BRIGHT LIGHTS, B.I.G. CITY
“He would construct those intricately rhyming narratives inside his formidable brain.”
When the Coogi brand was founded in 1969, its trippy indigenous-influenced knitwear was designed to give wealthy American tourists the chance to drop a wad of Aussie dollars on a fair-dinkum kitsch souvenir of their trip ‘Down Under’. Little did its founders in the tony Melbourne enclave of Toorak suspect that — like many other symbols of brash upper-class affluence — their $500 creation would be co-opted as an aspirational symbol by the U.S. urban community. No one played a greater role in cementing Coogi gear’s status as playa-wear than Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G.
Critics at such respected organs as and have held Biggie up as the greatest hip-hop M.C. of all time. He wasn’t. That title goes to fellow New Yorker Rakim, hands down. (Oh, please don’t argue, the (remix), and filmed at Nell’s). Check the garment-promoting flow on the latter, which uses possession of luxe knitwear to symbolise Big’s rise: “”
