Young people who follow Ralph Lauren are like: “So what?” That’s why I was able to sell young people - I didn’t give them one horse, I gave them the whole carriage. The world is changing and what happened with brands like Ralph Lauren is that social media and musical platforms extracted young white people away from aristocracy. And sooner or later that's going to collapse, because the foundations on which it was built are too exclusive. And when you represent aristocracy, you're not challenged like the Beatles challenged everybody. One of my heroes is Ralph Lauren, but what Ralph represents is aristocracy. So from that point on I studied the symbolism associated with religion that took me back to ancient science, which dealt with man as a microcosm of the macrocosm and that the source of who we are is within us and we can connect to that. It taught me about religion as an appendage of ancient science. He said, “No brother, but look right here,” showing me a book called Man’s Higher Consciousness by Hilton Hotema. They didn't have it so I walked up to this guy that looked so spiritual as if he had a halo. So I go in there and get a book called Back to Eden, it’s a book about natural healing. When I was 23 years old, I went into a historical bookstore called Tree of Life on 25th Street where all the new age people went to learn about metaphysics. It came to me when I was turning my life around. I went to Chicago, I said: “Where the Italians at?” Growing up, my best friends were poor Greeks and Italians. I think my 9th grade teacher, put it best when she said: “Who is it that knows London when only London they know.” And let me tell you the difference. I didn’t understand the cultural power of Harlem before I started going to other cities. To really understand Harlem, you have to be from somewhere else. It just separated that generational respect that takes place on the street. The departure from this kind of cultural tree came about because of the crack epidemic and it broke up the lineage of families. And that's what I like to do, bridge the gap between the generations who didn't get the feedback I got from the older guys. We go through Harlem and I introduce him to all the older guys in the hood who knew his father, so that he could hear stories about him. One day I said “I want you to put all your jewelry away and be a regular guy, we’re going to take a walk through Harlem. So I try to impart on him all the history that his father would've told him had he been here. In the end, is, like him, an inspiration.Is a great guy, a great spirit, and he's part of a great legacy. There is a profound vulnerability in Day’s story and a striking self-awareness as he recounts both his successes and failures as a man, father, son, brother, husband, and entrepreneur. an intriguing and twisty tale about the hustle and the hustler, and it is eloquently and engagingly told. ‘It’s easy now to take for granted the trail blazed…Detailed descriptions of his family’s tragic journey through poverty, the changing nature of his beloved and cursed neighborhood, and his adventures as a hustler are riveting.’-Nelson George, The New York Times ‘A fantastic and cinematic writer’- Phoebe Robinson Spanning seven decades of history, creativity, struggle, and achievement, Dap’s memoir was published by Random House in July 2019, debuting on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list and later named one of Vanity Fair’s best books of the year. From 2017 to 2019, I worked with Daniel ‘Dapper Dan’ Day to shape his epic life story into a book, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem.
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