Straight Outta Compton Style: Thrift Stores, Gold Spray Paint, and More Insider Info

Baggy pants, Dickies, and zip-up hoodies aren’t exactly trends for the ages, but they are the key elements that capture the iconic style of the legendary L.A. rap group N.W.A in the ’90s. Now Straight Outta Compton, the biopic that tells the story behind the group (which if you haven’t seen yet, you’ve definitely heard a ton of buzz about. It raked in a whopping more than $111 million in the box office, domestically), steps back into that period, where the costume choices for the actors who played Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella play a pivotal role in setting the tone of the movie.

Glamour got a chance to chat with costume designer Kelli Jones about her work on the flick and the nuance of the 866 costumes that were used in the film (including what N.W.A has in common with the men on another one of her hit projects, Sons of Anarchy):

Glamour: Before you’d been hired for the film, what did you know about N.W.A.’s style?

Kelli Jones: I knew the look was mainly gangster street style. Dickies, baggy jeans, Nikes, and a lot of black clothing. One of their staples was definitely [Los Angeles] Raiders gear. They never wavered from that solid, strong style.

Glamour: Of all the clothing and accessories we see in the movie, how much was new versus vintage? Where did you find stuff?

KJ: About 50/50. There were so many changes in total, and we had to pull resources from just about everywhere—thrift stores, costume shops, swap meets, alleys in downtown Los Angeles, and army-navy surplus stores. A lot of the jewelry was ordered online.

Glamour: Was there a particular piece that was hard to find?

KJ: Eazy-E’s net gloves were tricky to find. There are a ton of leather fingerless gloves out, but his were net. After scouring every website and store we could think of, one of my costumers, Yabbi, realized she had a pair from years ago in her kit!

Glamour: About the jewelry: Was it all costume or was anything real?

KJ: It’s all costume. I wish we had the budget for real jewelry! We had gold spray paint for the chains when they would start to tarnish in order to keep them looking good. Movie magic.

__Glamour: It was reported that there were 866 wardrobe changes before things were finalized—is that a lot more than normal? __

KJ: Yes, it’s way over what’s typical for a normal movie. When we started, each of the five guys had about 40 changes. Then the script changed a bit while we were shooting and it shot up to 60 or 70 looks each. Even Jerry Heller had almost 40. Most biopics span several years, if not decades, so I knew this would be a lot to take on, but I was really excited.

__Glamour: Were there any similarities between outfitting these characters and the men on Sons of Anarchy? __

KJ: There were a lot, from the baggy Levi’s to the Dickies to Nike Air Force 1s. Both are subcultures of tough dudes who were all individualized in their style while remaining similar. They looked badass without looking like they’re trying.

__Glamour: What trends do we still see today that were started by N.W.A? __

KJ: That gangster style. Of course people were wearing that type of clothing before them, but they put it on the map for such a broader spectrum and made it their own because they didn’t overdo anything.

They romanticized it—kids in middle America wanted to dress like them because of what they stood for. It was a strong look and made people feel badass. Even as they got more famous they never became slaves to fashion or dressed differently than how they did when they were just starting out.