1997-12405 words · 2 min
"Armor All": Bulletproof Fashion After Tupac and Biggie
Kevlar in mink coats: How the murders of Tupac and Biggie made custom protective clothing a hip-hop trend in late 1997.
Original: “Armor All” · SPIN · Julie Taraska · December 1997
Floor-length mink coats, sneakers, and bulletproof fabric underneath: After the murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G., rappers no longer relied solely on bodyguards and armored SUVs. In December 1997, Julie Taraska described in SPIN magazine how fear became fashion. Her trend story carried the subtitle “hip-hop’s fastest growing industry: bulletproof street gear.”
From Bras to Mink Coats: Protection up to .357 Caliber
On offer were leather jackets, sneakers, camouflage suits, floor-length mink coats, and even bras, at prices between $300 and $13,000. The material was said to be lighter than cardboard and to stop bullets up to a .357 Magnum caliber. However, these claims came directly from the manufacturer and were not independently verified. The $20 million in annual sales cited in the article also represented the entire US market for Kevlar clothing at the time, not the hip-hop industry alone.
One supplier from New Jersey, Urban Body Armor, reported clients at Death Row, Bad Boy, and Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit. Most artists kept quiet about exactly who bought what. Only Busta Rhymes spoke openly about his precautions and advised all his peers to wear a vest: “Do the safe thing, not the sorry thing.”
Two Murders in Six Months: The Fear Was Real
The article is a snapshot of that era. By late 1997, the two most famous rappers of their generation had been shot dead within six months: Tupac in September 1996 in Las Vegas, Biggie on March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles. Both crimes were unsolved at the time.
Biggie’s murder remains officially unsolved to this day; in Tupac’s case, a Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty on August 31, 2026 (not final as of October 2026). As early as February 1997, rappers had publicly called for a truce in the East Coast-West Coast rivalry. The fear SPIN describes here with subtle irony was real.
Open Shirt Instead of Kevlar: Too Late for Tupac
For Tupac himself, the trend came too late. As SPIN had already noted in December 1996, he was not wearing a bulletproof vest on that night in Las Vegas. He probably would not have chosen his clothes for their Kevlar lining anyway: his persona thrived on the open shirt and the visible “Thug Life” tattoo.
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