Jay-Z is doing a collaboration between his Roc Nation and the Italian luxury fashion house Monclear to launch a line of clothing that was all designed by my man himself Jay-Z.
The Roc Nation x Monclear collection includes puffer jackets, vests, heavyweight sweatshirts and sweat shorts with accompanying branded t-shirts, and an iconic fuzzy bucket hat, which would look pretty sweet on me, but I digress.
The collaboration works because of the contrast between the two brand’s aesthetics of “alpine luxury fused with a healthy dose of NYC swagger” to quote Esquire.
This isn’t the first time that Jay-Z has worked with Monclear. Jay-Z and one of his Roc Nation producers Mike Dean partnered with Moncler to create an audio/visual project called “The Art of All” for the Italian luxury brand’s immersive experience at the February 2023 London Fashion Week.
Jay-Z is far from the first HipHop artist to dip their toes in the fashion industry. Such OGs of the fashion trade include Sean Combs (better known by his alias Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, or just Diddy), has his fashion brand named Sean John which according to Wikipeadia “is a privately held fashion lifestyle company created by music mogul Sean Combs.” that “debut with a men’s sportswear collection for the spring 1998 season.” and has “annual retail sales of $450 million” in 2016.
Kanye West’s Brand Yeezy was an incredibly successful and profitable collaboration with Adidas with their Yeezy sneakers. The collaboration Kanye West a Billionaire for a hot minute before his mouth got him in trouble and Adidas canceled their contract after he said some anti-semitic comments and torpedoed his own fashion brand.
Then there was FUBU (better known as For Us By Us), that was one of the first brands spawned from HipHop culture. FUBU reached its peak of popularity back in 1998 when they made $350 million in annual worldwide sales that year.
That brings us to Jay-Z’s own fashion brand Rocawear, which he founded in 199, and eventually sold to the Iconix Brand Group for over $204 million in cash in 2007.
Now Jay-Z is back in the fashion game with his collaboration with Italian luxury fashion house Monclear, although I think we can all agree he never really left.
