The cover of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) – the 1993 debut album by the US hip-hop collective – presents something of a curveball. Back then, an album’s artwork was more than a Spotify place holder, it was often all you had to go on, and the entry point into the world of the Wu-Tang Clan didn’t give much away. Featuring six (possibly seven) figures lined up in a dark room, each wears a black standard-issue logoed hoodie, their faces, and identities, obscured. Behind them, the main light source, is a refulgent emblem, much like Batman’s Bat-Signal, only a W.

Aside the “W” logo, which still shines brightly, the image is misleading on several counts: for a start, the album’s credits list 10 personnel, including nine official members, not seven (of them, Ol’ Dirty Bastard died in 2004; Cappadonna was enlisted in 2007). And rather than a faceless, homogenous clique, each member was later known for their own unique flair in terms of both delivery and dress – and each as a solo performer in their own right. Outside of cleverly managed photoshoots, there was no uniform, beyond a shared penchant for oversized sportswear.

“A picture like this traditionally functions as a clue to help understand the music contained,” writes Mr Will Ashon in his brilliant, scattergun new book on the group, Chamber Music: About The Wu-Tang [In 36 Pieces], the publication of which marks the 25th anniversary of Enter The Wu-Tang’s release. “This one does and it doesn’t. The group… are deliberately disguised… What’s contained inside is of hidden significance, an encrypted message, a mystery. That it is, in the world’s most literal meaning, occult.”

Still, even here, there are indicators. “At a glance, we might think the second figure is wearing crazy, crepe-soled cowboy boots,” Mr Ashon notes, “but when we look closer, we see it’s probably Clarks or Timberland[s] and the guy has his jeans rolled up to his knee.”

You could hazard a guess who owned the shoes. While Tims have become ubiquitous across hip-hop, Clarks became a trademark for Ghostface Killah – as demonstrated on the cover of his 1996 solo album, Ironman. “It’s been claimed that the Wu’s endorsement of Clarks Wallabees, which Ghostface Killah used to dye blue, saved the company from going out of business in the 1990s,” Mr Ashon tells MR PORTER.

Another unlikely label, Polo Ralph Lauren, found itself woven into early Wu-Tang mythology. The preppiest – and perhaps whitest – of brands actually had something of a cult following within New York’s hip-hop scene. Even before the emergence of Wu-Tang, a Brooklyn-based gang called the Lo-Life Crew – “Lo” as in Polo, as referenced in Wu-Tang’s single “C.R.E.A.M.” – had made Ralph Lauren merchandise must-steal items. But Wu-Tang poured petrol on the flame.

The video to the single “Can It All Be So Simple” is perhaps best remembered for a very large jacket from Ralph Lauren’s Snow Beach line, worn by Raekwon (who Mr Ashon names as the best-dressed member of Wu-Tang, largely thanks to a tweed deerstalker he wore in early promo shots). According to Mr Ashon’s book, the rapper saw the jacket by chance in the window of a store on the way to the shoot: “‘The first thing I thought,’ Raekwon recalled, ‘was, “Yo, this ain’t something I seen before. I could be the first one to rock this. When people start talking about it, they gon’ eventually say, ‘Only one I seen with that jacket on was the Chef.”’ [The Chef was Raekwon’s other nickname.] He went into the store to find that they only had one XXL jacket left and – sensing some kind of fate in this exclusivity – he bought it there and then for a few hundred dollars.” The jacket was recently reissued, but original pieces in mint condition now sell for thousands on eBay. “It really is a very famous anorak,” Mr Ashon notes.

Given that today Mr Kayne West is seemingly the central point around which the fashion world orbits (despite his questionable taste in hats in recent times), it can perhaps be hard to picture the paradigm shift that resulted from the Wu-Tang Clan’s emergence. Only a decade before, the hip-hop dress code had been updated from a sci-fi disco look to a more terrestrial regalia of tracksuits and adidas Superstars, thanks to the likes of Run-DMC. Wu-Tang took things further, and were among the first to seriously market their image, launching their own label, Wu-Wear, thereby providing the foundations for Mr West’s high-fashion brand, Yeezy.

“The late 1980s saw the rise of an ‘Afrocentric’ style – tie-dye, dashikis, Africa medallions instead of gold ropes, etc,” Mr Ashon says. “The Wu, though, were part of a wave to simplify and take it back much closer to what ordinary people were wearing. Really, their whole modus operandi was to present themselves as real and unmanufactured, so their clothing choices had to reflect this. The rawness and directness of the music was supposed to be echoed in the rawness and directness of their clothing. They were a big part of the early 1990s move towards baggy and oversized clothes. Huge combat trousers or sweatpants, Timberland boots, hoodies, puffas, do-rags, gold fronts and so on. A ‘street soldier’ look.” All of which sounds very much like what you’ll see on the runways of 2018.

And just as street-style photography reinvigorated staid fashion poses, Wu-Tang’s take on hip-hop brought a real-life edge to the genre. For all the pseudonyms and imagery lifted from old kung-fu movies, the group’s key currency was authenticity. It made Wu-Tang Clan at once a club we all desperately wanted to be a part of – and one that, in the way we dressed, we already were.