10/08/08
Text: Nik Mercer
Kangol may make LL Cool J's hat of choice (and, ahem, Kangol Kid's), but the weathered British clothing company came from a grander, less proletarian place, and tonight's retrospective with photographers Ricky Powell and Janette Beckman that looks back on the label's seventy year history is testament to such a claim. (Check out General Montgomery in his Kangol cap to get a better idea of where the company came from.)
The birthday bash, which is being held at Le Royale (21 7th Ave. South), will include "a cocktail hour displaying selected portraits... by Ricky Powell and Janette Beckman" and a bit of a dance party with DJs Justine D and D.F.A.'s Holy Ghost! on the 1s and 2s.
If you're planning on checking out the bound-to-be-a-blast event, you better read up on your Kangol history so as not to be too ignorant of the legendary company's cultural importance:
"Some seventy years ago a Jewish Polish refugee and British World War One veteran who made his trade importing the newly popular French beret to England decided to meet the increasing demand by producing his own, setting up a factory in the rural and remote northwestern English village of Cleator. From that bit of Depression Era entrepreneurial ingenuity, through the next world war then dawning, collaborations with designers Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin, endorsement deals with The Beatles and Arnold Palmer and an iconic role in the American Girl Scout movement, Kangol would earn a modest place in history. It took the emergence of Hip Hop as a major cultural force out of New York City in the late Seventies and early Eighties, when Hip Hop artists like Grandmaster Flash, Kaz, LL Cool J, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys started rocking their gear to make Kangol history itself."
