Rarely do you find clothing that can withstand the tests of time and fashion. When I hear the word Polo, “classic” is the first thing that comes to mind cause no other clothing can adapt to any time period or situation as well as Ralph Lauren’s preppy yet stylish line. You can find me punching numbers and attending meetings at my day job wearing a classic rugby shirt, and that same night be caught tagging trains and drinking forties with that same piece of Polo and matching fitted cap. Polyvalence, classiness and style.

I’ve been deep in my Polo game for a minute now, long before most these rappers jumped on the bandwagon and thought the line became cool when the Big Pony shirts dropped. The same new jacks claiming to be Polo heads now, were wearing long tees and bootleg BAPE hoodies just a minute ago. From P-Wing to Suicide Skiers, my knowledge runs pretty deep but I gotta give it to my man Benny-Ill for schooling the kid on the culture and pretty much having one of the illest Polo games in our city. I’ve known duke for a good amount of time now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him rock anything else than the ‘lo. He has power pieces in his collection like any other vintage gear head, but it’s more his passion of street culture and the knowledge of the history behind the brand that I admire. Not everyone understands when you rock a teddy bear knitted sweater, but to people like me or Benny-Ill… shit is fucking gangster.

Mook-Life: What’s really good my dude, let us know where you come from, how you grew up and how it influenced you to be who you are today.

Benny-Ill: Aight, I’m originally from my daddy’s ballsack, I grew up in Montreal around the Plateau hangin’ out downtown and in the Mile-End…to me those are the best neighborhoods just for the simple fact that it’s where the action is. As soon as I was old enough to go out on my own I always ended up downtown at the arcades or on St-Laurent just mooking it out on the ave. This is way before I could get into clubs or bars, I’d just be outside with my friends doing whatever, skating or drawing the graffitis. I was exposed to all the crazy shit our fine city has to offer at a pretty young age.

Mook-Life: How did Ralph Lauren Polo come into your life?

Benny-Ill: I started noticing the style before I even knew what exactly the lo shit was. Around 91-92, a lot of rappers were rocking that style, sort of preppy along with outerwear mountain climbing type of gear. Grand Puba and pretty much all of Brand Nubians were thoroughly dipped..I remember seeing Cl Smooth rock some fly rugbys in some photos in the Source so I was like “that looks ill”. I went to Murrays Sports on Peel and copped me a dope rugby but it wasn’t Polo…that came later.

Mook-Life: Who else was rockin’ Polo in Montreal at the time? What was the scene like back then?

Benny-Ill: That early no one that I know of although I’m sure there musta been people but no one at my school or in my neighborhood. A year or two later I started hearing about ‘Polo Shows’ from some of my friends who were already in Cegep at Dawson College. Basically a Polo Show was a guy who came to school dipped in lo everyday. Right away that was fascinating to me although I never seen any of ‘em since I was fresh into High School. To this day I wonder what piece these guys were rocking back then and more importantly do they still have heat stashed somewhere, cuz this was prime time golden era, I’m talking ’92-’93. You would hear stories about guys rushing the Polo Mansion 20 deep and getting theirs.
A few years later I met these kids from the Jeanne Mance Projects downtown, they knew Sike, Soak, Santi through Erock who had already been writing with Sike which was a friend of mine. I started hangin’ out with Erock, his younger cousin and kids from the ATC crew. These kids put the battery back in my back as far as gear goes. They were not playing. They were fly everyday. Boosting and rocking a lot of Tommy Hilfiger and Polo. This is 1995 and Tommy was huge, these cats would come trough 15-20 deep all rocking blow up Tommy shit, knits, windbreakers… everything. I wasn’t mad at it but I was more into the Polo shit and got back on my get fly state of mind hardbody. I remember them coming out to Voltaire, which was a hiphop night on Duluth back then, after doing a credit card scam at the Mansion that same day. All these mooks had Polo Sport windbreakers with matching pants and hats but each dude had a different color outfit, there were like 4-5 of em just lighting up the avenue in the brightest of colors. I almost fainted… that’s how ill it was.

Old school flix taken between 1995-2000.

Mook-Life: Have you ever ridden a horse? If not, have you ever eaten a horse?

Benny-Ill: Yes to both. I have also beaten a dead horse of course of course.

Mook-Life: Give us an exclusive anecdote you’ve lived related to Polo.

