Cross Colours
Color-blocked jeans, bold-lettered tees, and a message stitched into every garment: "Clothing Without Prejudice." Cross Colours dressed the Fresh Prince, half of early-90s hip-hop, and every kid who wanted to look like MTV — then vanished almost overnight when its biggest retailer went bankrupt.
Carl Jones and Thomas "T.J." Walker launched Cross Colours in Los Angeles in 1989 — they'd wanted to call it Cross Cultures, but the name was taken. The mission was printed right on the clothes: "Clothing Without Prejudice" appeared on every garment, alongside messages like "Stop D Violence" and "Educate 2 Elevate." The idea, as Walker has described it, was to unify the African American community at a time when people were divided by gangs, drugs, and police mistrust — and the look — vivid color-blocking, baggy fits, Afrocentric palettes — made the message impossible to miss.
The rise was vertical. Will Smith wore Cross Colours as a wardrobe signature on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it was all over In Living Color, and the client list read like the era itself: TLC, Tupac, Marky Mark, Jamie Foxx, Paula Abdul, Shaquille O'Neal, Magic Johnson, even Muhammad Ali. The line reached more than 3,000 retail outlets, Black Enterprise named it Company of the Year in 1993, and by the founders' account the company was shipping up to $10 million a month at its peak. It launched careers beyond its own walls too, introducing future designers like Karl Kani.
Then the floor gave out. Merry-Go-Round — the mall chain that was Cross Colours' top retailer — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1994, owing the brand, by the founders' telling, $10 million it would never see. The company that had defined hip-hop fashion effectively went dormant for two decades. Jones and Walker relaunched Cross Colours in 2014, Cardi B and Bruno Mars performed "Finesse" at the 2018 Grammys decked in Cross Colours, and in 2019 the California African American Museum honored the label with its own exhibition, "Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century."
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