The “Crown of Cairo” hat by luxury brand Melrose High is having a moment.
Since debuting in 2022, the unbranded cashmere wool beanie hat, adorned with Swarovski crystals, has become an instant conversation starter and like-collector on Instagram. Atlanta hip-hop stars like 2 Chainz, Quavo, Lil Baby and music producer Metro Boomin have been seen rocking the sparkly toboggan in music videos, selfies, and courtside at basketball games.
The headpiece’s reach extends far beyond the South: Chicago drill rap pioneer Chief Keef, R&B superstar Chris Brown and K-pop sensation Zico also have the hat in common. Grammy-winning producer Hit-Boy and his father, rapper Big Hit, have worn them in family photoshoots.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The conspicuously mysterious cap is an extension of the profile of its creator, fashion designer and graphic illustrator Daryl Mapp, affectionately known as D. Mapp.
For the last two decades, Mapp’s work has canvassed different sectors of Atlanta’s cultural identity with many people not knowing he was behind it.
That includes logo designs, which Mapp created for Ludacris and Jeezy’s record labels, Disturbing Tha Peace and Corporate Thugz Entertainment, as well as famed Atlanta exotic dance club Blue Flame Lounge. He’s also designed tour merch for rapper YFN Lucci and capsule collections for Atlanta Influences Everything.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Similarly to the chart-topping recording artists currently wearing his latest creation, Mapp has a catalog of hits. But this time, he feels like has an apparel smash that could go global.
“I’m watching people I don’t know wear this hat,” said Mapp, who insists the hat is moving organically without stealthy influencer marketing to get the hat on the right heads, stating the only celeb wearing the hat that he has a rapport with is 2 Chainz.
“Everybody else, they have no idea who I am.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Mapp has been a fixture in Atlanta’s fashion scene since 2003 when he launched his first clothing line Convertible Bertt, in an era when a handful of emerging streetwear brands including Chilly-O, Exclusive Game and R. World were also pushing to give Atlanta a fashion profile to match its omnipresent music scene.
The line started off with Mapp immortalizing Atlanta’s club culture by creating graphic T-shirts with illustrations depicting the money-raining, bottle-popping scenes he saw each night. Over time, the designs began speaking more to Mapp’s interest in muscle cars and street racing, but the design that put the company on the map was a T-shirt that read “I Am the Street Dream” worn by early supporters Killer Mike and DJ Drama.
Inspired by Pharrell Williams selling of a $500 Billionaire Boys Club Swarovski crystal-embedded T-shirt, Mapp created a $100 rhinestone-studded rendition of the “Street Dream” shirt, which landed in the hands of music industry veteran Kevin “Coach K” Lee, then-manager Young Jeezy at the time.
“He came into our store on Auburn Avenue to pull some pieces for Jeezy to wear, but he didn’t pay for them,” remembered Mapp. . “He kept saying ‘I’m doing something special for you,’ but I was still worried about getting paid for the shirts.”
The “special” favor wound up being Jeezy wearing the shirt on the cover of a 2006 mixtape, which he also named after the shirt. This led to Def Jam Records ordering a thousand more to promote his highly anticipated album “The Inspiration.”
“That T-shirt changed my life and still does to this day,” says Mapp adding that the impact of the shirt led Jeezy to hire him to help springboard his 8732 clothing line. Mapp relocated to New York to help build the brand, but soon learned as he puts it, “The fashion business is 90% business and 10% fashion because the businesspeople control what the fashion is.”
“If they say gray sweatshirts are in, then that’s what’s going to be available for mass consumption,” he said. “Consumers could only buy what was in the store at that point. That’s why all the outfits matched. Shopping on the internet wasn’t what it is now.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
After spending four years in New York, Mapp returned to Atlanta, shifting his focus back to building Convertible Bertt. While the line was still beloved locally, Mapp ran into the same issues that many Atlanta and Southern-based designers do when attempting to scale up, a lack of infrastructure, capital and relationships with retailers and factories being the key among them. He also hit a not-so-obvious obstacle as well.
“Atlanta has the most impactful entertainment core over the last 20 years, we would assume that fashion should attach itself to it,” said Mapp, bringing attention to how up-and-coming artists begin wearing local brands but their tastes tend to change with success.
“But one thing that we notice is when the artists go from underground to mainstream, the trajectory moves so fast now that brands here never get a chance to really lock in with the artist before they move to the West coast, or the East coast, or to Paris and start associating themselves with more prominent brands. So we’re not able to grow with the artists.”
After a few years of ups and downs with Convertible Bertt, in 2016 Mapp started experimenting with the idea of “graduating” into the luxury tier.
“I was always into high fashion and already shopping at [expensive] price points, but I’m designing for a lower tier audience,” says Mapp. “Eventually I decided I wanted to design the stuff that I want to wear.”
That decision came in the form of Melrose High, a line described as a “luxury brand based around streetwear infused with elevated fabrics from around the world.” The first piece Mapp designed for his new venture was a handmade Guatemalan serape cloth button-down named “El Karto,” a literal eye-catcher that featured two different colored chenille eyeballs and a tear on the back.
The versatile garment could be worn as both a shirt or a jacket and thanks to Mapp’s friend, renown stylist Renaldo Nehimiah, it wound up draping Young Thug’s slim frame in Usher’s “No Limit” music video. Enthralled by the piece, Thug offered to buy all three of the prototypes Mapp had made, proving in Mapp’s mind that he was on to something.
Building off the newfound attention Mapp set up an online shop and added soft fabric, high-contrast bandannas, bucket hats, jumpsuits and short sets to the collection. Fans of his prior work immediately saw the difference in material, and price.
“El Karto” retailed for around $1,200, while the “Crown of Cairo” currently sells for between $650 to $1,450, depending on the style.
“I have no interest (in) Melrose High to be ‘affordable’ because these are my original concepts that I’m thinking of,” says Mapp who feels that since designers like himself frequently inspire the trends that luxury brands eventually copy and sell to the rest of the world, they should charge just as much. “They are like my intellectual properties and they have value.”
While Mapp’s latest creations are seeking to appeal to another tax bracket, he is still spending time working with local companies and pushing the boundaries of what fashion is and where it belongs. He recently collaborated with popular downtown eatery Breakfast at Barney’s to create the “Champagne on the Fairway” clothing collection.
This comes a couple years after Mapp created apparel for Magic City and Killer Mike’s SWAG Shop.
Credit: Ryon Horne/AJC
Credit: Ryon Horne/AJC
Efforts like these speak to Mapp’s desire to see Atlanta be recognized as a fashion hub.
“A designer from New York can put ‘New York’ on a T-shirt and they could sell it worldwide,” Mapp said. “We haven’t been able to put ‘Atlanta’ on a garment and it becomes a thing where people would be like, ‘OK, we’re wearing it.’
“For us not to be able to connect with the globe like that as an entity, it’s because we don’t have infrastructure. We have to set up the opportunity for us to springboard into the conversation of fashion.”
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