Early this morning as I was scrolling through my Instagram feed full of Halloween costumes, I saw a striking photo of four black men posted up on an vintage orange car wearing soft waved wigs and classic green velour sweatsuits. They were perfectly dressed up as the guys in Solange's "Don't Touch My Hair" video. In the picture, they posed proud with their arms folded — all in liberated postures just like the men in the original visual.
This afternoon, The FADER spoke to one of the men in the picture, Kenneth Kyrell, a Macy's Fashion Director, Lifestyle Blogger, and DJ, about how he and his friends shopped for their impressive look. As he explained, the four friends wanted to come together with one unified look to represent black culture and salute Solange for the movement she started with A Seat at the Table.
One of the most striking things about their costumes were how closely they were able to match the original velour sweatsuits from the video. Kyrell said that putting the costume together was a bit of a challenge, but everything came together nicely.
"The wigs weren't too hard to locate," Kyrell told me. "We went to a beauty supply store in Harlem and we thought it would be easy to find the green sweatsuits in the hood but it wasn’t. We went to this store Harlem NYC on 125th Street that sells a lot of streetwear and we found the green version of the velour with the hood."
In October, Shiona Turini told The New York Times just how difficult it was to find the exact sweatsuits she wanted for the video.
"I don’t know if people know how hard it is to find Akademiks velour tracksuits in 2016," she said. "I had to buy some off a website from China and reach out to the brand and find some off Amazon."
Kyrell's complete velour look was $25 and each wig cost $30. The suits took the group's costume to the next level and Kyrell said he is going to work the pieces into his everyday style: "Although it’s my costume, I’m definitely going to wear it again and throw a bomber over it."