Cyberpunk futurist Bruce Sterling once said that if you wanted to see the future, look back 18 years for a sense of what the next tipping point is: LL Cool J TROOP jacket, Edwin jeans, Slick Rick gold chains and the blaring 808 beats of PE’s “Fight the Power.” 1989 was the year hip-hop really burst into the mainstream, back before street style was logo-fied and segmented by ROCA-pet labels.

Which leads us to Daniel “Landlord” Morrison. Clad in a vintage Coca-Cola raglan, fitted, acid-washed jeans and red old-school kicks, he describes how the maintenance of his high-top fade is the quintessential aspect of his role as poster boy for local “hood vintage” streetwear purveyors Hoboken & Haberdashery.

“Yeah I’ve been doing [my hair like this] for five years, but every time I did, it’d be like, summertime I did it, wintertime cut it off,” he says, describing his wavering commitment to the style. “But ever since I met up with these guys, they gave me a reason [to keep it up]. They were like, ‘Yo, you have to keep it now; this is a full-time thing now.’”

Hoboken & Haberdashery co-owner Jesse “Uncle” Heifetz feels Landlord’s look is ripe for recycling. Yes, hip-hop style has finally met the eagle-eyed vintage digger.

“I think it’s partly because [hip-hop has] matured enough now where it goes from being [seen as] used to [being seen as] vintage,” explains Heifetz. “There’s a cycle of how vintage works and hip-hop wasn’t really around before the early ’80s or late ’70s, which is sort of the era of clothing that we’re selling. The ’80s is when hip-hop started, so it’s only natural [that the idea of vintage hip-hop has] finally come around.”

Heifetz has been in the vintage game for over 10 years, but he was raised in the business, with family-owned shops in Vancouver and Venice Beach. He says it was boring selling ’70s disco shirts and ’80s t-shirts to 69 Vintage and Bungalow until he found his niche, teaming up with co-owner Josh “JR” Rotter to sell original RUN-DMC & Beastie Boys tour shirts ($400 each, natch) and a mix of leather Pelle Pelle jackets, luxury Adidas cut-and-silk raglans with nylon overlay and lots of embroidery. And for the ladies, there are Chanel and Hermes zip-ups along with deadstock sneaks like Ewing high-tops that look like they were snagged straight out of a Jamel Shabazz photo shoot.
So far, the market for hood vintage is still a small enterprise. While Hoboken & Haberdashery have sold throwback hats and Nike jackets at Lavish & Squalor, they’ve found that, at this point, New York’s Coat of Arms and Las Vegas’ Fruition are the only shops that consistently stock this style.
Heifetz says they hope their new store in Whistler will be followed up by one here in the spring. Right now, H&H depend mostly on online orders and pop-up stores at the tri-monthly Retro party night to move the racks of inventory that hang in Heifetz’s basement.

So far, they’ve sold their gear to celebrity stylists, R&B singer Cassie, Hot 97’s Angie Martinez and Armand Van Helden.

“We’re just waiting right now to open to the public, because we don’t want to keep it exclusive,” says Heifetz. “We prefer it to be a movement. It’s hard to attain a good wardrobe of this stuff by going to Value Village.”