Cross Colours’ “For The Culture” Lookbook Puts Black Greek Life Center Stage with Brandy, MC Lyte and Yo-Yo

Cross Colours has launched “For The Culture,” a lookbook featuring retro pieces built around honoring individual members of Black Greek-letter organizations, and it centers them not just as members of their organizations, but as people fully immersed in joy, connection and community.

The lookbook was created by Kadeem Pilgrim, Senior Director of Marketing & Brand Partnerships at Cross Colours and a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., alongside Ray Cunningham, a National HBCU Alumni Hall of Famer, award-winning cultural strategist and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Both men are HBCU alumni whose careers have been built around culture, community and legacy, and “For The Culture” pulls directly from that lived experience.

Check out the EXCLUSIVE photos that Cross Colours sent to Watch The Yard from the lookbook.

Through intimate, vibrant imagery, the lookbook celebrates the natural beauty and magnetism of Black people, creating space for the community to see itself as it knows itself: expressive, radiant and deeply connected. At its center is a simple idea: honor the culture from within, through the people who carry it forward.

“For The Culture” includes cultural icons Brandy of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., MC Lyte of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., and Yo-Yo of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., each lending their presence to a project built around celebrating the culture through the people who live and shape it. Beyond the icons, Pilgrim and Cunningham pulled from their own community, featuring members of all nine Divine 9 fraternities and sororities they know personally and paying homage to their work on campus and communities, in their chapters and in the culture at large.

The lookbook carries the weight of Cross Colours’ history. Carl Jones and Thomas “TJ” Walker founded the streetwear brand in 1989, and it quickly became a fixture of the hip-hop generation. Throughout the 1990s, Cross Colours was worn by TLC, Tupac Shakur, and Aaliyah, among many others, cementing its place in Black entertainment and youth culture.

Every piece featured in “For The Culture” is an archive piece pulled from the Cross Colours headquarters. The team spent years combing vintage markets and the internet to track down and recollect the rare garments used throughout the lookbook, tying the project’s present-day celebration of Black Greek life back to its own history.

Between the archive pieces, the icons and the everyday members featured throughout, “For The Culture” reads as a tribute built from the inside, by two HBCU men who know exactly who and what they’re celebrating.

Photo Credit: Zen Moore (@Zenz3le)