Ian Isiah Is the Fashion World’s Favorite Gospel Singer
When Ian Isiah stops by the Vogue offices just a few days before his most recent EP, Shugga Sextape Vol. 1, is released at the end of last year, he comes with two bedazzled iPhones and a Juul eclipsed by a massive rhinestone cross that sparkles in the sunlight. “Never leave me in a beauty supply store by myself,” Isiah quips of his craftiness. He’s just wrapped up a leg of his tour with Dev Hynes—he sings backup vocals in Blood Orange’s band—which he describes as his dream job. “I wake up, I get on a plane, I check into a hotel, I go to sleep, I wake up, I go to soundcheck, we do the show, and then I go back to sleep. It’s the best thing ever. This is the job that I’ve wanted my whole life: to wake up and do what I know how to do without doing anything, and get paid for it, and then go back to sleep.”
He’s being flippant about not really doing anything, of course. Today, Isiah just released a new music video for “God,” a highlight from his latest “sextape” (his term for mixtape) that focuses on sexual freedom and gender fluidity, and is inspired by everyone from Whitney Houston to The-Dream to T-Pain. And even if you’re not well-versed in his music, you’re definitely familiar with his work in the fashion world. He’s a peerless collaborator, first through his styling for Shayne Oliver’s seminal New York brand Hood by Air, and now with his partnership with Telfar Clemens.
Isiah grew up with both Oliver and Clemens, so it’s only natural that he’s still working with each of them in some capacity. Isiah describes HBA as simply a reflection of how he and Oliver were raised. “North Face coats in Brooklyn in wintertime to me was couture. In summer, gel sandals on women? Fashion! Chaps? Leather cargo pants? All these things are couture now,” Isiah says of HBA’s distinct visual identity, which draws upon all these unlikely influences and more. “We got to create these collections that repeat how we were in high school,” Isiah says, whose teenage years coincided with what he considers a more widespread approach to gender-fluid dressing in New York City. “After high school, I got my style inspiration from me going to a party in the hood in the most dangerous area in Brooklyn wearing a miniskirt, and being completely comfortable and being accepted by all the people there. It gave me the courage to continue to design clothes, to go to Shayne with great ideas, and it even gave me the courage to sing, to this day.”
As for his work with Telfar, Isiah curated the concert–cum–runway show that was one of the highlights of the entire Fall 2018 New York Fashion Week. Dev Hynes, Kelela, Kelsey Lu, and more performed a rendition of Hezekiah Walker’s “Grateful,” which Hynes and Isiah arranged themselves, with “Telfar” playfully substituting for “the Lord” in the lyrics. Isiah says that to this day, people are still downloading the MP3 from that show and listening to it.
It was his first musical curation project, but it has as much to do with the sparkling cross on his Juul that keeps catching my eye as much as it does with his work in the fashion world. “Church and New York: That was my lifestyle,” Isiah says. He had to go to church twice a week growing up in Flatbush, which Isiah calls the “West Indian assembly of Brooklyn,” where dancehall reigned supreme, but really he went at least twice as often because he wanted to sing in the choir. “It was free music school for me. I knew since I was 3 or 4 years old that music was going to be a thing—I was making my cousins come over and sing with me and bang on pots and pans in the kitchen—and I always knew church or spirituality was going to be a thing for me, so I was forced to just merge the two.”
Now, Isiah wants to take this naturally collaborative spirit to a whole new level: He hopes to become a Quincy Jones type, helping others develop their own musicianship and sense of artistry. His eyes light up during our meeting when he considers the natural outcome of this seed of an idea. “Oh my God, am I going to open a school for music?!” I can see him file it away in one of his tidy mental folders. “I live by styling, and everything is a mood board for me,” Isiah says. “The circumference of my head is filled with folders, concepts, and mood boards. Even talking to you, I’m registering a folder for a certain look, and I pull from that folder.”
An Ian Isiah Music Academy might be a little far off, so for the time being, Isiah is obsessed with merch. He’s already helped Dev Hynes create some pieces for his tour, and he shows me his “sacred genius list of merch ideas” (it’s literally labeled “Genius Ideas” as a note in one of his charmingly blingy iPhones) toward the end of our meeting. He rattles off a list of concepts that he hopes to develop down the line: “I want to package my album when it’s pressed to vinyl in a diamond ziplock bag that’s also a purse. I might bring back iPods if I can. Do-rags. Juuls! Totally doing Juuls. Juuls that are also a USB for the whole album.” Until you can get a hand on one of Isiah’s Juul-USBs (which you’re encouraged to bedazzle yourself, in classic Isiah fashion), take a look at his new music video, above.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