Benny-Ill: There’s a few but this is a funny one. It’s ’95, me, Dabs, Ray and this kid I use to be down with decide to take a trip to Ottawa because this chick Dabs is seeing is throwing a house party. So we figure it could be fun, we’ll go party Friday and we’ll go get some gear Saturday… shit must be wild easy out there. So Saturday we all head out with the chick to go get some shit. First, we go to The Bay to get some Lo, now i guess they weren’t used to seeing mooks like us out there cuz as soon as we reach the Men’s Department we spot this goofy undercover straight scoping us out… I think dude was rocking a newspaper with eye holes cut out. Anyway, we walk around a bit and bounce, we get back to the car and this bitch starts whippin’ out all types of clothes from her shit talking about “what? you guys didnt get nothing??”. We were heated so we’re like awrite fuck it, let’s go to the Guess store. We go in there and there’s only 1 dude working and he’s hating. Following us and breathing down our necks. Out the corner of my eye I see the chick folding 2-3 pairs of black jeans and stuffing them in her bag. We get outside and this chick starts taunting and dissing us (laughs) she’s like “just tell me which size you guys wear and I’ll get it for you” and shit like that. We didn’t think it was too funny. Here we were thinking we would make a killing but our mookness betrayed us out of town. Maybe it’s cause we smelled like a dry puddle of 11% Wildcat beer from the night before, who knows.
Finally we head out to the art supply store, we each get a few supplies and just as we’re heading towards the exit the alarm goes off. Now we’re not out of the door and we’re about 6 meters from the alarm detectors but the shit is ringing for some reason, we all look at each other mad nervous and just walk pass the alarm detectors while they’re ringing and out of the door with no hassle. The moral of this story is fuck Ottawa.

Benny-Ill having breakfast in bed to start off his day.

Mook-Life: If you walk into a room dipped in Polo from head to toe, what song would you want to start playing?

Benny-Ill: Nah, stop the music and put the spotlights on me…I came to shut shit down.

Mook-Life: What is it about Polo that differentiates it from other brands? Style Wise and Culture Wise.

Benny-Ill: Classic golden era Polo is timeless. You can trace Mr. Lauren’s influences to classic americana icons but it’s the way that he flipped it and put it down that made ‘em classic designs. There’s a lot of other dope brands out there that put out classic lines but none of em could do it like Ralphy, they all lacked something. It’s the same reason why 80% of these street wear brands stay biting Polo pieces. They’re trying to get a piece of the magic but just end up looking dumb. With that being said, what adds to the mystique of it all is that the people who made these brands famous in the streets and later in rap videos are the last people Ralph Lauren had in mind when he was designing these clothes, and that’s poor people from the hood. Kids in the ghetto decided they weren’t gonna let the rich white people from the Hamptons have all the fun and started acquiring the same pricey garments but in funkier ways. This is around the early 80 to mid 80′s in Brooklyn with two crews: one was called The Ralphie’s Kids and the other the POLO U.S.A. (United Shoplifters Association). They linked up and became the now infamous Lo-Lifes. These dudes would go on missions shoplifting thousands and thousands of dollars of Polo and other high end shit in single outings. They did so much damage they’re reported to be responsible for the closing down of B. Altmans (a New-York City department store). So this is where it all comes from and that tradition has been carried on for decades and is still happening to this day… with more Ebay bidding than boosting though (laughs). And the funny part is that the most sought after lo items are still all from that same era, that’s like 1986 to 1994 give or take a few pieces.

Benny-Ill shows us some examples of the influence of Ralph Lauren on street fashion in general and how other brands rip off Polo designs. His comments:

“Ok this almost got a pass because Rich Yung is Fabolous’ clothing line and Fab is an old school Brooklyn ‘lo head from back in the day which explains why he going for the Polo flavor with his line. But come on Loso, you giving it a bad name with this ugly ass jacket.”

“I don’t even know what brand this is but they tried to flip one of the most powerful Ralph Lauren pieces and failed miserably. Get that shit out of here.”

“Besides the P-wing the most ripped off ‘lo icon has got to be the Polo Bear. How many lame companies are gonna do their lame attempt at it already? This is what? the Tupac bear? Lame. Maybe getting 4th graders to draw your designs is the new trend in street wear though.”

“Oh boy. Coco? They musta been smoking that cooked coco when they came up with this wack shit. On a more positive note, check the P-wing socks my man is rocking on the right hand side picture. Yowsers!”

“Another example of the biter completely missing the point. The original skier looks like he’s carving a sharp turn at breakneck speeds while the imitation’s character looks like it’s a drunk chimpanzee falling off the T-bar. Fuck outta here!”

Mook-Life: What are your all time favorite polo pieces?

Benny-Ill: There’s a few..in my opinion, the Alpine rugby is the best Polo rugby. It’s everything a Polo piece should be..a rugby with bright colors and big crisp writing…it’s perfect. The hurdles jacket is another one, the Arrnold Palmer…the grey rings hoodie…I could go on for hours (laughs).

Mook-Life: We’ve seen a boost in Polo popularity lately due to the likes of rappers such as Vado and herbs like Kanye West. What do you think of all this recent hype on Ralph Lauren’s line?

Benny-Ill: It’s just a fad. I don’t know, to me it’s not the same lane. They’re pretty much just rockin’ run of the mill Lo. I haven’t even seen one of ‘em rock heat. Most of ‘em even seem to sleep on the real fresh pieces that’s been put out in the recent years.

Mook-Life: Who would win in a fist fight, Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger?

Benny-Ill: I think Tommy is light in the loafers plus Ralph Lifshitz was born in the BX so I’m sure he had to knuckle up on a few occasions.

Mook-Life: Any shout outs, last words or death threats?

Benny-Ill: Last words… When I die bury me with the Exco on.

Photoshoot pics were taken by Shani, for more of her work check out her site:
http://shanidissizit.wordpress.com/