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Music

Technics released the SL-1200 turntable in 1972, and the direct-drive SL-1200MK2 of 1979 became the deck hip-hop and house DJs built their sets on. Music is about the sounds that shaped what people wear and the equipment they played them on. Run-DMC released My Adidas in 1986, and an endorsement deal with adidas followed, one of the first between a sportswear brand and a music act. Hip-hop then steered menswear for decades, from Dapper Dan's Harlem boutique to Pharrell, who co-founded Billionaire Boys Club with Nigo and later became Louis Vuitton's men's creative director. Virgil Abloh kept working as a DJ alongside his design career. The gear has its own thread. Sony's Walkman of 1979 put music in a pocket, Apple's iPod did it again in 2001, and Teenage Engineering's OP-1 fit a synthesizer into a slim aluminum case in 2011. Bang and Olufsen in Struer, Denmark, spent the 1970s making hi-fi that people wanted in the living room, and the Beogram 4000 turntable of 1972 is the proof.

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