Italian luxury label Gucci today released an ad campaign featuring Harlem icon Dapper Dan ne Daniel Day, and also let it be known in a NY Times story that designer Alessandro Michele and Day are working together on a collaborative collection, which will be sold in Gucci stores globally in spring 2018.
Additionally, Day will open a Gucci-sponsored Dapper Dan studio for custom commissions. Day’s hope is to bring back some of the tailors who worked at his first store, which operated from 1982-1992.
All of this came about after an uproar over a jacket Gucci showed on its fall 2017 runway that was clearly inspired by a jacket Day designed in the early ’90s for Olympian sprinter Diane Dixon.
In response to the push back, Gucci acknowledged the inspiration on social media and in an interview with the NY Times at the time, Day said he was in talks with Gucci, but didn’t say much more.
In today’s article, Day finally spoke about the controversy. “People were excited in a different way than I was,” he said. “I was just excited about it being there. The part about appropriation, Alessandro and I are part of two parallel universes. The magic that took place as a result of what he did was bringing these two parallel universes together. That opened a dialogue between us when we finally got in touch with each other. I found out how similar our experiences were, the way he grew up and the way I grew up, and how he was influenced by me. I was never apprehensive about what took place. The public was more up in arms than me.”
