Dapper Dan ― Made in Harlem; a Memoir

The story of a legendary designer who pioneered high-end streetwear, from a storefront in Harlem to the red carpet in Hollywood, dressing everyone from Salt-N-Pepa and Eric B. & Rakim to Beyoncé and JAY Z along the way.

DAPPER DAN IS...
"Black fashion's greatest treasure." BET
"the original auteur of gangster chic." GQ
"the godfather of hip-hop fashion." The Source
"a legend." Chicago Tribune

With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the early 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own flamboyant designs. But before reinventing fashion, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books, and, finally, a designer who broke barriers to outfit a whos-who of music, sport, and crime world celebrities in looks that went on to define an era.

By turns playful, poignant, and inspiring, and featuring two incredible eight-page color photo inserts, including the only existing, never-before-seen images of the notorious Mike Tyson-Mitch Green street fight, Dapper Dan's memoir is a high-stakes coming-of-age story, spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an ever-evolving America.

Daniel "Dapper Dan" Day's work has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, The Museum at FIT, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum at FIT, The Museum of the City of New York, and London's Design Museum. His eponymous boutique was open from 1982 to 1992, and reopened in 2017 in a major partnership with Gucci, for whom he also served as the face of their fall campaign.