Karl Kani

Karl Kani (; born Carl Williams on May 23, 1968 in Limón, Costa Rica is a fashion designer, and the founder and CEO of the hip hop fashion brand Karl Kani.

Early career At age 16, Williams started designing clothes after learning the essential handcraft at his father's company. He never studied tailoring or design, but he would buy material and tell a tailor exactly how he wanted his garments to look, enabling him to have "fresh outfit(s) that nobody (else) had." They made no profit at this location, and after the shop was robbed, they moved to Hollywood, where he started selling catalogs for $2 that he and his partner had put together. They only made profit from the catalog sales and did not sell any clothes. He decided to take out an advertisement in Right On! Magazine, but that did not jumpstart sales.

Brand name Williams chose the name "Kani" as a derivative of "can I", in reference to the questions he asked himself about success at the beginning of his career (e.g., "Can I do it?")

In 1989 Karl Kani was launched as a hip hop fashion brand. He was inspired by his passion for hip hop music and fashion and decided to design clothes that appealed to a large public, including friends and celebrities from his hometown Brooklyn, New York. They would always buy a bigger size but then the waist would be too big, so he decided to increase the pant size.

In 1994, Kani used $500,000 in profits to launch his company "Karl Kani Infinity". In addition to his old partners, Kani now faced a marketing onslaught from hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons's Phat Farm and a number of mainstream clothiers. He also had reason to worry that his involvement in Cross Colours might taint his operation in the minds of retailers. "I expected some resistance", Kani said. "A major turning point for me was when retailers accepted us back into the market." After some resistance from the people who made the plates, Kani decided to go ahead with it and it turned out to be his best-selling jeans ever.

Karl Kani Big & Tall The idea for the big & tall line came to Kani after numerous conversations with National Basketball Association stars, who complained that they could not fit into much of his merchandise. Big and tall people may be just as fashion-conscious as anyone else, so Kani launched his line in mid-1995 in big & tall stores around the country. He spotted an area in the market that had been ignored and paved the way for other hip hop fashion brands.

In 2002, Kani was honored with an Urban Fashion Pioneer Award for his lifetime achievements, at the Urban Fashion Awards.