Fat Laces

Buffalo shoe with yellow 32 mm wide Fat Laces shoelaces, including 32 mm, 16 mm, 8 mm and 3 mm (round) " normal shoelaces "

Fat Laces are extremely wide shoelaces that are very popular in the hip hop and skater movement.

The Fat Laces have their origins in the New York hip-hop movement of the early 1970s. Various old-school hip-hop pioneers named New York dancer Jorge “Fabel” Pabon (Rock Steady Crew / Tools of War) as the inventor of the Fat Laces (see film Beat Street ).

Fat laces are threaded into the holes provided on the shoes, but they are usually not tied, as this would destroy the decorative effect caused by the pull (laces become narrower). The laces are often meticulously threaded into the shoes in a symmetrical sequence, in straight lines or sometimes in two alternating colors per shoe.

The laces are mostly 2 to 4 cm wide and 1.20 m or even 1.40 m long and are mainly worn in typical sneakers from the retro basketball area of ​​various brands.

For the sake of simplicity, the shoelaces on the b-boy characters of the graffiti artists were shown completely white. At first, in order to achieve the optical impression, cloths were worn instead of shoelaces. The idea was later taken up by the industry and colored variants were also produced by machine.