VietNamNet – A new store offers phat clothes to dapper up the rapper in all of us. Tip Top Freestyle Shop has got the gear for you to get waxing lyrical.

A new hip shop in a unassuming part of the city.

I like to think I'm a dapper fellow, and sometimes I need to spruce up my attire. Belts are available on every street, if you like a black leather strop with a chrome buckle, an artless production that bears the name of a designer that would never produce something so oafish.

They say men can’t shop. I can and often do, although you can take your metrosexual label and jump right in the lake. The secret is simple: have some female Japanese friends.

My search for a new belt was directed by one such young lady, who had found a small shop in an otherwise unassuming part of town. They were purveyors of exactly the kind of skate and hip-hop inspired apparel I favour.

But then I couldn’t find the shop I was looking for, the information of its whereabouts actually being two years old. Instead, just as I was about to give up, I came across the Tip Top Freestyle Shop.

The shop was so new you could smell the fresh lick of paint. Hip-hop blared from the stereo, as the seam of shameless skate and hip hop labels opened before me. It had been open for just two weeks, so the kids from the nearby international high school hadn’t yet plundered its range.

Last year The Good Life caught up with The Big Toe hip hop break dance crew and it seemed that this was their lair, or at least their wardrobe. Hip-hop flavoured clothes literally dripped from the shelves, throwing off their labels in the same shameless surliness that a rapper embodies on the MTV screen. Photos of the crew in action adorn the walls, while a large poster advertises freestyle dance lessons at their kindergarten hangout.

Tip Top has sourced a fine selection of labels, from the generic sport stylings of No Fear, to the hype and energy of skate labels Blind and Spitfire. Predominantly they stock hip-hop labels though, including Snoop Dogg and a whole horde of 50 Cent gear.

They have enough t-shirts to dress an entire freestyle dance competition, as well as caps, and small selection of jeans. They’ve got bags and every other accessory may need, from necklaces and wallet chains, to sweatbands, belts and buttons.

The gear is sourced from producers in Thailand, but the imports are fairly irregular, so you have to be on time when a shipment comes in. As hip-hop takes on more and more fans in the capital city – check out the local bar scene, where Manu Chao has finally been flipped to breaks with some magic on the mic – their need for clobber is going to have to be met.

They only had a few belts though, and the times they are a changing, they didn’t bear the Boy Scout type buckles I use for pants retention. So I picked up the most enormous No Fear sweatband and a nice little visor made by Blind.

Looking for big bad jeans and some street attitude? Check out Tip Top Freestyle Shop, 8/C3 Giang Vo Street, Hanoi.

Matt Black