The Rise Of The Hoodie - from Rocky Balboa?

Posted January 26 2013

It seems like everyone has a favorite hoodie nowadays, but was it always so?  According to this article a few years back by the New York Times, Rocky Balboa helped influence the rise of the hoodie in today's fashion.  The hoodie "signifies outcast status."  It began "in the 1930s as a practical piece of clothing" created first by Champion for "laborers in frozen warehouses of upstate New York."  "Eventually, hooded sweatshirts were produced for football and track athletes." 

In the late 1970s the fictional character Rocky played by Sylvester Stallone was becoming a mainstream cultural icon just as hip-hop culture was developing in New York City. The hoodie fashion was passed on  to this culture as it symbolized "an us against them," root for the underdog message.  By the 1990s clothing makers like "Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren, and even high-fashion designers like Gucci and Versace" began making hooded sweatshirts inspired by it's popularity in the hip-hop community.

So, started for it's practical purposes to keep workers warm in frozen warehouses to its practicality with athletes, its comfort and style soon caught on to mainstream fashion and the rest is history.  The hoodies in closets like yours and mine are evidence of that! =)