CROSS COLORS JEANS & T-SHIRT

Founded in 1989, street wear brand Cross Colours was born with the tagline “Clothing Without Prejudice,” and was created to raise awareness of the violence inflicted on communities of color. The painted jeans display their brand logo and features faces looking at each other with the messages “WE HAVE TO” and “WE HAVE TO WORK LIVE SING DREAM AND THINK TOGTHER” on either leg. Notably, these iconic jeans were featured in aa 1991 advertisement, displayed nearby. The graphic T-shirt draws upon a similar color palette and prominently features the brand’s logo. Cross Colours was one of the pioneers of the influencer style of marketing that is commonplace today. This is evident by the responses of the founders Carl Jones and TJ Walker when asked about the power of influence regarding Cross Colours and its impact on the world as they state, “I think the most important move we made was deciding to reach out to the Fresh Prince. ... We started to give away a ton of products. It’s exactly what Influencer Marketing has become today. We treated our products like currency and factored it into our advertising costs.” Even today Cross Colours uses its massive pull to conduct political change and activism through their website that has a page about this called, “every vote counts.”