exposure I got to anything was like gambling, and I became a real proficient like that. But I had an uncle, Eddie Henry, it's just him and my mother, right? Eddie Henry had went, had ran away when he was young, and he joined, he had joined the

• 14:41Speaker 02

  circus, and was one of them guys, yeah, one of them guys.

• 14:44Ben Horowitz?

  Joined the circus, I mean, this is, that era. I've heard that story, but I never knew anybody did.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a handyman, they had him doing like running errands, but he was, he hooked up with the, the magician, talk him, told him all these kind of tricks with the cards.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  So Eddie Henry taught me them tricks.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  So, those tricks helped me out later on in life, y'all hear a lot about them tricks later. So anyway, the Harlem that I grew up in, we are, I'm the last product of a generation that saw Harlem without a drug epidemic. I'm growing up in the 50s, the drugs epidemic didn't hit till the 60s. So the first part of Harlem you see was like numbers, the number game, policy, that used to take place and everybody used to bet on numbers and then it was like, they had people who was like, had maybe drinking problems, but they were functional. Right. It was nowhere near like, like the drugs were. Then in the 60s when the drugs hit and then we start seeing all the drug dealers with

• 15:51Speaker 02

  all this money, all the shiny things that we wish we had. Yeah. And then they, we started drifting away. Right. Drifting away and then a drug, it went from a nu, the street game, the street thing went from a number culture to a drug culture and that's when Harlem changed. Right. We never used to have to lock our doors, nobody locked their doors until the drug epidemic hit and that changed the whole complexion of Harlem. And I got caught up in that be, um, because of the, uh, the lore, me and all my brothers, my sisters never did nothing wrong, but me and all my brothers got hooked up, caught up in that.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  And, um, I remember it was June 19th, 1967, I got busted for, for selling drugs. I got out three months later with probation, September 27th, 1967. The one of the assassins, alleged assassins for Malcolm X was in there, Johnson 3X Butler, right? And what I, what I observed, he was in lower A1, I was in upper A4, so it was tears and we had to pass by. And, um, I saw all the respect that this man used to get. And the way they treated him.

• 17:07Ben Horowitz?

  And did he get respect for allegedly killing Malcolm X? Or was it for a different thing?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  It was a different town. Like Malcolm X today, the Malcolm X these young people in here know today, at the time was, there was a shism that was taking place in the nation of Islam, right? So to the vulgar people when Elijah Muhammad was still alive, Malcolm X was considered a traitor. Martin Luther King was considered an Uncle Tom. So history has showed that that wasn't true. It's just that these men chose a path that was the right path to choose. They were idolized then because people didn't really know what happened. But anyway, the story is like, when I saw the respect he got, I said, "I might go to jail again, but I will never go to jail for doing anything like that to my people."

• 17:55Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  And that's what changed my life. So that was 1967. When I got out, I went back to school. I was 23 then. I went back to school, high school. That was like murder, being on the bus going from Harlem. Oh, man, because I'm seeing the young kids that I'm going to high school with, doing the, making mistakes I'm making. I'm coming out of it and I'm seeing them go into it. I said, "Oh, man, it was hell." So I started writing for a newspaper, Forty Acres and a Mule, a student newspaper. And then I got real revolutionary and I said, "You know what? I had, from writing for Forty Acres and a Mule, I was offered a scholarship over the summer of 68

• 18:41Speaker 02

  as an intern at Columbia University. Either I take that or I can go to Africa and study in Africa with Forty Acres and a Mule."

• 18:49Ben Horowitz?

  Scholarship to Columbia, go to Africa with Forty Acres and a Mule.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I wanted to go to Africa. Dr. Henry Clark. I wanted to find out what happened. So Dr. Henry Clark said, one day he said at the paper, right? You know, "We tend to think of ourselves as victims all the time." So one of, me and one of the students, we always have these conferences every week with a different scholar, Dr. Henry Clark, Dr. Ben Jockman, you know, all kinds of scholars used to come through. And so Dr. Henry Clark, he's the one who mentored Malcolm. So he's at the paper one day and one of the students like myself on the editorial board asked Dr. Henry Clark, he said, If we are the first people on the planet and we the chosen people, why are we going through what we going through today? And Dr. Henry Clark says,

• 19:35Speaker 02

  "That's because of a transgression we made before Europeans came into our life." He never elaborated on that, so when I was going to Africa, I went looking for what he was talking about.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  You know what? That took a little bit of the anger away, you know, and gave, it gave me like a focus there, "I'm gonna find out what's wrong." Because whatever it is that's wrong might be what's wrong with me.

• 20:02Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  And when I say "me," us. So I had to figure out a way to get to that. So when I went to Africa, I traveled like, it was fortunate for me. I'm in Harlem, Martin Luther King is alive, Malcolm X is alive, all that energy. I go to Africa, I'm in Ghana, Kwame Nkuma with the Pan-Africanism Movement, it just got disposed. Then I get to Tanzania, Nyeri is in, is governor, is the president. And I get to Kenya, Jomo Kinyata is the governor. So I got all this energy and we studying African history. I stayed in Tanzania, I stayed at Kurosinie International School, where they were training South Africans to fight in South Africa.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  So we were, um, we were like a really radical group. And even the, um, Urban League had gathered money, had gotten Pan-American Airlines to donate the airfare for the seven countries we was going to visit in Africa to us. And when we got to the airport, they didn't, the State Department, I mean, United States government, didn't know how radical we were. So when we got to the airport, the State Department put pressure on Pan-American Airlines and they canceled our reservations.

