Writer Katherine Bernard spent months listening to every track in Jay-Z's discography, carefully plotting each and every sartorial name-check along the way—and you might soon be able to wear her efforts in the form of a T-shirt. It wouldn't be the first time Bernard has explored the direct relationship between fashion and rap: last year, Dazed published her entertaining take on tracking brands' popularity via Rap Genius' "Rap Stats" tool. This time, Bernard narrowed her sample size to one artist, weighing the influence of one major voice over time. To accompany her project "Art As Wrench"—an anagram of Jay-Z's given name—she mocked up a demo of the shirt and had some familiar fashion faces, including Been Trill's Heron Preston and Vogue's Lynn Yaeger, read off the luxury checklist in the order Hova named them. Some, like Izod and Bali, are perplexing to the younger readers, and NYTimes music writer Jon Caramanica reads off, "Prada, Chloe, Prada," then smiles and adds, "It's real basic bitch shit."
Bernard has a Kickstarter to seek funding for larger-scale distribution. If it pops off, the shirts would also provide momentum for her next project: Kanye's laundry list of luxury picks. Bernard plans to tap into his passionate and often turbulent relationship with the fashion industry, telling The Cut, "As his life increasingly becomes a performance, what he wears carries more weight. He lives in his clothes in a really public way, there's a dialogue between him and his clothes that's very personal and sometimes even contentious." Either way, as the project's scope widens (and includes more artists), it will no doubt provide an enlightening look at vagaries and trends in both the fashion and hip-hop spheres. See the graphic and watch the video below.
Lead Image: Kevin Winter / Getty Images
