New York Fashion Week: The Lil Yachty Collection By Nautica Holiday 2017

NEW YORK – Rapper turned fashion designer (even though he doesn’t consider himself a designer) Lil Yachty presented his capsule collection for Nautica during New York Fashion Week.

“I’m not a designer,” said Lil Yachty, who held court at the presentation of his capsule collection for Nautica. “I just have my own style.” Since bursting on the music scene with his platinum selling single, “One Night,” the Atlanta native made it clear that Nautica is his go-to brand, specifically the vintage styles with pronounced logos that fit nicely with his distinctive, boating-inspired image.

Yachty‘s formal relationship with the brand, which I never thought would happen because fashion houses usually don’t let people who look like Yachty and I in began in November 2016, when Nautica launched a capsule collection for Urban Outfitters and tapped Yachty as the face of the campaign (see it here).

Their relationship deepened in the beginning of this year when Yachty was named a creative designer for the company (see it here), which has led to the Lil Yachty Collection by Nautica, a tight assortment he collaborated on with Steve McSween, the heritage brand’s vice president of global men’s design.

“He brought his favorite Nautica vintage pieces and I brought mine, and 10 of them were the same,” said McSween. “And we built the line around classic Nautica pieces from the Nineties.”

The collection featured puffer coats, zip-up fleece jackets, vests, polo shirts and drawstring shorts in a tight color palette of yellow, red, hunter green and navy. The lineup was logo heavy and sprinkled with new details and fabrics including white zippers, mesh panels placed over a flocked “N” logo and Sherpa, which was used for varsity jackets and bucket hats.

I love the fact that Yachty brought a diverse group of models to his presentation. Nautica has provided the artist with a platform to extend his vision, and he’s injected some new energy into the more than 30-year-old fashion label. It’s an ideal partnership.

Thank You Lil Yachty for opening up the doors for people who look like us, come from where we came from and breaking barriers in the fashion industry.

It’s so hard from Black people, especially straight males who comes from the inner cities in America to succeed in the fashion industry filled with gay white men.

Designers copy off our culture all the time, and then you don’t see a lot of people that look anything like us in ad campaigns, on billboards, working at magazines and fashion houses, or sitting in the front row at shows.

Photos Credit: George Chinsee/WWD/REX/Shutterstock