• 21:18Ben Horowitz?

  Oh, wow.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  They withdrew the reservation, but then a black philanthropist put up the money at the last minute so that we can go on this trip to Africa.

• 21:26Ben Horowitz?

  Do you know who that philanthropist was?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  No, they, I mean, we never found out who he was. I guess he want the State Department to know.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  So, when we get to the, when we get to the first leg of the trip in Ghana, Accra, Ghana, our passports disappeared, right? And the passports turned up at the State Department of the United States Embassy. So we go there to pick it up. We didn't find out till later on that it was a CIA agent following us around. You know, because this was the time, 1968, well, I mean, young black radicals wasn't going to Africa.

• 22:03Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah. Not without a CIA escort.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  If you go to the library and you read Forty Acres and a Mule, and you can see that at the Schoenberg Library on microfilm, and you see the things that we were talking about. To give you an example, I wrote an article in 1968 when they was building the State Building, the State Building in Harlem. In 1968, I did a study on that State Building and found out what this plan was about. Constable Baker Motley had mentioned that plan earlier, but the State Building was the first building they was going to put in Harlem to start gentrification taking place. So I had got a prototype of that State Building, and I put it on the front page of Forty Acres and a Mule, and I made it look like a Trojan horse.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  You know, to let people in Harlem know, and this is 52 years ago, to let people in Harlem know that gentrification is coming to Harlem. And when you go to Harlem today, you see gentrification has kicked in. So that's how radical we were and how advanced we was, and we were all young, like, all from being 18 to 23, but we had so much energy. We had all these revolutionary and these Dr. Ben Jacob, and all these scholars coming in and talking to us.

• 23:20Ben Horowitz?

  Now, when you were in Africa for the fight in Zaire, which was later...

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that was really interesting. I went back to Africa on my own in 1968 because I went with a group. And when we went with that group, it wasn't no hotel thing. We stayed with families. We did live-ins, everything like that there, you know? So 1973, I went back because they had Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, the rumble in the jungle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my hustling skills kicked in. Wasn't selling drugs, but I was a professional gambler then. So I go back to Africa for the fight. George Foreman's just busting the head, you know what I mean? And training. Yeah, that's not when Ali was busting him in the head. Yeah, Muhammad Ali while he was training. So I said, "Man, I gotta stay here a month and a half, wait for him to get well." Yeah. So I said, "You know what? I might just travel around again."

• 24:07Speaker 02

  So I stayed in Zaire for a while. Then I went to, back to Lagos, Nigeria. And then from Lagos, Nigeria, I went to Liberia. And so, and that's in Monrovia, Liberia, I had Fulani Taylor. And that's where the whole concept for me getting involved in fashion. Yeah. You know, I'm gonna tell that story. So come back. I'm hustling again. It's like, as I mentioned earlier, you get these tools when you grow up poor. And you use these tools. But as you move along, you start learning things.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  But in 1968, when I came back from Africa, I was in the Panther Party, Nation Islam. The Panther Party had got really radical. You know, they had us like, we would have to study the Battle of Algiers, where young people was kicking the dope dealers down the steps and just cleaning up the city. And at that time, it was the drug dealers was considered the bloodsuckers of the poor. Those are the reasons that we were doing so bad. So the people, Nation Islam was moving on the drug dealers. Panther Party was moving on them. Then Fatah, the head of the 5%ers, all of them was zeroing in on the problem with drugs. Because that's what had the devastating effect.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  The reason that they were doing that because everyone during this time knew what Harlem was like before drugs. But the second generation that grew up with a drug culture don't understand.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  What we would like before that happened. I refuse to go back and get drawn into that. So that's when I, I got into what is called... Let me give you an idea what you learn in Harlem, in the streets. You learn the paper game. That's credit cards and checks. You learn how to do that illegally. The paper, the con game. Everybody know what that is. Everybody in here been conned some kind of way. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah, the con game, you know what I mean? And so these are all the things that we learned from professionals. So I definitely wasn't going to get involved with anything that's going to be detrimental to the community. So I said, you know what?

