Over the years, hip-hop has grown to be more than just a genre of music. It has evolved into a culture that incorporates and revolutionizes music with fashion, dancing, art and much more.
UCLA’s Hip Hop Congress will host its 10th annual fashion show, #swag, Thursday night in the Ackerman Grand Ballroom dedicated to the ever growing scene of the hip-hop youth culture today.
“It’s part of February hip-hop awareness month and the idea behind the show is to eleborate hip-hop in it’s evolution and to embrace clothing as a part of that culture,” Cultural Affairs Commission staff member and fourth-year Latin American studies student Margarita Rozenbaoum said.
According to CAC staff member and second-year political science student Isaiah Lauwreys, the name of the fashion show, “#swag,” reflects on the changes within the community and culture.
“It’s called #swag (Pound Swag) and refers to the Twitter culture and technology, so we try to embrace all of that. It’s kind of keeping up with the youth today and representing us and the things we do.” Lauwreys said.
The show will feature brands that range from A.Creation, LRG and Joyrich. The outfits that the models will be showcasing on the runway were chosen because of their appeal to hip-hop and urban style.
“We have some local brands such as Brandy & Melville. There are a couple of Los Angeles based brands: A.Creation, Dime Piece, there’s one called Luv Sicc, which is women’s clothing, so there’s a fair selection,” said Hip Hop Congress staff member and second-year classical civilizations student David Shamash.
Not only is the fashion show displaying a wide range of clothing from numerous brands, but it will also feature performances from surprise guests. Last year, the fashion show featured Mike Posner and Big Sean.
Models were cast in early January when Hip Hop Congress held auditions. Rozenbaoum said that the fashion show will feature a diverse group of models and that audiences should expect a less conventional runway show.
“We don’t strive to put together a high fashion show where when we cast our models we solely based on attitude. We don’t care about height and weight or any of that,” Rozenbaoum said. “We want people to … see fellow students participating in something that they love in an event that’s bigger than themselves and feeling empowered on stage.”
According to Shamash, the idea of having a wide range group of models is intended to reflect that in the everyday life of hip-hop culture, the clothing being modeled is worn by many different types of people of different backgrounds.
Second-year communications studies major Tara Sweatt modeled at last year’s fashion show alongside performers like rapper Big Sean and said that with the way the stage was set up, models walked the runway during the concert.
“It’ll be more of an entertainment event where the audience will get to see models and performers interacting,” Sweatt said.
According to Rozenbaoum, last year’s event had more of a concert setting, while this year will feature a live DJ.
“Everything was a lot of people piling forward and there was a lot of focus on the stars and artists. Now that we have an elevated runway, artists will be towards the back and there will be more attention on the models and clothing,” Rozenbaoum said.
This year CAC has reserved Ackerman Grand Ballroom. Lauwreys said he hopes that the larger venue will allow the fashion show to draw a larger crowd.
Lauwreys also said that he hopes that the event will bring out students of all different types of backgrounds to expose them to a culture they may have not known existed within hip-hop.
“It represents the things you don’t see every day when you go to class. We want to expose people to different cultures and hope the event helps people see different perspectives that they didn’t have any idea about,” Lauwreys said.