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[Urban Buy]

Say anything
Graffiti chic hits the big time

BY NINA WILLDORF

REMEMBER WHEN A stray pen streak on a shirt was reason enough to hand it over to Goodwill? Well, those days are over. Today, thick ink tags can mark a formerly doomed shmatte as the latest in cool: graffiti glam. Fancy-shmancy designers are homing in on ’80s street chic, painting their ready-to-wear runway garments in a style more often found on walls, buses, and highway overpasses. The messages vary from poetic to label-promoting, random to unreadable. But all the clothes and accessories have something to say, both literally and artistically.

The trend started on runways in March with Louis Vuitton’s graffiti bags ($290 to $1730), designed by Marc Jacobs and covered with Vuitton tags done by artist Stephen Sprouse. But good luck trying to locate one: when ladies who lunch started drooling over the fall handbags, Vuitton execs told them to get on the phone. Boston’s store doesn’t carry them and the New York Fifth Avenue flagship has a 300-person waiting list.

But Bostonians need not despair. Louis Boston carries a menswear line of graffiti-graced denim and leather pants and jackets by London newcomer Wale Adeyemi, which sport positive messages (if you can manage to read them). A white leather jacket ($1175) has a patch of prose on the back left shoulder, saying something like be your and, um, that’s about all we can make of it. Adeyemi’s jeans ($150) and jean jacket ($195) carry red-ink words on the upper-back portions. “It’s a very positive message,” says Renato Mazzaferro, a menswear manager at Louis Boston, trying to translate. “As far as coming up with a sentence, well, it’s very hard to do that ... you get an idea of what he’s trying to say.”

Some messages are more frivolous than those on Adeyemi’s do-gooder line. A Sparkle wife-beater ($6.99) at Urban Outfitters features horizontal black-marker golf phrases like hole in one, rough house, and iron drive. Huh? If you can figure out the theme behind those phrases, we’re all ears ...

Further along on the random tip, Jasmine Sola carries a cut-off white V-neck tee by Joe’s ($86) with multicolored doodles of phone numbers, dots, the occasional Hebrew letter, and an anarchy sign. Of course, for those without cash to spare, this looks pretty easy to re-create at home while on the phone with Mom.

For those who prefer to speak messages aloud: keep an eye out for the soon-to-arrive Christian Dior handbag that looks like one of those old-school humongous ghetto blasters.

Loud and proud, baby.

• Christian Dior, Copley Place, 100 Huntington Avenue, Boston, (617) 927-7757

• Jasmine Sola, 37 Brattle Street, Cambridge, (617) 354-6043; 333 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 536-6697

• Louis Boston, 234 Berkeley Street, Boston, (617) 262-6100

• Louis Vuitton, Copley Place, 100 Huntington Avenue, Boston, (617) 437-6519

• Urban Outfitters, 11 JFK Street, Cambridge, (617) 864-0070; 361 Newbury Street, Boston, (617) 236-0088

Issue Date: June 28- July 5, 2001






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