• 26:32Speaker 02

  I'm gonna study this paper game. Yeah. Yeah, the paper game. Checks, credit cards. Yeah, credit cards and everything. So I devised this method by which I create my own credit cards. Yes. Yeah, so I was a bank official. Me and my friends, all of us Muslims, but broke away from Nation of Islam for the same reason. I never accepted the concept of a biological devil. So it wasn't suitable for me in the Nation of Islam. I couldn't accept that part. So we come across this credit card scheme. So I'm the one to initiate the scheme. So now we go in country hopping. Catch a plane here.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  We go to, we go to St. Thomas, St. Croix, Aruba, Venezuela. You spending these folks' money like it belong to us. Yeah. We leave Barbados and we go to Venezuela. And we in Venezuela and some soldiers pulling guns out on us, right? And I'm looking at Khalid and his face is getting all excited. I said, damn, what's wrong? I don't even know what's wrong. I wanted to know why the soldiers was taking us into the bush anyway. He said, man, they was gonna kill us and rob us. So I got, we got back in the car. We went back to the airport. That was the second one. Now we get to Aruba, right? Then all of a sudden, I'm trying to call my friend and I can't get them.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  And then I see these cop cars, then we figured it out, they're looking for us.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  They had already got my other two friends, so I didn't know where to go. I'm on an island, I didn't know where to go. So I started ripping up all the receipts, and I'm on the beach ripping up the receipts. Next thing I know, they pull up on us and I didn't, and I didn't, um, I didn't see freedom for nine months. Man, you do not want to get in trouble in a foreign country, please. Please. And so, for nine months, all I did was read, read, read, because that was my out. Read, read, read. When I got out of that, then I became more proficient at that.

• 28:38Ben Horowitz?

  More proficient at the paper game?

• 28:40Speaker 02

  I got really proficient, and I made a lot of money.

• 28:43Ben Horowitz?

  So and then the paper game ended up like weirdly leading you into the fashion game?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I used to make, uh, everybody listening, uh, what's it? Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run.

• 28:56Ben Horowitz?

  Kenny Rogers, yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Never count your money while you're sitting at the table. There'd be plenty of time for counting when the deal is done. That was my philosophy.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  So, uh, after I made the money, I told everybody who was down with me, man, quit that.

• 29:11Ben Horowitz?

  And you were up on the laws too, though, so you knew, you were up, you knew there was new legislation coming too, that was gonna make the paper game more dangerous?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, the banking system had not figured it out yet.

• 29:24Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah, right.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  So there was this loophole, and even if you got caught, you would get just 90 days, but we never even got caught.

• 29:30Ben Horowitz?

  Making credit cards.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  But when they changed the law, I said, that's it, I ain't doing that no more. And you never go back when you do something wrong. But while all this is taking place, I'm doing all this spiritual reading, and so my mind is constantly changing, my mind is constantly changing, and I'm looking for a way to, to, to really fit into society. You don't wanna, I just wanna be, I just wanna be regular, I just wanna be normal, I just wanna be, you know... Buy into this American idea. But what's also working high in my head is the only, you know, the fact that I didn't have the privileges and the opportunities that other people had.

• 30:06Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  So after the paper game, I buy me a brand new Mercedes Benz. Paid forty-two thousand dollars cash, you know.

• 30:15Ben Horowitz?

  With, with paper from the paper game?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  From, from the paper game. And then I said, um, I'm gonna drive around for a while, figure out what I want to do. And then, uh, I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I knew all the gangsters. I'm gonna open up a store and sell to them.

• 30:33Ben Horowitz?

  And with the gangsters, you knew they had money in like clothes in a way. You knew about that market where nobody else did.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I knew all, every gangster in Harlem, I knew them because I used to break them.

• 30:43Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  They used to call me Gambling Danny.

• 30:45Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz I, I studied everything. I learned from the best, that were, the best gamblers that was in Harlem. And then I read all the books on gambling so that I can have a, a, even a better perspective. And I read, um, John Sculley. John Sculley was a world authority on gambling. I read all his books.

• 31:02Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  And when it came to hustling, I read, uh, Hustling and Con Men.

• 31:06Ben Horowitz?

  He studies the hustle game like people could study the computer science game.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Look, listen here. If you wanna get an inside look of what my mindset was and what my skills was, watch the movie with, um, Robert Redford and Paul Newman, The Sting.

• 31:23Ben Horowitz?

  The Sting, yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  The movie, you got ten calories more. And if you can pick up on the move that they made in The Sting, then you gifted hustler. It gives you, uh, an idea of what the hustlers who came out of the South was like, right? And it involves gambling and it involves the con game. It's the epitome of everything you wanna know about the inner workings of the streets and how other things, other than drugs, how you can make money. So in The Sting, right, there's this, there's an older black guy. So the black guy, he dies. He could never play, he could never make the big sting.

• 32:03Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  You know? It was always his goal to make the big sting. So when Robert Redford and Paul Newman come and say, man, y'all white, y'all can make the big sting, you know? And one of the guys, he con. Hey, killed him, so Robin Redford is gonna avenge that. And then the whole plot emerges from them. But the sting comes right out of the book. Hustlers and con men, so you can get a really good view of that. If you wanna know what Dabba Dan, that portion of Dabba Dan's life was like.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  I'm a good guy. It's just that, this is what happened to my life. If you march backwards in my history, this was what's opening to me. This is the advances I could make. I took advantage of all the opportunities that were available to me. This is not an apology, this is so that you understand me. Anyway, so, fashion. So, I thought that I could go and open up a store. I said, you know what? People with high aspirations, they want everybody to know that they moving up the ladder. So hustlers and everybody like that, especially hustlers. The main thing they used to like is furs, diamonds and gold, right?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  So I know I couldn't mess with them diamonds and them gold, Mike, cuz that's a whole new study I got to go into there.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  So what I did was I started reading everything that I could find out about furs, right? So it just so happened, I left the paper game, but there's two guys that's still in the paper game, right? They use check, certified check machines. And so when people like yourself wanna sell your old fur, you advertising the paper, they say, yeah, we'll buy it. And then you show up with your fur and you get one of their special made certified checks.

