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One index for everything published: records, stories, watchable media, community memories and places. 14 records match.
The 'batty rider', the very short women's shorts that became an iconic, contested item of early-1990s dancehall fashion, especially among dancehall queens, a recurring focus of respectability debates and of Carolyn Cooper's scholarship on the dancehall body. Treated here as a documented fashion term.
fashion · Well supportedClarks Desert BootThe suede lace-up that Jamaica made its own: a rude-boy staple from the 1960s and a dancehall constant ever since, celebrated in Vybz Kartel's "Clarks" (2010), whose reported sales effect the company itself acknowledged. The definitive item of the island's Clarks canon.
fashion · Well supportedClarks Desert TrekThe centre-seamed Clarks style nicknamed the "bank robber" in Jamaica, a fixture of the island's Clarks canon alongside the Desert Boot and Wallabee, and part of the wardrobe celebrated in Vybz Kartel's "Clarks" (2010).
fashion · Well supportedClarks shoes in Jamaican music cultureFootwear style deeply associated with Jamaican rude-boy, reggae and dancehall culture, album/song references and UK-Jamaica style exchange.
fashion · Well supportedClarks WallabeeThe moccasin-built Clarks silhouette, launched in the late 1960s, that Jamaica adopted and never released: a staple of rude-boy and dancehall dressing across five decades, name-checked in Vybz Kartel's "Clarks" (2010) and treated in Kingston as formal wear for the dance.
fashion · Well supportedDreadlocks (Rastafari)The uncombed, matted hair worn by many Rastafari as a 'holy crown', symbolising the mane of the Lion of Judah, African identity and resistance; widely understood as a fulfilment of the biblical Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:5) against cutting the hair. In mid-20th-century Jamaica locksmen faced stigma and arrest, but through reggae dreadlocks became a global emblem.
fashion · ProbableGold teethGold dental caps worn as a status and style marker in dancehall, part of the flossy self-presentation documented in 1980s-90s dance photography. Community-documented fashion practice.
fashion · Well supportedJamaican bandana (madras)The red-and-white (with blue) plaid cotton cloth, originally madras fabric from India distributed across the British Empire, that became Jamaica's national costume fabric; Louise Bennett-Coverley (Miss Lou) elevated it from everyday and market wear to national symbol by wearing it for performances and public appearances, and it is worn today for Emancipation, Independence and folk-culture events.
fashion · Well supportedKangol hatSoft angora bucket cap and beret, adopted from mid-1980s hip-hop and worn across dancehall and the wider rude-boy lineage until the brand name became a lyrical shorthand for style.
fashion · ProbableMesh marina (string vest / merino)The perforated string vest, called 'marina' or 'merino' in Jamaica, adopted from a 1930s Norwegian army design and exported to the British Caribbean in the 1950s; suited to the heat, it became a staple of 1970s rude-boy dress and later a recurring look for reggae and dancehall artists (worn under an open button-up or in red, gold and green).
fashion · Well supportedPork pie hat (rude boy)Short flat-brimmed hat that, with the trilby and sharp suit, defined the 1960s Jamaican rude-boy silhouette and was later revived wholesale by Britain's 2 Tone ska movement.
fashion · Well supportedRastafari tam (crown)Large hand-crocheted cap, often in red, gold and green, worn to hold and protect dreadlocks and to honour the head as a sacred 'crown' in Rastafari livity; widely seen across roots reggae.
fashion · Well supportedRed, gold and greenEthiopian-derived colour triad central to Rastafari and reggae visual identity, read as the blood of struggle (red), the wealth of Africa (gold) and the land (green), often with black for African people.
fashion · Well supportedRude boy styleStyle of the 'rude boy' (rudie) subculture that emerged among poor young men in early-1960s Kingston alongside ska and rocksteady: sharp slim suits, narrow ties, porkpie or trilby hats and sunglasses, drawing on American jazz and soul dress; carried to Britain by the Jamaican diaspora, it influenced the mod, skinhead and later 2-Tone subcultures.
