Read the story of the ongoing and epic history of one your favorite piece of clothing: the hoodie!
The hoodie can be traced back to Medieval Times. Monks wore a hood called a cowl attached to a tunic as their clothing attire. In other cultures a hooded cape was very commonly worn by outdoor workers and travelers.
The word “hood” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “höd”, which is where the word “hat” was derive from.
For hundreds of years they didn’t change much until hooded sweatshirts were reintroduce in the early 20th century for labors working in cold New York warehouses, in the United States. It is believed that Champions Products, originally a producer of sweaters, produced the first hooded sweatshirts in the market. From then on, it became one of the most practical and comfortable clothing attire for customers.
The term ‘hoodie’ became more popular in the 1970s, as hip-hop culture was gaining popularity in streets of New York and the fashion world was embracing the hoodie as well. The most important push for the hoodie was probably the appearance in the Blockbuster film Rocky in 1976. That was forty-four years ago Rocky Balboa made his first triumphant ascent up the 72 stone steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art – creating one of the most iconic images in cinematic history. He instantly became a workingman’s, street thug and striving athlete’s hero. Rocky came to embody the underdog in his bare-bones workout gear the reflecting his origins of the streets Philadelphia.
As the time passed by in the 1990s, the demand for hoodies rose even more when athletes started to give their hooded sweatshirts to their girlfriends to wear. Hoodies were adopted by skaters, hip-hop artist, surfers and the punk culture as a symbol of what one reporter termed “cool anonymity and vague menace”.
One of the graffiti writers, Eric ‘Deal’ Felisbret recalls hoodies pooping up on the scene. “The people that wore them were all people who were sort of looked up to, in the context of the street,” recalls Deal. He also mentioned that graffiti writers preferred wearing hoodie to keep a low profile, while break-dancers wore it “to keep their bodies warm before they hit the floor.”
Clothing designers such as Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger took note, finding inspiration in the street fashion. They helped bring the hoodie full circle from the high schools to the streets and back again.
As the hoodie continues to rise in the fashion world even Mark Zuckerberg CEO of Facebook often wears a plain grey hoodie rather than a business suit, drawing criticism during his company’s 2012 initial public offering.
As you can see the hoodies is not going anywhere anytime soon, it’s going to continue to make strides in the fashion world and evolve into a form of free speech like the t-shirt.
Do you have a crypto project or know of one with a message and are ready to spread the word on a hoodies? Let us know! At Block Gear, we print super soft custom crypto hoodies and t-shirts that people love to wear and talk about, and we’d love to help you spread your your projects message to the world.