Not many garments have traversed as many fashion trends as the hoodie (a.k.a the hooded sweatshirt). The history of the hoodie aligns with America’s divisions of class, race, and identity. It has served as a vehicle for both this country’s dreams (athleticism, higher education, luxury) and denials (counterculture, anti-Establishment, racial injustice).
However, the meaning and status of hoodies has constantly changed and been re-invented. The first popular appearance of the hood as part of garments dates back to the European Middle Ages. In those days monks wore hooded tunics (also known as “cowls”) and workers who worked outside used hoods attached to their capes to protect themselves from rain and snow (these were commonly called “chaperons”).
In those days, the sole purpose of the actual hood was to protect against harsh weather conditions and had to be as simple as possible. Before the hoodie evolved to the form we know and wear today, sweatshirts were the usual sports and outdoor workwear. The US brand Champion pioneered the production of sweatshirts after developing a process that allowed the use of thicker materials such as French Terry cotton.
Then, in 1930, Champion sewed the first hood onto a sweatshirt to keep workers in upstate New York warm, thus also pioneering the hoodie. Starting in the 1960s, universities started to print their names and logos on hoodies in the 60s and 70s. This phenomenon is still widespread today for both sweatshirts and hoodies: especially in the USA but also all over the world.
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The Hoodie in Hip-Hop and Counterculture
Then, in 1973, the beat dropped in the Bronx, and the hoodie became the uniform of MCs, stickup kids, graffiti artists, and b-boys. A staple of hip-hop culture, the hoodie represented defiance, the down low, discretion, and dignity. Initially, graffiti artists, in particular, wore the hood to hide their identity from the police while illegally tagging public buildings or the New York subway. It is said that even today some sprayers still choose their hoodies according to the size of their hood.
When skateboard kids in L.A. and punk-rockers in NYC adopted it, the sweatshirt with a hood became a symbol of disruption. In the golden era of hip-hop, the hoodie went global. Tupac Shakur wears the hoodie in the movie poster for Juice, as do the Wu-Tang Clan on the cover of their debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), in 1993.
Since the hoodie was also often worn by petty criminals for similar reasons in the early 1970s, it had (and to some extent still has) a somewhat negative connotation. But, when the cult film Rocky came out in 1976, the hooded sweatshirt finally gained some iconic status.
Fashion Industry Appropriation
After hip-hop gained not only cultural but also economic success, the hoodie was finally included in sportswear collections of major fashion houses such as Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. This is when the fashion industry began appropriating the “urban” look, creating the luxury versions of the hoodie worn on the runways of Gucci, Prada, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Isaac Mizrahi, Chanel, and Giorgio Armani. The rather negative connotation of being close to crime (and graffiti) rapidly became a positive, cool and urban association.
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The Trayvon Martin Tragedy and the Hoodie's Transformation
However, the slightly negative connotations still continued at least until the early 2000s. One example is the “Hoodie Ban” from 2005 when the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent (UK) banned its visitors from wearing hoodies (paradoxically, the shopping centre itself continued to sell hoodies the whole time). But its association with Black culture raised the hackles of the white Establishment.
For all the wrong reasons, the media attention again focused on the hoodie in 2012, when Trayvon Benjamin Martin was killed by George Zimmerman at the age of 17 years by a firearm. On the evening of February 26, the teenager of African-American descent was on his own on his way back to his father’s fiancée’s house in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the police as a suspect.
Zimmerman was injured during the encounter and claimed to have acted in self-defence, which is why he was initially not charged with any crime. Police said there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense and Florida’s “stand your ground” laws didn’t allow the police to make an arrest or even file any kind of criminal charges. Then Trayvon Martin was fatally shot, and his killing made the hoodie a symbol of Black life, internalized anger, and social justice globally.
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After Martin’s death, rallies, marches and protests took place throughout the United States. This was followed by a national debate on racist profiling and “stand your ground” laws. One of the larger rallies, the so-called “Million Hoodie March”, inspired by Trayvon’s style of dress, took place on March 21 in Union Square in Manhattan, New York City.
On March 21, 2012, activists in New York staged the “Million Hoodie” march from Union Square to the U.N. Today, for Black public figures, the hoodie - thanks in large part to Trayvon’s death - has become a superhero cape, the uniform for those who want to make a statement about social and racial justice. The hoodie has become a fundamental piece of my wardrobe since the killing of Trayvon, even more during the COVID-19 pandemic, and most definitely since the murder of George Floyd.
On the ninth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, the racial conversations in America around the hoodie continue. The garment has been long associated with a racist stereotype of criminality in Black communities and a device for racial profiling in the United States. Martin was wearing one on 26 February 2012 when he was shot dead by a neighborhood watchman in Florida while out buying a pack of Skittles.
Now, in the same month Martin would have turned 26 had he lived, wearing a hoodie is still sparking conversations and debate around racist perceptions of Black young people. “I’ll never forget when Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, I was 12 years old,” wrote Chicago Bulls’ player Coby White on Instagram.
White has been wearing a number of custom-made hoodies from A3 Craaaftz, including ones celebrating historical figures during Black History Month such as Claudette Colvin, Matthew Henson, Shirley Chisholm and one of Martin featuring the logo “Don’t Shoot”. “This is when I realized racism was real. From that moment on I knew I had to be very aware of my surroundings as a means of survival,” he wrote.
Sole vowed to wear a hoodie to class every day to change the perception of the garment. Co-founder Andre Wright said he founded the group with Sole to “stand out against perceptions against Black and indigenous people of color wearing hoodie sweatshirts. We are fighting to be free and [are using] the hoodie to hold one our our most important conversations of our time: what does it meant to be Black and to be human?”
Fashion and Black Identity Today
With last year’s racial reckoning around the Black Lives Matter protests and the movements within the fashion industry to attempt to address racial inequalities, Wright believes that things have moved forward, including new spaces online for Black-owned beauty and fashion lines. “I think fashion has definitely changed,” he said. “It has become bolder when talking about the injustices [and] the messages about Black designers and fashion activism has amplified.”
Still, issues of fashion and Black identity persists. This week a teacher sought to discipline a black pupil in Oklahoma wearing a T-shirt with the logo “Black King” on it. “Clothing has always been used to justify harm against Black bodies,” said Wright.
Nowadays. the fashion world wouldn’t be the same without the iconic hoodie, which is no longer worn as a purely rebellious piece of clothing that embodies the hip-hop culture of the 70s and 80s. Instead, you can see the hooded sweater worn across all age groups and social classes. It’s now a versatile garment that can even look somewhat sophisticated and urbane if worn in a certain way.
