Daniel Sannwald + Michael Philouze Travis Scott:Welcome to Astroworld Interview by Samira Larouci
What’s next after
Astroworld? Travis Scott is a modern-day rockstar.The shape-shifting artist has spent the last six years intricately carving out a career that’s managed to insidiously penetrate and reconfigure the very DNA of rap music, whilst simultaneously – and seemingly effortlessly – straddling the f ashion, and soon-to-be ar t world.
His now signature (and highly replicated) style is a nonchalant combination of heavily distressed Saint Laurent jeans, deconstructed vintage tees, oversized lumberjack shirts and Jordan 4s finished off with a weighty pile of hand-carved iced-out chains from New York jeweller to the rappers Elliot Avianne, and a chunky diamond-encrusted Patek Philippe. The personification of contemporary elegance. Having designed a 19-piece capsule collection for Helmut Lang – a brand he’s sworn by since he was 15-yearsold – collaborated with BAPE and Ksubi, as well as serving as the face of both Alexander Wang and Saint Laurent (for the second time running), Scott’s output firmly cements him as an urgent creative powerhouse. But getting to this point in his career has been far from easy. Scott, real name Jacques Webster, 26, was raised in Missouri City, a middle-class suburb in Southwest Texas. Having dropped out of college, Scott was cut off financially by his parents and spent years couch surfing with friends between NY and LA waiting for his big br eak.
Today, the Houston-born multi-platinum selling artist is a new father, and is in the running for three Grammy Awards for his critically acclaimed No.1 album Astroworld. “It’s taken a while for it to get to this point in my career,” Scott says humbly, “Honestly, I’m super excited, I can’t wait.” Scott is mid-tour and working on his most ambitious project to date: Astroworld, the travelling near-mythical stadium-scale stage show that serves as a physical manifestation of the album. Scott’s shows have become synonymous with kids throwing themselves from three-storey balconies in to circle pits. Think a ’77 punk amusement park combined with Michael Jackson-level pyrotechnics. Astroworld is anything but a traditional rap sho w. Let’s start with the amusement park idea. How did the concept come about? You know, my shows have always been something that I’ve loved doing, so I got the idea for the show around the same time as the album. Its all kind of one thing really. I’m trying to bring back that feeling and experience of when people really let go and go crazy, and just really be themselves for one night. It lends itself to that energy and it’s something I’ll always want to do. Even though the original Astroworld was the name of a now-defunct theme park in Texas, the show is also like a travelling circus. Were you ever a fan of circuses in the South? Hell yeah, growing up in Texas, I was always around that type of stuff, and Astroworld is really my imagination just trying to push that to the limit and give an identity to a scene that I lived when I was younger and create that on a mor e extreme level. Do Southern culture and aesthetics really inspire a lot of your work? It’s everything about who I am.You know there are just certain things we like. Southern culture is a really major thing to me.
How has your style evolved over the years? Back in the day when I was travelling about I didn’t have clothes so I just used to pull shit together, but once I got settled it changed a bit. But I always had my staples, you know like a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, so I had to go from there, but I didn’t have the same quality back then. Whether it’s your collaboration with Helmut Lang or your own merch, your music seems to interweave quite organically with your design work. It kinda wound up that they’re both about an attention to detailing, and making everything coexist in the same way that my actual lifestyle is. With fashion and music, they both cater to people’s everyday lives, so the way you dress and the music you listen to is definitely the attitude, and the attitude is definitely a reflection of the way you dress, so I just try to make sure everything is just kinda tight, and just create different things for people to dress to and different ways for people to dr ess the way they like. Streetwear having gone mainstream has really changed the dynamics of design. How do you feel about it becoming so popular? People are making their style more personal, you know straight out the closet straight to the streets, I always love that shit. What other designers or houses would you like to collaborate with? I’ve worked with quite a lot. I’m always down to work with designers, but I’m trying to get back to catching my own vibe, you know I be feeling like just enjoying it. I’m kind of in a different space now where it’s like I just want to make more art, do more things for special reasons and shit. Let’s discuss Harvard. I read that you’re planning to go and study architecture with your friend Dozie Kanu? Me and my homie Dozie, he’s an artist. We were in Miami like two years ago and we met this guy who was working at the design academy, and his boyfriend was the head of the design school at Harvard and he just informed me about it and I was like man, it’s kind of like dope, and I’m into architecture. You know I wanted to learn more about it. I just wanted to go back and learn so I’m applying and hopefully I’ll get in.
And how would you balance that with tour lif e? I’m gonna try and make it work. Where I’m at right now, I’d like to study and do music at the same time. Would you ever follow in the footsteps of Virgil and his Murakami collaboration by teaming up with a contemporary artist? Yeah, I definitely would like to just be in the trade of art and put my creative input into art things.With my album, I made the screaming sculpture heads with (David) LaChapelle and popped them up everywhere. I’m just trying to get more elaborate as a physical artist and putting out mor e physical things. I have some things in my mind, but for now I’m still enjoying Astroworld. I’m just trying to complete the mission!
A new expression of elegance demands a fresh style of man to exemplify it.Travis Scott, a 26-year-old, Houston-born, multi-platinum-selling artist, is perfectly placed to channel and personify the winds of change that are currently invigorating menswear. A creative nonconformist, his portfolio of pursuits runs from music to design to architecture. Experimental by nature, for this shoot with the stylist Michael Philouze shot by Daniel Sannwald, Scott is channeling a persona that is unquestionably elegant – and he’s doing it on his own terms.