Tyler, the Creator and the Ironic(ish) Style of His Golf Wang Line



Golf Wang apparel and the Vans Syndicate x Odd Future shoe
What sets Golf Wang apart is its humor, which is often dark and subversive like Tyler’s flows, even if unabashedly adolescent. Case in point: Tyler dressing up as “Thurnis Haley,” a middle-aged golfer who asks people on the course if they like balls, for Odd Future’s Adult Swim TV show "Loiter Squad."
That puts his line in sharp contrast to a world of hip-hop imagery, where, says Odd Future manager Christian Clancy of 4 Strikes, “every rapper wanted the same car and they all had the "Scarface" poster above their toilet.” Odd Future, by contrast, honors the cult of individuality — though such statements would never be made in earnest.
The Golf Wang collection includes a T-shirt emblazoned with a woman sucking on a red, white and blue Firecracker popsicle, which, according to the description, is made with “100 percent seriousness and cotton.” Sarcasm remains young people’s mother tongue.
Golf Wang — with items that range in price from $2 to $85 — is now sold at its eponymous store in Los Angeles (410 N. Fairfax Ave.) and in only 30 retail locations in Asia, Europe and North America and online at golfwang.com (where most of the products are sold out). And the Odd Future collective itself has a clothing line under the same name, sold in more than 300 stores.
“Tyler had grown up drawing doughnuts on his pants and dressing his own way and doing stuff,” says Clancy. “These guys are just making clothes for themselves, and then it’s a no-brainer for me as a manager to say, ‘OK, this is an obvious business.’ As I always say, the margin on socks is better than the margin on CDs, that’s for sure,” says Clancy. There even is a sneaker collaboration: Vans Syndicate x Odd Future, a collection of Old Skool Pro “S” suede shoes (those are skate shoes to laymen), in four colors, that came out in 2013. New colorways debut in July.
But while Tyler designs, he doesn’t think of himself as a designer: “I f—ing hate fashion and everything about it. I just like making stuff and it happens to be in f—ing cotton and, like, materials. But that shit [of the fashion world] is disgusting.” A healthy distrust of the corporate fashion industry, which exploits blind consumerism and false need, quite ironically makes for good business among post-millennials in the Internet age.
“I don’t want it to be like f—ing Rocawear or, I don’t know, a lot of things that come and go,” says Tyler. “That’s why I don’t give out free clothes to famous people. That actually could be the worst thing possible, if famous people wore Golf Wang.”
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