‘Hippie, High Street, and Super Black’: Sly Stone’s Style Inspired Artists to Find Their Own Groove

In music, it’s an open secret that one’s look is as important as their sound, and Sly Stone was a cosmopolitan reflection of time and place who simultaneously transcended eras. The American icon died on Monday at 82, leaving behind a legacy of soaring musical achievements, struggle, and glittery Halston unitards and capes that still make today’s pop stars drool.

Sly and the Family Stone rose to the forefront during the tumultuous late Sixties, amid perilous Civil Rights demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam War, all while “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People” played in the backdrop. As the developing hippie and counterculture grew, so did Sly’s superstardom. From his crocheted hats and patchwork pants to fringed two-tone tops and bug-eyed sunglasses at Woodstock, Sly dressed for his searing introduction to fame as one of America’s first Black musical luminaries with matching panache, creating a lane that allowed future musicians to do the same.

“In the 1960s, there was a burgeoning Black middle class and many people dressed conservatively to ensure they were seen as upwardly mobile and non-threatening,” says Emil Wilbekin, an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “But Sly’s look did not conform. He was hippie and high street London. It was also super Black.”

Sly’s style followed a long Black fashion lineage of high drama and imagination, picking up traditions set by the likes of Gladys Bentley’s gender-bending tuxedos, Little Richard’s pompadour and makeup, and The Supreme’s coordinated costume. (Much of this was celebrated at the Met Gala’s recent exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”) In the United States, Black people’s fashion has historically been used for protection and to declare “this who we know we are” in the face of racist stereotypes. Sly’s fashion moments, such as his Beatles-adjacent wig, dress shirt, and beaded necklace on the cover of the band’s 1967 album A Whole New Thing, immediately announced to the world, “This is not your usual group.” Sly also made sure fashion and aesthetic choices played a role with the group as a whole: Sly & the Family Stone was a band composed of men and women who were Black and white, who had the freedom to dress themselves for the stage, all of which were radical at the time. Sly would choose a color group and band members pick complimentary outfits, proof that he was dedicated to individuality and unity as an idea and a practice.

As the band grew in popularity, Sly stayed in the spotlight and provided formative Afrofuturism and glam rock looks: Bohemian knits with a fringed beaded shirt and fuzzy knee-high boots; red leather and bedazzled jumpsuits with oversized collars and embellished belts; and even the occasional bare chest with patchwork denim jeans. Each ensemble told the world that they were in the presence of someone larger than life, and he became an artist whose looks complemented the groundbreaking qualities of his songs. As time progressed, Sly’s influence reappeared again and again. It began to bubble up in Seventies and Eighties artists like Prince, who blended Sly’s virtuoso talents, taking it a step further with gender-bending clothing choices. Platforms, bell bottoms and lace-drizzled hats wowed audiences along with Prince’s ability to play all of the instruments on stage. In the Nineties, Lenny Kravitz’s leather pants, fur-lined tops and heels felt like nods to Sly. Later in the 2000s, the Soulquarians, a gaggle of neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu, Common, Talib Kweli and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, brought crocheted hats and patchwork leather pants and tops back to the forefront, styled by influential designer and milliner Ashaka Givens.

“I was looking at the stylistic expression of the music they were making and reflecting it in their costumes,” Givens recalls. She began as Badu’s costume designer in 1997 and met the rest of the Soulquarians on the road. Later, she began working with Common during his “Electric Circus” period, crafting pieces that reflected his sound and historical examples with an updated twist. “They would reference Sly, Bootsy and Earth, Wind and Fire and Parliament, and I’d think, How can I make this authentic and not the Party City version?” Givens remembers. “The answer was taking the silhouette and adding modern fabrication so it’s still current.”

Other risk-taking artists came along and pulled directly from Sly’s stage costumes: Some clear references include Goodie Mob’s Big Gipp and his penchant for patchwork pants and Outkast’s Andre 3000 with his furry rainbow-colored pants, made by Givens. And while Sly’s blend of boho, eclectic and space-age-wear opened up new possibilities in fashion, ultimately, what he left behind for artists was the courage to wear something made for a space station on planet earth.

“He wore seriously fly clothes,” Pharrell Williams wrote in the New York Times in 2003. “And to this day, I have no idea how he walked around in those platforms.”

Stone’s penchant for being himself gave his descendants the opportunity to groove to their own sartorial drums — and we’re all the freer because of it.