Sowmya Krishnamurthy is a music journalist and pop culture expert. Her work has been featured in Time, Rolling Stone, Complex, XXL, Playboy, Highsnobiety, and NPR. She is a graduate of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and lives in New York City. Fashion Killa is her first book.

"Fashion Killa is a love letter to hustlers, innovators, and people who didn't abide by the rules. Krishnamurthy's comprehensive work gives the history of hip-hop its due, recognizing the elevated contributions of the icons, designers, and rappers who came together to claim a place in a culture."
--Dapper Dan, Fashion Innovator

"Readers are lucky that this brilliant, shining gem of a book exists.... Along with its many nuanced arguments and observations, the book is a stunning historical record of years, people, places, runway shows, brands, and evolutions that should be studied. An essential book about U.S. culture."
--Booklist

"A cogent study of hip-hop's outsized influence on fashion trends...The link between hip-hop and high fashion is so tight that many consider them part of the same package. In this fast-paced, deeply researched history, Krishnamurthy chronicles how and why that deep bond continues today. ... Exciting and exhaustive, this fun hip-hop history explains what your favorite rappers are wearing and why."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"The first comprehensive anthology of the marriage between hip-hop and luxury fashion, mapping out well-examined evidence of the two entities being inextricably linked."
--The Cut

"Krishnamurthy cements herself as a necessary historian for the culture."
--Paper Magazine

"Fashion Killa is super important because we are the culture that transcends into fashion. Rappers motivate designers to make something dope. Hip-hop and fashion is a perfect marriage!"
--Raekwon, Rapper and author of From Staircase to Stage

"Sharp and engaging contribution to fashion, art, and storytelling. A must read for anyone who adores and respects fashion's contribution to mankind."
--Slick Rick, Storyteller, and Fashion Icon

"Sowmya Krishnamurthy's powerful and meticulously told deep dive into hip-hop's culture of showing out is a vibrant and historic telling of a groundbreaking story. Fashion Killa captures the visionaries, misfits, and rule breakers who revolutionized the worlds of fashion, innovation, and luxury. This is not just the American dream but a global story."
--Vikki Tobak, author of Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History and Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop.

"Fashion Killa is a luxury quilt of hip-hop journalism sewn with gilded floss. In Sowmya's skillful sartorial hand, the stories of fashion icons and upstart rappers appear in a two-way mirror, revealing the line between haute and street as a fabrication born out of aspiration, and the thread tying hip-hop to fashion as inevitable and durable indeed."
--Dan Charnas, New York Times bestselling author of Dilla Time and The Big Payback

Publisher: Gallery Books

Pub date: 2024-09-03

Length: 304 pages