• 33:53Ben Horowitz?

  You hear that, you need to take Bitcoin, Venmo, something else, don't take that.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  So, I'm with these guys, so they gonna sell me the furs. Alright, so they had the fur, they bring it to me, they take him out of the lining, right?

• 34:09Ben Horowitz?

  They traded the fake check for?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I go down the fur this week, this is when I meet Urban Chakis, my Jewish friend. So Urban Chakis takes the furs out, and I say, hold up, man. Maybe I need to be making these furs with you.

• 34:23Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Instead of me buying hot furs. So me and Eric Trey gets hooked up. I started reading everything and studying everything with the fur game. And then what I did was, I did my research. There was only three black furriers in the, in the country. There was one called, he was the most popular, a black furrier. Uh, in New York and there was two in Chicago. And I went and visited all of them, see how their operation worked. And I come back and I started doing the furs. But, um, what I thought was that I, I would be able to buy. And every place, other clothes, when I wanted to do other clothes. But all the manufacturers I went to, that sold luxury goods would not sell to me.

• 34:58Ben Horowitz?

  Okay. And why, and they, they just wouldn't sell to you because?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  They wouldn't, they just wouldn't sell to me.

• 35:03Ben Horowitz?

  You just liked it, you were like, that's it?

• 35:04Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna, you know. All I can say is that they sold to people who wasn't my color, so.

• 35:09Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  That was the intention.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  So anyway. So that wasn't working out for me. But the furs was working out for me, but furs are seasonal item, right? So I started going to this, uh, uh, a furrier in New Jersey. It called The Fur Factory, and he was selling furs to me, another Jewish guy. He's selling furs to me and I was doing good off those furs, right? He said, listen, my son and his, and my nephew are opening up this company. And they gonna be making leather jackets. I said, oh, okay, cool.

• 35:38Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  He said, go see him. His son and his nephew is Andrew Mark. They cool, they was almost like young black guys. I said, yo, what's up? Like that, you know?

• 35:48Speaker 02

  No, they was cool like that.

• 35:50Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  So we, um, I'm, I'm buying these leather jackets with the opossum lining from them, right?

• 35:56Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah. Opossum.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  So I'm paying $400 for the, for the jackets. And I'm selling them for eight. My competition was the most popular store in Harlem called AJ Lester's. AJ Lester's is selling the same coat for 1,200. So I'm smoking them, right?

• 36:12Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  One day, a guy comes with his friend. Who had already bought one from A.J. Lessons. And he was proving to his friend, these are the same coats. So he came to me where he got this from, right? Right. He said, "I told you, man, that guy got so hot, he went over to A.J. Lessons and had a fit." Oh, yeah. A.J. Lessons goes down to Andrew and Mark and tell Andrew and Mark, "If you sell to Dapper Dan, I'm not buying from you anymore." So he cut off the supply. You know, when I go down to re-up, down to Andrew Mark's and I'm to get some more jackets, they say, "Dap, we got a problem, man. I can't sell to you no more because A.J. Lessons say if I sell you, then they won't buy from me no more. They have six stores, you only have one." Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I said, "Oh, man." I didn't even, you know, I didn't even debate the issue with him because they told me, "Well, we will let you continue to buy, but you got to take the label out. You know the label is everything." Yeah, yeah, you can't do that. You know, so I got mad and I just left and I came uptown. Now, when I left, when I was on that trip in Africa and I was in Monrovia, Liberia, I went down to buy me some artifacts. And when I was buying these artifacts, right, you got to like the way I dressed and all because I was, you know, super fly. Yeah. He say, "I like..." Still are. Yeah. He say, "I like the way you..." He say, "I like what you got on it." I say, "I like them artifacts." I say, "You want to trade?" He said, "Yeah, I want to." I've got all my luggage.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  I took every, all the clothes that I took on the trip with me. I came back down to the marketplace and I exchanged all my clothes for artifacts and for him to make me clothes, you know, with African-style material, but Harlem-style cuts. Yeah. And that's how I came back. And that always stayed with me. So when Andrew Mark and them did that, I say, "You know what, man? Hold on. I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out how to do this myself." So I'm downtown and some Senegalese Africans selling from, from Senegal, wolos, and they selling their stuff on the street. I gave them my card. I say, "You know anybody so tell them come see me." Yeah. Right?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  And so first I got one, then I got two, then I got four, then eight, right? I, I was up to 23 tailors. All from Senegal. Yeah, all from Senegal. I'll never do that again. So anyway, so I had these Senegalese tailors and, um...

• 38:42Speaker 02

  I need something new, right? Now, I'm working with furs, I'm working with leather, and a guy comes into the store one day and he got a Louis Vuitton pouch.

• 38:50Ben Horowitz?

  And was that, that's Little Man?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Little Man. This was the kingpin in Harlem. The guy was, the guy was Jack Jackson, Jack, and he was in Harlem. Jack Jackson is the one who told on John Gotti's brother Gene Gotti that got him that 50 years. But the pouch is Little Man's boss's pouch.

