Style queen
Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee gets into character with fashion
One year ago, the members of the band Khruangbin returned to Houston as conquering heroes. The trio had at that point traveled the world playing songs from its breakthrough second album, “Con Todo el Mundo,” for hundreds of thousands of people beguiled by its internationally minded, not-quite-instrumental sound.
Bassist and singer Laura Lee walked to the middle of the stage at White Oak Music Hall and dropped a vinyl coat, revealing a bright-blue jumpsuit with eyes patched up the legs and sharply arched shoulder pads. She looked like an intergalactic comicbook crime fighter.
“I guess I was just having my David Bowie moment or something like that,” she says. “I got to feel like a superhero.”
Lee describes stepping on stage as getting into character, a defense mechanism of sorts. Years ago, when she and Khruangbin guitarist and vocalist Mark Speer would tour with psych-rock musician Yppah, she’d always hide behind sunglasses. In Khruangbin, she and Speer don Cleopatra-style wigs while drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson finds refuge behind the drum kit.
“Part of the goal with the wigs was so that we could be recognizable one way on stage and then unrecognizable off stage,” Lee says. “Even now, playing in front of 1,500 people can be terrifying. So the wigs and the stage costumes became a sort of armor. They also put me in a specific zone; it gets me ready to be in a performance space — to go out there and do my thing.”
Lee’s Instagram account speaks to the care she puts into that armor. She never repeats stage gear from a previous show.
“I have this ‘Toy Story’ complex about it,” she says, laughing.
“All these clothes in the world, crafted and designed by artistic people, they deserve to be played with and not kept in a box in the attic.”
When Lee sees a concert photo, she can tell by what she’s wearing where the show took place — even after she made the decision to wear two costumes per show after seeing Elton John twice on his last tour.
“If he could do four costume changes, I thought I needed to get at least two outfits per show,” she says.
Lee decided to change up her stage wear about four years ago, when Khruangbin was on tour with singer-songwriter Father John Misty — 35 shows over two months. At the time, Khruangbin had released “The Universe Smiles Upon You,” its first album, but the band had not yet found the sizable audience that would come with “Con Todo el Mundo” three years later. Lee knew she needed a stylist, but the band had no budget for one. In the restroom at a club in London she received a compliment on her hair from Megan Boyes, a young
stylist who, Lee says, “has been with me since.”
At first, Boyes worked with a tight budget: High-end designers weren’t interested in loaning out clothes to a band they’d never heard of. But as the band’s renown grew, so did available options for stage wear, and as options for stage wear grew, fashion became a more notable part of the Khruangbin show. Boyes says an early mention in the magazine Grazia caught the attention of some designers.
“I know Virgil Abloh is a huge Khruangbin fan, Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Alberta Ferretti … all big designers we were thrilled to collaborate with,” Boyes says.
Boyes also had to take Lee’s work into consideration: She spends 90 minutes per show toting a sizable bass guitar and requires mobility for some minor choreography.
“I usually need form-fitting things that allow me to have a little shape behind the guitar,” Lee says. “If I’m wearing something loose or flowing, I get hidden behind it, and you lose something.”
Boyes’ prohibited list: bangles, floaty sleeves, strapless tops.
“The music is most important, so the fashion is there to add to the performance, not restrict it,” Boyes says.
So Boyes sends Lee boxes of clothes before each tour. Lee says she gets a feel for each city and venue and tries to go from there, often looking for local or regional designers.
Lee insists on standing upon formidable heels. “It makes me stand a certain way, sort of standing at attention,” she says. “They terrify everyone. I’ve never fallen, but it’ll probably happen. And it’ll be totally worth it.”
Boyes’ Instagram page resembles an art-gallery catalog, with Lee a constant in photos of radiantly colored bodysuits, gowns and miniskirts.
“She puts an emphasis on finding young, up-and-coming designers,” Lee says. “People know Versace, which isn’t to say I wouldn’t love to wear it. But she’s great at finding brands before they get big. And that can be really exciting. Sometimes designers feel more adventurous and creative before they’re known.”
Khruangbin released its third album, “Mordechai,” this summer. Under normal circumstances, the band would have played scores of shows by this point. As 2020 has been anything but normal, the three band members have been off the road. Lee is currently living in upstate New York. These days she posts photos of nonstage attire, including custom jeans created by Kasey Montazeri, an architecture student who also designs clothes.
Another artist Lee connected with is Argentinian painter Paula Duró. Khruangbin hired Duró to design a poster for the band’s show in New York’s Central Park. Duró’s art often draws from the terrestrial and the celestial. Her representation of Khruangbin placed the band on what appears to be some faraway planet. Lee stands in the center in a sky-blue jumpsuit with rainbow stripes at the hip and eyes running up the legs.
Naturally, Lee and Boyes reached out to Burnt Soul, a London-based company that specializes in catsuits and jumpsuits that, Lee says, “people can frolic in.”
So the bassist and the stylist worked with a painter and a design company to turn a spacesuit into a reality, as Lee strode on stage at White Oak wearing something that had been a painting four months earlier.
“I think that’s my favorite outfit ever,” she says. “Most of what I wear on stage is more fashion than costume, but that one was more on the costume side. And I enjoyed that. It felt powerful.”