Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion

Impeccably researched and highly detailed, music and culture journalist Krishnamurthy’s debut title impresses with its breadth of scope. Spanning from hip-hop’s beginnings and tracing through its rise to eventual supremacy by the 2020s, it illustrates how intricately this music genre is interwoven with fashion. From the streets to haute couture runways, the book draws upon interviews with musicians, designers, and consumers to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between dress and popular music. Backmatter includes an extensive bibliography and index, plus a timeline of Kanye West’s discriminatory comments and behavior and the resulting impact on his fashion partnerships during the autumn of 2022. The book does not include photographs of the clothing it describes or the artists it highlights, which places it more in the category of an academic resource than popular reading. Casual readers might find the amount of information challenging without visual representation of the subject. However, those looking for a full treatment of the topic will find it here.