• 39:08Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Right? And he got all this money, he got $100 bill. And I look at that pouch, I say, damn. What is it about this pouch? Ain't but $6 worth of vinyl.

• 39:18Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  You know, this Louis Vuitton pouch, you know? But everybody's excited, I say, wow. So it all, it clicked in my head. Now you got furs, diamonds, and gold. Now here's symbols.

• 39:31Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  I say, it's the symbols that's making us popular. So I went and studied all about the symbols and stuff, and I figured out the science behind textile printing and all that.

• 39:41Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  I say, if I could take them symbols and make them look like that bag, and have them walking around looking like luggage.

• 39:52Ben Horowitz?

  And at that time, at that time Louis, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, they didn't, they didn't use the symbols like that.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Nobody, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, none of them. And let me tell you, all you future designers and stuff, I never, ever went to a runway show where you see people, you know, the models in it. I never went to one until I did the deal with Gucci. I didn't want to know what it looked like when it's finished. I wanted to know how it was made. So all I used to study is technology, fashion technology, fashion construction. And I would go to all the trade shows associated with garment construction. So I began to teach myself everything about textile printing. And then, in addition to that,

• 40:41Speaker 02

  what I used to do was like, when the industry was moving from the United States to China, when everybody was going offshore.

• 40:48Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  When the unions, this, this is very important. When the unions tricked everybody into constantly asking for raises, but they didn't put pressure on the corporations that were producing the goods. But the prices was rising, they said, "Look, we can move our factories offshore, which end up in China, and then still get the same prices that we sell goods from here." So all the industries was moving to China. Well, this is the same time I opened up my store. So now I'm going to auctions at all these businesses, these factories that's closing down.

• 41:26Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  And I'm learning things. I would get to the auction early and walk around like I knew something and listen to the auction, you know, listen to the people who buy the machines, see what they be saying about machines, ask questions. And I'd be the only, like, black guy in there. I learned all about the different types of machines associated with the industry.

• 41:44Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  And I bought them and I put, I started bringing them to the, to my, my location. So I end up having a three-story building on 125th Street and a 2,000-square-foot factory on 120th Street, all in Harlem, all run by me and my Africans, right?

• 42:02Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Ben Horowitz?

  And your, your design process was also very different in that you spent time with the, the customers in a way that the guys in France never would have thought of.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. My approach to fashion is, like, you see designers, they come from their ideas, and that's good. They approach it like they're painting a canvas. And that's good, you know, because that, that's an input. But what I've always done was to embrace the culture and translate the culture. And how I did this is like, when my customers came in, I asked them how they feel about themselves. How do they want to look? Now, I got all this fabric, this is your P and I, and I'm, I'm printing everything. You know, whatever design you want, everything. But now, the creative process kicks in. How do you want this to look on you?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  And we sit down and we discuss how you want to look. So now I got all this input from all these people coming out of, of my community, and so this is the infusion of ideas that's taking place between me and those who want to be transformed, because clothes transformed me. And I know how it feels when they got them nice outfits on. So, what I did was, I continued that process.

• 43:27Ben Horowitz?

  You hear that, I just, all these entrepreneurs, you hear that.

• 43:32Ben Horowitz?

  Okay, good.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  So...

• 43:33Ben Horowitz?

  It's an important part.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  In doing that, I come up with all these different ideas. Whereas, a person who designs for themselves, if they mess up, if they make something wrong, then they stuck with a collection. Now, I got two pluses in my favor. I got fabrics that I'm making, and that fabric can be anything. Once you have a garment, that's all it is, is that garment.

• 43:56Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  So, I got that working for me, and I got the fact that I'm getting all this input from the people from my community who have these ideas. But I had to remind them, "I know you got ideas, but everything in your mind might not look good on your behind."

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Now, I'm shifting, there's a shift now, from the hustlers, and then it's the birth of hip-hop. Perfect timing, you know? Now, I have my personal collection of influences, all to me. So, I got this creative idea, I got the knowledge of textile printing, right? I have upcoming influencers.

• 44:45Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  So, I got all this working for me. Now, what's missing? I needed a social vehicle. Yo MTV Raps.

• 44:54Ben Horowitz?

  Now, you're on television.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  I got all the components that I need to be successful, right? But I ain't have permission to use those labels.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Right? So, I'm making all this stuff, and I'm under the radom. I got all the rappers and everything. Now, then the athletes start coming, I got all the black athletes and stuff. Then, Mike Tyson comes to the store, he's with Naomi Campbell, when she's starting out. Now, I'm getting all this attention. On top of that, Mike Tyson gets into a fight with Mitch Blood Green in my store.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Next thing, it comes out, Monday Night Football. And they get up in the helicopter, you know, over to Yankee Stadium. Down there somewhere, Dapper Dan's 24 Hour Boutique, ha ha ha.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, they're making a joke out of it, but now, everybody, everybody knows. So the brands say, "Who the hell is a Dapper Dan?" The next thing I know, hip-hop is moving on, moving on. The OMTV is bursting out. So all this attention, I'm getting all this attention now. And now, there's something very particular is happening with the major European brands, the luxury houses. They are bankrupt for ideas. Yeah. You know, so you couple that with what I'm doing. And then, it becomes, no, they say, "Wait a minute."

