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Quality matching hoodies for girlfriend and boyfriend online shopping right now: When youth culture, urban style, and race are united by a symbolic item of clothing, singling it out can be problematic. It’s very difficult to strike the hoodie from our social fabric without excluding the same cultures that have adopted it. Graffiti, skateboarding, hardcore punk, and hip-hop sprung from the desires of supposed ne’er-do-wells to change their surroundings into something more bearable. Gloomy train cars became a canvas, broken pavement became a playground, noise and aggression became musical redemption. American society has embraced all this. We’ve absorbed the music and language of hip-hop. Punk music plays in grocery stores. Skateboarding’s sister sport, snowboarding, is now an Olympic event. The hoodie has been there all along. We can’t hope to eliminate it now.

The fit of the hoodie has also changed over the years. In the early 30s, hoodies were purposefully designed with dropped shoulder seams so football players could wear them over shoulder pads. Today most hoodies and sweatshirts are stripped from their utilitarian roots and designed with a straight fit so they can fit perfectly when jackets and coats are layered over. Evidently, the key feature of the hoodie is the hood with knotted drawcord and metal grommets designed to fit perfectly for any wearer’s head, to block out the cold wherever it’s trying to get in. There’s no need to carry a jacket or an umbrella. It’s all there on your back. Discover more details on country couples hoodies.

Founded in 1919, the US company Champion apparently made the first hooded sweatshirt in the 1930s. The company turned to making sweatshirts once it had developed methods for sewing thicker materials. Initially hoods were added to sweatshirts to keep workers warm during the bitter winters in Upstate New York. Shortly thereafter, Champion supplied sports kit including sweatshirts to the US military for training exercises and physical education classes.

Another culturally significant impact the hoodie had on America came with the 1976 release of the now-classic film, Rocky. Sylvester Stallone’s classic gray hoodie became a symbol for hard work. The hoodie found its place in high fashion during the eighties when Norma Kamali created her Sweatshirt Collection. This was revolutionary for the fashion industry, and it shifted fashionistas’ perceptions of everyday fabrics and garments in high-end designs.

According to Harold Lipson, a former president at Champion who started at the company in 1934, the hood was first added to sweatshirts in order to protect athletes and laborers from the elements. Employees at cold-storage warehouses and tree surgeons working through the winter were calling for a garment that would provide more warmth than their long underwear. Meanwhile Champion was working directly with high schools to determine their apparel needs, eventually making big double-thickness hooded sweatshirts that football and track athletes wore on the sidelines in bad weather.

Eventually, movies like Rocky aided in the hoodie’s rise from a subcultural representation to general popularity in the mid-70s, associating it with discipline, humility, and self-determination. For the first time, the hoodie was transcending its utilitarian roots and becoming politicized because of this double standard. The Nineties saw the emergence of especially hard-edged gangsta rap, and groups like Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill had a pared-down dress code to go along with their gritty attitudes. The cover of the classic 1993 album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is a particularly grim depiction of the hoodie. See additional info at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BC6G1FKT.