Snowboarder, Britain, 1994: beanie, T-shirt, hooded fleece, jacket, trousers, boots. Six garments, four makers. B-Boy, America, 1993 into 1994: hat, plaid shirt, jacket, jeans, jersey shorts, boots, from Cross Colours and Karl Kani, four of the six to Kani.

Afrocentric B-Boy, London, about 1990, comes to four: cap, sweatshirt, boots, and a Four Star General suit covering the outer layer and the legs in one accession. Yardie, London, autumn and winter 1993: T-shirt, cardigan, trousers, boots, all four from The Duffer of St George, and nothing on the head.

Ragga takes two entries, both of them partial. Oz of Against All Oz made and wore a crushed velvet jacket and trousers; the shoes with them are catalogued as women's. Danny Edwards wore jeans and boots dated 1992 and 1993 over a customised shirt from 1984.

The legs are the only position all six reach. Head three, base layer five, outer layer five, feet five. Oz is the one missing from the base layer and from the feet; Danny Edwards is the one missing from the outer layer. None of the six matches on colour.

What Sits on the Head

A cap, a hat and a beanie.

Zulu Nation supplied the Afrocentric cap. Red and green cotton, 544mm around, 232mm deep. Cross Colours made the B-Boy one. Blue and red, plastic-backed, 24cm long, 12.5cm high. Low Pressure's is a navy nylon fleece beanie.

The museum took a tape to the cap and the hat. The beanie came in on its description alone.

The other three outfits begin lower down. Yardie at the T-shirt, Oz at the jacket, Danny Edwards at the shirt.

What Went Next to the Skin

The snowboard set runs nylon and fleece through the beanie, the pullover, the jacket and the trousers. The sixth one is cotton. A T-shirt. Grey-brown, with a Buddha on it, worn under everything else.

Four of the others put something here, and all four are cotton. African-American Alumni's sweatshirt is printed with a Malcolm X design. Duffer's is red jersey printed with circles and squares. Cross Colours made a plaid shirt in patchwork, two sorts of check sewn together, 89cm long and 133cm around. That check is woven into the cloth. Danny Edwards's is customised white denim from 1984, the oldest garment anywhere in the six and the plainest thing in the group.

Laid side by side those five have nothing in common to look at. A man, a run of circles and squares, two checks, a Buddha, and one shirt with nothing on it.

The Cross Colours piece is the one the record fails. Patchwork is construction, and the entry never says whether a factory sewed those two checks together or a wearer did. Half the making of that 133cm shirt is unaccounted for.

The Layer That Tells the Sets Apart

Karl Kani's jacket is denim and leather. Breast pockets with leather fastenings. 88.5cm long, 126cm around.

Duffer's is a black, red and white wool cardigan with suede trim. Against All Oz supplied Oz's jacket, purple and orange two-tone crushed velvet with gold braid. It is the loudest garment in the six by some distance, carrying three separate decorative decisions on one body, and it is the only outfit here where every surviving garment is decorated. Four Star General's suit is cotton and corduroy trimmed with Kente cloth, the Asante weave from Ghana.

Snowboard needs two garments to fill that slot: a grey hooded fleece pullover from Low Pressure with a blue nylon Transworld jacket over it.

Denim, wool, crushed velvet, corduroy, nylon, and no two outfits reaching for the same one.

The corduroy is a problem for counting. Four Star General's is one accession covering a jacket and a pair of trousers. It stands here and again on the legs. The fifth entry at this position is half a garment away from being the fourth.

What Went on the Legs

One pair. That is how many on the legs ever got measured. Karl Kani's oversized jeans: 115cm and 136cm around, 79cm and 111cm long.

The rest carry no figures at all. Westbeach, wide-legged and slouchy in navy nylon. Against All Oz, black and red two-tone crushed velvet. Exhaust, customised blue denim from 1992. Duffer's, wool, creased, plain. The trouser half of the Four Star General suit, cotton and corduroy. Karl Kani's black cotton jersey shorts with elastic, catalogued by the museum as underwear.

All six have something on the legs. No other position manages that. Two cloths appear on more than one pair: denim, from Karl Kani and from Exhaust, and cotton, in the Four Star General corduroy suit and the Karl Kani jersey shorts.

The Westbeach pair tells you where that outfit went in practice. Westbeach put out oversized jeans under the name Gunz in 1993 and set the shape of snowboard clothing off the mountain. The pair the museum holds is from 1994.

Every Set Ends in Boots

Timberland

tan suede, lace-ups, ankle style

Karl Kani

black leather, mountain style, rings and hooks

Duffer

brown suede

Airwalk

black suede and rubber

Grinders

black leather lace-ups with a zip, Danny Edwards's

Oz's set ends in shoes the museum lists as women's.

The Streetstyle exhibition did hold trainers. The same show holds a pair of Vans, accession T.623:1, 2-1993, in a set of women's skatewear. They are suede high-tops, cut down, sealed with stickers and glue. The museum had trainers of the period to hand. It put them in another case.

Three pairs suede, two leather. The Timberland, the Grinders and the Karl Kani boots are recorded with lacing, the last of those on rings and hooks. Duffer's entry says brown suede and Airwalk's says black suede and rubber, with no fastening recorded for either.

None of the five is a light shoe. Under trousers recorded at 136cm around, that weight stops the leg ending in nothing.

Airwalk built its name on skate shoes, and its pair here is the only one with a rubber sole. The one piece of sports construction in the group came out of the wrong sport, sitting under a set whose other five garments were all made for snow.

What Repeats Inside a Single Set

Start with what it is not. Run every colour word in the six through the garments. No colour appears on all the pieces of any one set. Black gets furthest, onto half the Yardie garments and a third of the American B-Boy ones, and it never reaches the Afrocentric set at all.