• 46:29Speaker 02

  So what I did with these symbols is to create this new idea, which they named after me, which is called Logomania. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today, today you see, the reason Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi, every major brand is using the format that I use. When you go to the store, look around, look at the artists, they have logos all over them. And that's what I gave birth to, that idea. So that was the infusion that the luxury brands use. So now, here's the plan. First part of the plan worked like this. Cease and desist.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Cease and desist. Next thing I know, the brands is coming to my store. Yep, with real lawyers, yeah. Anything with their logo on it. Giving me a letter to "Desist what you're doing now." They all started reading, they all started reading. That's part, that's part one, right? Kept reading. Every time they come, they taking all my merchandise and everything, so that's costing me money. In addition to that, right?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Tommy Hilfiger starts going to the hip-hop clubs and giving out Tommy Hilfiger jackets.

• 47:52Ben Horowitz?

  Ah, yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  You know, giving them out, Tommy Hilfiger jackets, right?

• 47:55Ben Horowitz?

  Figured out who the influencers were, yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  He figured it out early on, right? So, um, now, that infusion is coming from outside. The pressure is coming from the brands, right? The next thing they do, Yo MTV Rep, Ted, Ted Demme was the producer of Yo MTV Rep. Me and him had a tight relationship. Ted Demme told me, "Anytime you want, you just call me, I'm sending a film crew to you." Because this is the birth of two things, this hip-hop hair, fashion hair, this is the other side of the coin that's moving on. They go to Ted Demme and tell Ted Demme, "If you show anything that Dap O'Dan wears, we're not advertising with you." And that's when you started seeing the blur.

• 48:36Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  On what the rappers was wearing.

• 48:39Ben Horowitz?

  Right.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  So, now they raiding me, you know what I mean? They blurin'. The next step is to give the contractors. So, what, the first door that opened was, I remember when Jam S.J. came to the store. He said, "Dap, man, Adidas just gave me a crazy deal." You remember see, he came in with a big gold chain, with a big gold Adidas shoe. Oh, yeah. And that was the beginning, you know? That was the beginning of a thing. Then LL Cool J, then FUBU comes about. "FUBU, for us, by us?" Who said that?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  "For us, by them." Do your homework.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Do your homework.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  So, FUBU comes in.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  LL Cool J wears a hat.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  For a photo shoot that he was doing for the Gap.

• 49:43Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Bam, takes off, everybody see that? Fubu star, clocking numbers. So now, the next idea, now, listen to this, next idea. This was our opportunity, right? I'm gonna go to that next. I got twenty-three people working. I got a three-story building on One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street. Two thousand square foot factory on One Hundred Twenty Street. So, this is all money that's going out, right?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  So, one day, Fendi comes to the store with the Marshalls. Seasoned Cisorder. I got a jacket, a full-length coat, looked like an Aqua Schooling coat, with tuxedo black mink collar. Black plonge leather with all the black on black Fs on it. Sotomayor. Anybody know who she is? Yeah. Sotomayor. She's a Supreme Court Justice. At this time, she's working for Fendi, as one of the lawyers for Fendi's. She comes in the store with the team. She say, "That jacket, that coat is so amazing." He belong downtown. They don't take me downtown, they take all my clothes downtown.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  So that, these raids kept raiding me broke, and raiding me broke, and I kept losing money. On top of that, the most critical thing is now, you know, I started out with the gangsters. But now, because of the drug culture, it's imploding because they're fighting against each other. And when they couldn't find each other to fight late at night, they knew Dapper Dan was making money. So, two thirty, one warning, I'm sitting in my van, and these drug dealers, who were no longer making money, was struggling, attempted to kidnap me. I fought them off, and they shot me, and today, that's why I have a bullet at the base of my neck.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  So what happens is, and that's why you might hear me say, you cannot be in it and not of it. So after, after that, I had to figure out, you know what? I had to start all over again. I went from a table and selling clothes out my car to a three-story building with 23 people sewing. Five family members working. You know, in a big factory where I'm doing the cars, because I did cars, everything. Anything you wanted with symbols on it. I give you all the symbols you want, any way you want.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  So I'm doing all that. So all of that vanishes. Because, you know, my payroll was $12,000 a week back then. That's $48,000 a month. I'm just with, just with the workers. $48,000 a month. And then I had rent on the three-story building and rent on the, on the factory. So all I was adding up. But my, my passion for the, for my workers, because like, we was like a family. So even when I got shot, I'm laid up for a month, I'm still paying them. So that's one month is $50,000. So all this caved in on me. The next thing I know, I am back on the sidewalk

• 52:54Speaker 02

  with a little table like this.

• 52:56Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Selling t-shirts. But I said to myself, you know what?

