The Brooklyn crew that turned preppy fashion into a streetwear staple

A group of kids from Crown Heights and Brownsville, Brooklyn, created a fashion movement in the late 1980s that continues to echo into today’s streetwear culture.

The crew, known as the “Lo-Lifes” for their obsession with Polo Ralph Lauren clothing, would steal massive amounts of gear off the racks of department stores and mall shelves. By collecting and wearing Polo exclusively, they became walking billboards that helped give rise to the brand’s unlikely status as a staple of urban culture.

A new autobiography from the Lo-Lifes’ founder George “Rack-Lo” Billips, published by Brooklyn’s powerHouse books and distributed by Simon & Schuster, sheds light on the origins of the movement, its influence in hip-hop and streetwear, and Billips’ journey from criminal to career counselor.

As brands like Rowing Blazers and Aimé Leon Dore have brought a measure of preppy style back to streetwear, Billips’ book chronicles the way Black youth in New York first embraced luxury clothing while subverting its traditional associations.

It also documents his life’s journey from gun violence and run-ins with police to becoming the founder of a global fashion movement with chapters on four continents.

Billips describes the Brooklyn of his youth in the early 1980s as being much more provincial, with close-knit communities that stuck mostly to their own neighborhoods. He says that when he moved from Crown Heights to Brownsville, he was one of the first of his friends to bring the neighborhoods together.

Billips catalogs his early years by the sort of trouble he got into. He and his friends kept pigeons on their rooftops – an expensive habit for a young kid – and paid for it with side hustles like packing groceries and pumping gas, as well as breaking into payphones and stealing.

“I didn’t really care about the consequences,” Billips said. “It was all about survival, getting by, and not really wanting to depend on mom and pops for too much.”