Tyler, the Creator’s Fashion Statement
rowing up as an inner-city black kid, I wasn’t the foremost masculine,” a shirtless, deep-voiced Tyler, the Creator told a sellout crowd of two thousand at the L.A. Live complex, in downtown l. a. , on Saturday. “I wasn’t into sports,” he continued. “I liked pink and shit.”
The designer and hiphop artist Tyler The Creator Merch Creator performing during his fashion show Saturday at the L.A. Live complex in…
The designer and hip-hop artist Tyler, the Creator performing during his fashion show Saturday at the L.A. Live complex, in l. a. .Photograph by Kevin Winter / Getty
The speech was the twenty-five-year-old rapper’s third of the night. After débuting a blinding line of apparel, footwear, and accessories from his Golf Wang clothing label, Tyler had screened a product clip with a pre-recorded voice-over, then emerged to perform a scathing new diatribe called “Ego” during a silver, glittering polo top. Now, fearing that he seemed like a “broken record,” Tyler hammered points home about identity, individuality, and ownership together with his mixture of sincerity and trademark vulgarity. He recounted a scene from his teen years, before 2010, when his self-directed music videos catapulted his Odd Future collective into the limelight. At an area shop after school, he recounted, Tyler was “made an example of” by a store worker for wearing a pink hoodie. “That’s not a true man,” the shopkeeper had taunted ahead of others. “That’s not what real men wear.”
Barely an hour after the runway show had ended, Omar Mateen opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. The heinous act cast an especially dark cloud over an already drizzly weekend within the city, where L.A. Pride Week had brought thousands of revelers bent L.G.B.T.-themed events within the days before. By Sunday morning, the worst fears were confirmed: news outlets reported that a person armed with assault rifles and explosive chemicals had planned to focus on the parade before being arrested by local police. The parade proceeded that day as planned.
Tyler’s had a posh relationship to the L.G.B.T. community, rife with contradictions. He’s been criticized for his use of slurs in his lyrics, leading to a ban from the U.K. and Tyler The Creator Bags Zealand for perceived hate speech, while simultaneously claiming two outwardly gay members in his flock — progressive for any hip-hop group — and openly (if sardonically) professing his attraction to many men, including Leonardo DiCaprio. Throughout the show, his repeated nods toward these controversies appeared to beset what should’ve been a proud moment for the young artist. He emphasized clothing as a tool of communication, and even dissent — a message that was ultimately inseparable from the horrifying attacks on identity and individuality that might unfold soon after.