• 53:02Speaker 02

  I'm gonna come back.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  So I never, I remember when my daughter said, Dad, what's wrong with Daddy? She never sewed me like that. I laid up for like, three months, just wondering what I was gonna do next. And then my wife said, we gotta do something. So I made iron-on Chanel t-shirts and went on 125th Street at the table like that, dear. I'm counting tour busters. I counted 144 tour busters that came through. I ain't sell one t-shirt. But I said, "You know what? I'm gonna figure this out again." At the time, Guess came out, right? Yeah. I started making these little outfits for girls, these little Guess with the little, this little, like a little cheerleader skirt and nice little tops with the Guess symbol and the skirt and the symbol matched

• 53:50Speaker 02

  with that little Guess what on it? And I started selling like 30 or 40 of them a day, straight for six months. Next thing I knew, I had another 100,000. You know, I'm calling, call it Africa.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  So now I got enough money. I'm building me up another little team. So I still can't go off the radar. So my nephew there, I get my little nephew there. Me and him hit the road. So because I knew all the gangsters, I would drive from New York City to Chicago, hitting all the black cities. Let me tell you a trick. I can tell you about this one. I had a friend work for FUBU, so I knew what their distribution was. So I went to every place they was at.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Going west and I come back and did the same thing going south. I struggled. Next thing I know, I had all this money again. And then I was stable. And in addition to that, something new took place with the rappers. Now the rappers got money. They forgot all about me, though. No, I can't say that. Jay-Z didn't forget. You know, because he came of age. What they would do was send, this is, this gave birth to what you call the stylist today. All the artists are working with stylists now. So the stylist was the mediator between me and them. I didn't like that, but I worked with that anyway. But I think by the time I'm getting ready to come out the underground, we had this big gap, right? So from the time, this is important.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  From the time that they raided me... To the time that I came back, all these black brands, these minority brands emerged. But what they did not do was study the game. They didn't do no reading, no studying. And so, they took the luxury idea that I created for us and took it downstairs, right? Right, right. One thing you never see me do, I never made no gang power for an area. I never did anything associated with that. I tried to keep it on a luxury level. So they, they made it so that anybody can have it, anybody can do it, and then it went down. So between the time that I went underground and all these brands emerged, they all collapsed.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  But this time is giving all the brands besides, besides Tommy Hilfiger, because he's the first to peep it. Yeah. All the other brands start kicking in. Even Ralph Lauren, because that's why Ralph Lauren opened up Ralph Lauren Sport and got that black model, Tyson. Yeah. All that was to, the lure to bring us in. So now, we lose all of that time while these minority brands is emerging, but they don't understand how this is supposed to be marketed and all of those crash. That give the luxury brands, that gave the luxury brands time out to step in and do exactly what I was doing. Take your designs. But charge way more. Yes.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  And so that's where we at today. But they made a mistake. My partners and the best guys out there today. Gucci created this jacket that I created in the eighties for Diane Dixon. Ah. The difference now, and as opposed to when I first started, is that now I have a voice. And I didn't know I had a voice. Hmm. But that voice was black Twitter. Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Black Twitter said, "Uh-uh."

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Uh-uh, that's Dapper Dan's. You know? No, that's Dapper Dan's. Black Twitter went in, right? Yeah. So the next thing I know, my son is of age now.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  My son said, "Dad, Gucci wanna talk to us." First we got all these entertainers and all these bigwigs calling us saying, "Man, yo, Dad, man, Gucci's trying to get to you through us." Right. My son say, "Dad, Gucci wanna talk to you." "No, child, I don't trust them." "I done been raided like crazy, what I'm gonna talk now for?"

• 57:56Speaker 02

  "I said they wanna raid me again, they ain't gonna find me." "Don't give my number." "Don't you say nothing."

• 58:06Speaker 02

  He say, "No, Dad, they wanna really talk." I say, "Oh, yeah?" I say, "You sure something?" He say, "Yeah, man." I say, "Tell them come to Harlem." "They came to Harlem."

• 58:18Speaker 02

  I say, "Damn, they serious."

• 58:21Speaker 02

  "They came to Harlem, we ironed out this deal, they say, 'We know that the world knows who you are.'" Yeah. "Now, he say, 'And all these brands are paying you homage, but they're not paying you.'" "We gonna change that.'" Yeah, that's crazy.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  So, they came to me with this partnership deal, they say, "This is what we gonna do. We gonna allow you to open up a store in Harlem." "Beautiful store, atelier, no more store, atelier, y'all got that?"

• 58:55Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  "They gonna allow you to open up an atelier in Harlem, and you gonna be able to do what you've always done, produce still. Only thing is with our fabrication, and that's gonna be a partnership. In addition to that, we gonna have a Dapper Dan line, and we gonna partnership on that, and that's gonna be distributed around the world, and you get a percentage of that."

• 59:21Speaker 02

  And so, and that's the deal I made, right? And it was working fine. Then there goes another boo-boo. But before we go to the boo-boo, let's go back to Louis Vuitton. Soon, as Gucci gives me this partnership, Louis been number one for years. All of a sudden Louis brings up Virgil. Right? Now, you know that's the reaction because Gucci put me in and we got a collection ready and we shooting it out. Louis Vuitton reacts to that by going to get Virgil and they don't have a collection.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  So you know it wasn't pre-planned, but a reaction, right? And that's good because we getting in these spaces, which is where we need to be, you know? But before that, two important things happened. First, there was Gucci Ghost, a great idea, and he was doing some of the things for Gucci that I did, right? But he wasn't quite Dapper Dan. And then Louis Vuitton went and got Supreme because Supreme is connected to the millennials. So they go get Supreme, right? But what the public did not know when Supreme made the partnership with Louis Vuitton,

