NEW YORK, NY.- Jacob Collier was about to cross Fifth Avenue when a stranger stopped him to take a picture of his outfit. A Grammy-winning musician with millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, Collier is used to requests for pictures, but it was a nice change of pace to be asked because someone liked what he was wearing — a color-blocked jacket, acid-green patterned pants and tie-dyed Crocs — rather than because the person recognized him from the internet.
“I was always curious how someone would perceive me from a fashion perspective because I’ve never really perceived myself that way,” he said later from his perch on a rock in Central Park, where he spent a sunny afternoon between shows on his “Djesse” world tour. “I’ve never overly contrived it. I’ve gone for things I like that are comfortable and expressive, and that’s about it.”
Following his artistic instincts has served the 27-year-old Briton well, turning him into an internet-age success story. As a teenager, his videos of multi-instrumental covers of classic songs went viral on YouTube, earning him professional representation. Since then, Collier has won five Grammys and been nominated for four more. He is commonly described as a genius by fellow musicians, and the list of his admirers is long: Coldplay and Lizzo are fans; Hans Zimmer called Collier his “hero”; and SZA said she “stalked” him on Instagram until she convinced him to collaborate with her.
That Collier attracts admirers from across so many genres is a testament to the uncategorizable nature of his music, which contains elements from jazz, folk, R&B and classical. His songs often comprise hundreds of tracks layered over one another, in which he plays and sings every sound. He recently attempted to translate this enjoyment of complexity into the visual realm by using the music software Logic to color-code the hundreds of tracks that went into his arrangement of “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” He printed the resulting pattern on a pair of pants in collaboration with the brand Skidz.
“I find myself gravitating toward things that are highly patterned, because I’m quite highly pattern-minded,” he said. “Musically, I enjoy that exploration, and visually I think it follows suit.”
Through it all, Collier’s look has remained remarkably homegrown. That’s not to say it’s tame: His wardrobe is wild and high-energy, full of crayon colors, power-clashing patterns and the occasional alligator onesie, paralleling the eclecticism of his whimsical and energetic soundscapes. But whereas many of his peers present a version of themselves to the world that has been polished by a team of professional image-makers, Collier has, for the better part of 10 years in the public eye, done his own thing. Until a few months ago, he’d never worked with a stylist. His biggest red carpet moment — when he wore a hot pink Stella McCartney suit to the 2021 Grammys (and promptly spilled ketchup on it, he divulged) — was a result of the brand reaching out to him directly.
“You can tell when someone’s covering themselves up, and you can tell when someone is pulling things out from deeper within using clothes and colors,” Collier said. “That’s what I try to aim for.”
At his first of three “Djesse” shows in New York, that meant bounding joyously across the stage in lime-green corduroy pants from an upstart brand called Fried Rice and a shirt made of upcycled bandannas from Rcnstrct Studio. He went shoeless in mismatched socks, as is his custom when performing, partly because he uses his toes to play a custom instrument and partly because he likes feeling “grounded and in my body.” When he does wear shoes, they’re usually Crocs, because they remind him of the house where he has lived his whole life and recorded most of his music. (“Everyone in my family wears them,” he said.)
Almost all of his signature wardrobe items are like that: If you ask him what he’s wearing, he’ll tell you about a relationship with someone he loves.
The pair of patterned harem pants he wore to every show of his first tour, which started in 2015 and lasted for two years, came about when he tried on a pair of his sister’s. (Having grown up in a house full of women, he said, “I don’t think of clothes as having a gender.”)
The T-shirt that he wore almost every night of that first tour also points to a major pillar of the Collier style philosophy in that it was handmade by a fan.
“Fans like to give me things, and it has really sustained my fashion diet over the years,” he said. When he rifles through the suitcase that serves as his tour wardrobe, fan-made pieces abound: There’s a tie-dyed hoodie, a knit hat and a patchwork kimono embroidered with a “JC” logo. As an artist known for collaborating with his listeners — Collier regularly conducts live concert audiences as though they’re choirs and digitally duets submissions from followers on YouTube and TikTok — wearing pieces made by his fans allows him to feel as if he’s speaking “the same language,” musically and sartorially.
But just as his musical trajectory started with him making songs alone in his room and has expanded to feature collaborations with world-class artists, he has recently decided it’s time to enlist others to help him with his look. Collier is working on a currently-under-wraps collaboration with an international brand that will be introduced this year. And for the “Djesse” tour, he worked with the stylist Marta del Rio, who also creates looks for Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Tinashe, on his performance wardrobe.
“He’s so advanced in his musical maturity, but he’s just starting to experiment with fashion,” del Rio said. “He communicates joyfulness and enjoyment, and we wanted to maintain that essence with the clothes.”
At the beginning of their working relationship, Collier had a conversation with del Rio about sustainability in fashion, which he described as “a world full of possibilities to explore” that he is in some ways “just waking up to.” A onetime member of his school’s environmental club, Collier has started introducing climate awareness into his music-making process. He recently installed solar panels to power his music room, and he’s donating roughly 10% of net profits from merchandise sales on his current tour to Earth Percent, a nonprofit that raises funds for climate action.
Collier’s most responsible dressing habit, though, is one that sets him apart from many of his social media-raised peers. While many young creatives associate self-expression with never being seen online wearing the same thing twice, he frequently wears his clothes again and again. A beloved striped Missoni knit, for example, appears in multiple music videos, at press events and in home videos.
“I just really like it and wear it all the time,” he said, nodding at a group of street musicians whose eyes lit up in recognition as he walked by. “It’s a simple thing, but a lot of my friends and people in the industry will do something new for every show and event.”
Though some of Collier’s fans have expressed a desire to imitate his look — there are Instagram accounts and Reddit threads devoted to documenting his style and parsing where to shop for pieces like his — he’s happy that his first concert in New York was attended by a crowd whose garb mostly didn’t mirror his own. More than anything, he said, he wants to inspire people to be their truest selves.
“Certain people will wear a hat that looks like mine or something, but I get much more excited about people being really expressive as to who they are,” he said. “I love seeing people be themselves. I don’t want people to be like me. I want people to be like them. It’s that permission-giving that means the most.”
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
