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PURP
(@ss.purp)
Mizaiah:
Your art has layers. All of it. Today, from outside looking in, your main focus is your clothing brand: .terrain. I think this is the perfect name as we see the pieces you create. It’s layered, it’s high fashion, it’s streetwear, it’s art and it’s clothing and it’s fit for anything and anywhere.
Was your goal always to have your clothing be able to essentially be worn anywhere? Or was this something you learned for yourself over time as you reached new skill levels and accomplished your original goals?
How much of your personal emotions go into making your pieces? Do you create from your emotion or is the creation of your pieces a moment of distraction or an outlet for you?
How does making music and fashion intertwine for you? Or are they two seperate worlds? If they are separate, how does Will know when to water both of those assets of his tree and how do you ensure you’re growing in both?
Lastly what goes into creating something like the “Arable” drop. Is it something that you plan to the t before hand (color, patterns, visuals etc) or do things come naturally as you create?
PURP:
I think my libra sun would say it’s engrained into everything I do. Finding the balance between the light and dark, high and low, street and formal, melodic and lyrical. At a point, I think I was doing it subconsciously but as I honed my skillset further it definitely became an intention. Fitting everywhere is also something I used to pride myself in so the adaptive nature of my art reflects that, I think. Duality is a big thing, honestly theres duality in everything, and something overviewing my work has done is show me how contradictory I can be, how flippant an emotion can be from song to song or style to style. Overarching though is the hope to create things that are timeless.
Everything is driven by emotions! Sometimes it’s very literal, like 2023 I made this beanie with a skull on it because so many of my people had died over Covid and death loomed on my mind. I’d also made tees and hoodies with the skeletal motif. Not only were people dying, relationships had began to fade too. I titled the collection “no more bones” because I wanted to stop carrying dead weight while also honoring and remembering who they were to me.
On the surface you can look and say “oh that’s a cool looking beanie that’s been upcycled and it’s very clear that it takes inspiration from KAPITAL or Mutsu but, I had to find (or even create rather) a source that really connected with me and tell a piece of my story. It’s more than clothing, otherwise it never reaches the public. If there isn’t like an actual piece of me to share openly and possibly resonate with others it’s not .terrain. Every piece has feelings, whether it be in the texture, the color, the story behind it, and most times a mixture of all three.
At one point I saw the music and fashion as two different parts of me. I grew up. I’m still figuring out how I want to make the mediums feed into each other. I’m doing a fashion show in early September that, for the first time, I’m gonna use my own music for and I think after that I’ll have a better understanding. I’m the type that has to experience shit for it to actually click. Seeing it in real life will kinda motivate me more often to make music that gives context to my clothing with the specific intention of a runway. I would like to treat both music and fashion as different legs of an octopus, moving independently with the greater goal being full self expression/financial autonomy. You know, world-building authentically and organically while making a profit and little to no conformity to fit into anyone else’s idea of what an artist should limit themselves to being. That kinda hippie shit. I’ve been told that I didn’t make sense to someone until they heard my music and saw the clothes I make which kinda boggled me but, it adds to the point of it all being branches on the Asad tree.
“The Arable” was really a retrospective of my work over COVID. None of that was made remotely close in time to each other but it looked amazing on a clothing rack together so I made it a thing. It was also like a marker for me, a little starting point on this next era of terrain. Back to the original premise of finding that balance in opposing ideas. new clothing from old clothing, old silhouettes with new fabrics, modern silhouettes with ancient techniques and so on. “The Arable” was a macro shot on what I was capable of doing and what I want to grow seeds out of.
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