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  when they initiated the line and everybody attending the show was issued a letter stating, and I want you all to hear this in the back, stating that this whole collection is inspired by Dapper Dan. So do your homework and find out. So here it is. Everything has come out of Harlem, this creative force associated with hip-hop that's circling the planet. Now, we got two things. We got one, number one is our ideas of fashion has encircled the world, right? Two, our musical platform has encircled the world. The only problem is... Hip-hop has gotten their money through trials and tribulations,

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  but we are not making any impact in fashion. Because of what we did from the time I closed down to the time I got this partnership. We didn't approach that right. So now, all the brands got their power. But now, it's slipping away. It's slipping away because they're making mistakes. So when Gucci made a mistake, it wasn't intentional, in my opinion. They made a mistake and did the blackface, that was another boo-boo. Now, I gotta represent who I am and where I come from. So I had to tell Gucci, I said, "Listen, man, I'm a black man before I'm a brand. How you gonna do something? You gotta come back to Harlem again and explain what you did." So they came back to Harlem again.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  And we sit down. And what I did was I organized all the people that I could find in the corporate world, those who were responsible for the mechanical way that corporations work, and those responsible for cultural inclusivity. So that they can come and organize a plan by which we can have a presence in Gucci so that this doesn't happen again, and we're represented right. If you want to read about it, it's called a change makers program by Gucci. And with it, so far, they didn't hire two vice presidents. They got programs to recruit young black designers, minority designers, in this huge program.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  Now, if you look and see what's happening, the world is becoming a community now. People are flying who never flew before. People are visiting countries. So the world is getting smaller. People are more familiar now with our culture than ever before. So we have to be represented in them places. What people of color have to realize here, man... You don't have to do like I did and start from a table. We need to be inside these corporations on a higher level so we can take advantage of the opportunity to see how they run and how they work so that we can do these things for ourselves.

• 1:03:34Ben Horowitz?

  Yeah, so last question because this is such an important point that you made. When you decided to work, like you could have gone the other way. They sued you, put you out of business. You could have said, well, like, we're going to get rid of Gucci. We're going to sue him into the ground. But you kind of took a lesson from what you learned in Africa when you visited Kenya, the Jomo Kenyatta, and then Uganda with Idi Amin.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, very good point. So when I, everything I did, nothing that I've done has been by accident. It's all been done through research. So when I went to Africa in 1968, I studied how they handle their government and their industry. So when I was in Kenya, I stayed with Chief Richard Korani. And he was equivalent to like a borough president, right? And what he taught me was that, like, what Jomo Kenyatta did when he became president, like, all the colonial land and the colonial houses that they had, he reappropriated the colonial house. And what he did was, he'd take this colonial house

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  and he'd give it, there's two major tribes in Kenya, the Kikuyu and the Luwaw. He said, okay, you're a Kikuyu, you live here. You take this house. You're a Luwaw, you live here. So he split it up so that there'd be this unity. The next thing he did, and the most important thing he did, which is what I implicate and I talk about in fashion, is that Jomo Kenyatta told all, because the economy was dominated by people from outside. Basically, in East Africa, they're Indians. So Jomo Kenyatta told the Indians that are in Kenya, he said, all y'all have to have an indigenous partner in your business, or you cannot do business here. Right?

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  So that set the framework for Africans, indigenous Africans, to learn how to run these businesses. Right. And Niyari did something similar to that. But Idi Amin in Uganda did something that devastated the economy. So what he did, he kicked all the Indians out. And so you didn't have nobody inside that could take over the industry. And the economy collapsed. So this is what I was thinking about when I approached the thing with Gucci. If we are to move up and move forward, we have to be in them rooms to see how these multinational corporations work before we can start building on our own.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  So if somebody tells you, this is important now, if somebody tells you, "Oh, man, we can start our own business," tell them, "Go get a table." And let me see you do it. Tell them, "Go get a table, let me see you do it." Now, what's so important about that? Now, say they gonna say, "Oh, yeah." And they get big-headed, and they go get a table, right? Now, you know, every 20 or 30-something years, we get a powerful cultural platform. You know, we've had jazz, calypso, rock and roll, all these powerful platforms by which the whole world embraces our music, that we can take advantage of. But they don't last forever. Hip-hop will morph into something else, you know?

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  But now, what's happening with hip-hop today, which I seen happen with rock and roll, is that other people learn how to empower themselves with our culture. You know what I'm saying? And that's nothing wrong. And that's gonna happen whether you like it or not. You know, so what we can do is when we get these platforms that we can take advantage of our culture, then we have to be able to utilize the vehicles that'll get our culture around the world by which we can make money. So while you sitting on that table, Gucci, Louis, Fendi, and all of them are taking elements of the culture and moving it around the world by using, by using... Influencers that are representative of our culture.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  So that's how this works. So we get a chance to work from there. Now, as the culture moves, it changes. People adapt to it. So you got to keep going back to the source from which the culture come from, building on that and take advantage of that. And if you don't do that, you're not paying attention.

• 1:07:57Ben Horowitz?

  On that note.

• 1:08:03Ben Horowitz?

  Thank the legend.