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Hip hop street wear brands took inspiration from the DIY aesthetic of punk, new wave, heavy metal and later hip hop cultures. Established sportswear and fashion brands attached themselves to the emerging early 1980s hip hop scene such as Kangol and Adidas.

Hip hop street wear is fashion that is considered to have emerged not from studios, but from the grassroots. Street fashion is generally associated with youth culture, and is most often seen in major urban centers. Magazines and Newspapers like the New York Times and Elle commonly feature candid photographs of individuals wearing urban, stylish clothing. Japanese street fashion sustains multiple simultaneous highly diverse fashion movements at any given time. Mainstream fashion often appropriates street fashion trends as influences. Most major youth subcultures have had an associated street fashion. Examples include:

Hip hop street wear, also known as urban fashion, is a distinctive style of dress originating from African American youth on the scene of New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit, Memphis, Virginia, Atlanta, and St. Louis among others. Each city contributed various elements to its overall style seen worldwide today. Hip hop fashion complements the expressions and attitudes of hip hop culture in general. Hip hop fashion has changed significantly during its history, and today, it is a prominent part of popular fashion as a whole across the world and for all ethnicities.

Streetwear included large eyeglasses (Cazals),Kangol bucket hats, nameplates,name belts, and multiple rings. Heavy gold jewelry was also popular in the 1980s; heavy jewelry in general would become an enduring element of hip hop fashion. In general, men's jewelry focused on heavy gold chains and women's jewelry on large gold earrings. Performers such as Kurtis Blow and Big Daddy Kane helped popularize gold necklaces and other such jewelry, and female rappers such as Roxanne Shanté and the group Salt-N-Pepa helped popularize oversized gold door-knocker earrings. The heavy jewelry was suggestive of prestige and wealth, and some have connected the style to Africanism.

Street wear in this period also influenced high fashion designs. In the late 1980s, Isaac Mizrahi, inspired by his elevator operator who wore a heavy gold chain, showed a collection deeply influenced by hip hop fashion. Models wore black cat suits, "gold chains, big gold nameplate-inspired belts, and black bomber jackets with fur-trimmed hoods. "Women swear Daily called the look "homeboy chic. In the early 1990s, Chanel showed hip-hop-inspired fashion in several shows. In one, models wore black leather jackets and piles of gold chains. In another, they wore long black dresses, accessorized with heavy, padlocked silver chains. (These silver chains were remarkably similar to the metal chain-link and padlock worn by Treach of Naughty by Nature, who said he did so in solidarity with "all the brothers who are locked down. ") The hip hop trend, however, did not last; designers quickly moved on to new influences.