An Ode to the Jersey Dress, the 2000s Hip-Hop Trend

YouTube users Victoria Monét, Dmitry Fedkiv; Getty | Mark Mainz, Theo WargoYouTube users Victoria Monét, Dmitry Fedkiv; Getty | Mark Mainz, Theo Wargo

A full embrace of impracticality is one of the hallmarks of 2000s fashion. Jeans were cut low past the pubic bone with no regard or support for the stomachs above them. Men’s shorts were oversize and worn in the most inconvenient location: just underneath the butt, secured with a belt desperately clinging to thighs with every swaggered stride. They stopped just above the ankles — pants with an identity crisis. Baby T-shirt sleeves burrowed deep into your armpit, greedy, apparently, for sweat stains. Not a drop of functionality was to be found in these garments. But they weren’t meant to make sense — the aesthetic is what folks were after. And this rang true for one of the decade’s most recognizable looks: the jersey dress.

The trend, as a 2003 New York Times article tells it, was birthed from a place of necessity. For capitalists, that is. At the time, Mitchell & Ness, a sports goods brand, was enjoying a surge in popularity from a new market comprising Black and Latine city dwellers. Since the mid-’80s, the brand had been creating replicas of vintage jerseys, aka throwbacks. As the brand’s owner at the time, Peter Capolino, told Fortune in 2003, “I figured my market was 35-to-75-year-old conservative, college-educated, suburban white men.” But in 1998, after Outkast’s Big Boi was styled in a throwback Dale Murphy (Atlanta Braves) jersey for the duo’s “Skew It on the Bar-B” music video, it quickly became clear that his target market was far Blacker and swaggier.

The most powerful thing about the jersey dress is that it celebrated a very particular brand of femininity: one that appropriated parts of a male-dominated culture and remixed it in its own image.

But remember, it was the 2000s, a time when an oversize silhouette was the preferred look. The only fitted thing you were wearing was a baseball cap. These new customers were buying jerseys in the largest sizes available. The mad grab for size-XL-and-up jerseys left Mitchell & Ness with a bunch of smaller styles sitting in the warehouse. So, as the brand reps tell it, they decided to turn the extra stock into dresses, at the behest of the company’s then-President Reuben Harley. Harley gave one of the dresses to R&B singer Faith Evans, who wore the piece on an episode of BET’s “106 & Park” at the top of the aughts. The rest is history.

It seemed as if jersey dresses were everywhere. Mariah Carey took the stage at the 2003 NBA All Stars game in two jersey dresses. The first was a throwback Chicago Bulls piece with Michael Jordan’s number 23. It stopped well above her knees, the sides boasting a lace-up detail to make it even more alluring. The other look, a Michael Jordan Washington Wizards jersey, had a low neckline and reached the floor, grasping every curve on the way down. That same weekend, rapper Eve was spied out and about wearing another Michael Jordan throwback dress — this one for the Chicago Bulls — paired with the It shoe of the time: high-heeled Timbs.

Styled by June Ambrose, R&B singer Mya starred in the 2000s “Best of Me (Remix)” music video matching JAY-Z in a powder-blue North Carolina Tar Heels Jersey, arguably the most memorable of the decade. It bore the number 23, the one Jordan wore when he played for the team in college. She recently wore a blinged-out re-creation of it in a photo shoot with Alexis Photography in June 2023, 23 years after it made hip-hop history.

The jersey dress is at once tomboyish and unapologetically feminine. It was made to be accessorized, preferably with large gold hoops, rimless sunglasses with colored lenses, stacks of necklaces, and sneakers you wouldn’t dream of playing any sport in. Apropos, since the dresses, despite their obvious link to athletic teams, were decidedly impractical for any strenuous physical activity other than dancing in the club. The frivolity was the main appeal. That’s what made them so cute. They were cut to the feminine figure: pinched at the waistline, fitted enough to hug the curves, almost always stopping at a length that would allow for a generous view of the wearer’s thigh.

You didn’t need to know the team or the player in order to wear them. If you did, it was a bonus. You were never questioned about the player’s stats or abilities. You were never shamed for not knowing any of those things. In the 2000s, wearing a T-shirt with a band whose songs you couldn’t name was a faux pas. But wearing a jersey with the name of a player you couldn’t identify in a lineup? Acceptable. Celebrated, even. Because the look was the point — not the actual engagement with sports culture.

And with this, every girl with an ear for hip-hop from the Bronx, NY, to Inglewood, CA, embraced the piece. We were all running around in Jordan 1s, looking like Fabolous’s love interest in the music video for “Trade It All.” Whether clueless about sports or not, girls across the States were embracing the aesthetic, and soon, other clothiers like South Pole and FUBU were creating versions of the piece with their own branding.

The impact of the jersey dress on 2000s style is generation-defining. It’s now a favorite of Gen Zers at parties honoring the decade. R&B singer Victoria Monét’s music video for “On My Mama” is an ode to early-aughts hip-hop culture and could not be complete without the fashion staple. In one scene, she wears a baby-blue jersey dress with lace-up sides, recalling Mya’s iconic “Best of Me (Remix)” look.

The most powerful thing about the jersey dress is that it celebrated a very particular brand of femininity: one that appropriated parts of a male-dominated culture and remixed it in its own image. It wasn’t just sports culture; hip-hop as well was decidedly male. And the prominent fashion trends centered on menswear. Men still make up the majority in the space today, but we are enjoying a dominance of female emcees like Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, City Girls, and Nicki Minaj. But in the early 2000s, there was a mere handful of highly visible women rappers, and the jersey dress allowed them to participate in the culture at an entry point that was more suited to feminine sensibilities.

It allowed girls who didn’t give a damn about a ball or the men wielding them to indulge in a fantasy far more accessible and, depending on who you ask, fun.

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