What repeats instead has no colour in it. Snowboard runs nylon and fleece through four of its six garments. Oz's crushed velvet takes both of his. The Afrocentric set puts a name on two of its four, the Kente trim and the Malcolm X print. Duffer uses suede twice, as the cardigan's trim and as the whole of the boot. The American B-Boy set holds a width across the chest. The Cross Colours shirt measures 133cm there and the Karl Kani jacket 126cm, seven centimetres apart.

Then the part that matters. In three of the five that property crosses the maker. The nylon and fleece come from Low Pressure, Transworld and Westbeach, three separate companies. The two printed pieces come from Four Star General and African-American Alumni. The width runs across Cross Colours and Karl Kani.

The two where it does not cross are Yardie and Oz's ragga. Duffer made every garment in one, Against All Oz made both in the other.

So the repeat holds without the label holding. A shell from any factory still reads as nylon. A trouser cut to 136cm still measures 136cm.

What falls outside can be counted in four of them. Snowboard leaves out the T-shirt and the boots, Afrocentric the cap and the boots, Yardie the T-shirt and the trousers. Oz leaves out nothing, both his garments being velvet. The American B-Boy set cannot be counted at all. Three of its six garments were measured and three were not. Whether the hat and the shorts and the boots sit inside that band is unrecorded.

Where the Extra Room Got Cut In

Carl Jones founded Cross Colours in 1989 and has described the starting point as a pair of trousers built on a size 38 body with a size 32 waist.

The museum labels them: waist 115cm, hips 136cm, twenty-one centimetres between.

That is the 38 body and the 32 waist as a finished object. A 32 waistband on a 38 leg is a pattern change. Ordering a 38 instead moves the waistband to 38 as well.

The Cardigan Was Eight Years Older

The T-shirt, the trousers and the boots are all 1993. The cardigan's catalogued as about 1985. The museum will date it no closer.

Eddie Prendergast, Marco Cairns, Barrie Sharpe and Clifford Bowen started Duffer in the mid-eighties on a stall in Camden Market, selling vintage and stock out of army surplus shops. Bowen left in 1989 and sued the others over future earnings. Thomas Hiedecker bought a majority stake in 1994. Sharpe left the year after. Their own account of the outfit puts three sources in it at once. First, the reggae and yardie scene of the late sixties and early seventies. Yardie means Jamaican. On the museum's card the cardigan is a yardie cardie. Italian beatnik dress from the early sixties. Third, football casual. That was the terrace habit of the late seventies, expensive European sportswear worn to matches. Gary Warnett describes the same look as a merger of dancehall, casual and Italian style.

The other four sets run tight. Snowboard, 1994 all the way through. The American B-Boy set, 1993 into 1994. The Afrocentric pieces, 1990. Oz's ragga jacket and trousers, both 1993.

So the cardigan had been in Duffer's hands for eight years by the time the outfit went on show. It is the second oldest thing in the group. The oldest is Danny Edwards's shirt of 1984, worn with jeans from 1992 and boots from 1993. Both ends of the 1984 to 1994 range sit in outfits put together years after the garment was made.

Four garments from one shop has a limit built into it. In Brooklyn, where the Lo Lifes had been dressing head to toe in Ralph Lauren since 1988, Thirstin Howl the 3rd describes running up extra-large shirts out of three or four Polo silk scarves. Duffer's four garments never hit that point. Howl's wardrobe did, and three or four scarves became one shirt.

Wearing This Now

A tee, trousers, something over the top, boots. Two of those settle themselves. Cotton at the skin, leather or suede on the floor.

The trousers decide your outline. Put the width on the leg. Keep the waist close at the top of the hip and let everything below it go straight down and out. The lower half then reads as one column. That is the shape worth having. Burgundy cotton with white stitching down the seams. Navy nylon, slouchy. Black wool with a crease pressed down the front. The line runs vertical through all that width. Crushed velvet in purple and orange. The pile catches light as the leg moves. Any of them will do if the width starts low.

Put the graphic tee underneath. That is the better place for it. Zip the jacket and the outfit reads as plain colour. Leave it open and a strip of the print runs down the middle of the chest with the jacket standing on either side. A narrow band of pattern sits on a plain field. The print becomes one detail on the outfit.

Over the top, almost anything: a hooded fleece, a nylon shell, wool with suede running round the edges, denim with leather at the pockets, corduroy trimmed in Kente cloth. Size it well past your own. Once the shoulder seam sits out past the shoulder the sleeve hangs from a point on your upper arm. The jacket falls in long soft folds of its own.

The boots vary least of the four. Tan suede laced to the ankle. Black leather in a mountain cut, rings and hooks up the front. Brown suede. A wide leg needs weight under it. The two together give the outfit a base.

Common Questions

What did any of this cost at the time?

The V&A records no prices. The nearest figure is Karl Kani's first footwear line of November 1993, high-top boots at $130 and sneakers at $70.

Why did these brands disappear?

Cross Colours carried its product in more than half of Merry-Go-Round's stores. The chain filed for Chapter 11 in 1994 and liquidated in 1996, owing money for stock it could neither pay for nor return. Jones and TJ Walker lost the trademark and went their separate ways. They took it back and relaunched together in 2014. Karl Kani never lost his: he bought his own name from Jones in 1994 and kept trading.

Was Duffer only ever a menswear shop?

It worked as an importer too. It brought Red Wing and Woolrich into Britain first, pushed Carhartt and Evisu, made Tricker's shoes desirable, and ran a tailoring shop on Savile Row.

Is there anything from the second half of the decade?

Not in this group. Streetstyle ran at the V&A from 16 November 1994 to 19 February 1995. The newest date on any of the twenty-five garments here is 1994.