Karl Kani (born in Brooklyn, New York City, 1968) (real name Carl Williams), is the fashion designer, founder and CEO of the Hip Hop fashion brand Karl Kani. Karl Kani was launched in 1989 as a fashion forward and Hip Hop influenced clothing line. Inspired by his passion for Hip hop music and fashion, Karl designed clothes that appealed to a large public, including friends and celebrities from his hometown Brooklyn, New York.
At age 16, Carl Williams started designing clothes after learning the essential handcraft at his father’s company. Karl never studied tailoring or design, but he had flair for coming up with unusual, stylish concepts. He would buy material and tell a tailor exactly how he wanted his garments to look like. "For a relatively small sum, as he put it, "I had a fresh outfit that nobody had."
Karl’s customized outfits were so “fresh” that soon they were in demand. After seeing him on the scene in local clubs, men started asking for a Carl Williams’ outfit of their own. Soon Karl was taking his first orders in his car. The death of one of his close friends inspired some deep contemplation. “It made me think about life differently”, he added “ I thought I should really do something positive."
During Karl’s initial rough start in Los Angeles the question that had obsessed him for years, “Can I do it?”, remained unanswered. He kept asking himself: “Can I do it? Can I build a fashion empire? Can I become the ‘Ralph Lauren of the streets’?” Karl didn’t have the answer for all these questions but it did provide the basis for his new name, Kani, a variation on "Can I?". With a stylish "K" replacing the "C" in his first name, he ventured his own optimistic reply, Karl Kani.
Kani is also known as ‘The Originator’. Karl was the first to set the trend of merging hip-hop with fashion. He spotted an area in the market that previously was ignored and paved the way for other Hip Hop Fashion brands. Being the first African-American man to launch a Hip Hop Fashion brand, Karl inspired many others to follow in his footsteps. His many achievements earned him the title of the ‘Originator’.
Carl Williams, we salute you.
(Article sourced from wikipedia.com)
