Continuing on the Suits of Armour series, we begin to unpick Ghetto Fabulous fashion as it pertains to women in the Hip-hop sphere in opposition to male rappers and exploring how these oversized silhouettes now being sported by women became an internalisation of more than wealth status, but a gender affirming indication of power and autonomy over their bodies.
Where the oversized jeans and bold print jackets were used by men as non-verbal signifiers of power and cultural legitimacy in the emerging Hip-hop world, to women, these garments personified more than this. To women, it was a loud rejection of the cultural landscape and misogyny at large that hypersexualised women, confining them to the traditional western female pop-star mold. Their fashion also spoke to an embracing of queerness in a climate where black communities and the mainstream media at large weren’t accepting of the queer identity.
Salt-n-Pepa, Queen Latifah and Missy Elliot, dominated the female rap space throughout the late 80s through to the 2000s and their distinguishing visual identity destabilised the monolithic lens in which female artists in the Hip-hop space were framed.
Salt-N-Pepa’s visual catalog was one of the first modern examples of the depth of women’s creative complexity. Their newest single ‘Push It’ (1986) had just been released and saw the girls sporting an 8-ball jacket created in collaboration with Dapper Dan and Hip-hop artist, Christopher Martin. The Hip-hop genre was becoming critically identified by its lyrical flow and politically conscious messaging and the emerging all female hip hop group from Queens, intentionally geared any conversation away from their bodies and onto the garments and in turn the art they were making. It wasn’t simply because the pieces were oversized that Salt-N-Pepa were considered unconventional, it was the entire embrace of the Ghetto Fabulous persona. From the kente print chapeaux, to the blunt cut asymmetrical bob and neon yellow jackets, Salt-N-Pepa’s style proudly exclaimed, ‘we can be cheeky, sexy and soft yet powerful and incredibly self aware, all at the same time’.
Widely revered for her regal headdresses with vibrant threads, Queen Latifah’s incorporation of her West African heritage was a return to Dapper Dan’s Sapeurs influence, while remaining emboldened enough not to rework them for a more feminine silhouette or design. The hit Single U.N.I.T.Y (1993) from her third studio album struck an immediate chord within the black community and the recording academy at large, rewarding Latifah her first Grammy. Much like Salt-N-Pepa, Queen epitomised early Ghetto Fabulous swag, sporting fedoras, baseball hats and newsboy caps at a time when it was considered unorthodox for women. Her gender and cultural identity is personified through the same oversized, androgynous and eclectic signifiers as her male counterparts. Yet she, among many women in the Hip-hop sphere, are vilified and stripped of the autonomy that men who exude the same fashion expression are granted.
“I’m not taking it no more, I’m not your personal whore, that’s not what I'm here for”, Queen exclaims in U.N.I.T.Y. Raising awareness of violence against women and the objectification of black female sexuality, Queen Latifah mobilises a new landscape of activists that became a force for social advocacy in a field dominated by men, whilst reclaiming the power in Ghetto Fabulous fashion through her own gender expression.
By the early 2000s, Missy Elliott had entered the scene with her futuristic, oversized tracksuits and inflated silhouettes. Styled primarily by June Ambrose and Misa Hylton, both pioneers of the transition from Ghetto Fabulous into fashion and culture amidst the 90s and 2000s. With a moniker like ‘Miss Deameanour’ and an affinity for Canadian Tuxedos, it becomes clear that her larger-than-life theatricality was similarly a rejection of restrictive hyper-feminine norms. So, while Salt-N-Pepa approached fashion expression through the championing influence of Dapper Dan in the 80s, Missy embraced the experimental futuristic aesthetic of the end of the millennium, while maintaining her androgynous style that exuded power. This became especially polarising amidst the transition into the saturation of hyperfeminine fashion of the Y2K era to be explored in Chapter Four of the Suits of Armour series entitled A New Kind of Armour: Hyperfemininity and Sex Symbolling in Ghetto Fabulous.
Further Reading:
Chearis, Katherine (2005), Socialism, ‘Women, Feminism, & Hip-hop’
Mowatt Robyn (2025), Okay Player, ‘All-Time Flyest Female Rappers Who Broke Barriers with Speed and Style’