Post Malone’s New Merch Collaboration Is Magical, Medieval, and Beer-Themed

There is something magical about Post Malone. With an overgrown mustache and guttural laughs, he’s like Santa Claus with face tattoos, swagging along in a pair of Lucchese boots. He lights up even the dimmest spaces, like when I meet him in Los Angeles on the Sunset Strip’s Rainbow Room, a kitschy bar dotted with dated photographs of musicians and the occasional celebrity—Kid Rock and David Spade and Puddle of Mudd. It’s the type of place where the waitresses call you “hun” while offering you a mountain of hot wings. This is Malone’s favorite spot when he’s in town, and the venue where he chose to shoot his new lookbook of Bud Light merchandise. After all, beer is a staple in Malone’s food pyramid. “It’s all I drink,” he says, patting his stomach. “Obviously, by my belly.” He’s been a longtime beer fanatic, and beer, specifically Bud Light, often make a cameo in his music. His second album was named Beerbongs & Bentleys. In his song “Takin’ Shots,” Malone sings the lyrics: “Sippin' Bud Light, that's the new Goose.” In the music video “Goodbyes,” Bud Light’s unmistakable blue label and brown bottle make a cameo. He was named Bud Light’s Influencer of the Year. In August 2018, after his private plane made an emergency landing, the first thing that Malone requested was not a drink, but specifically “a beer.” In other words, the entertainer’s Bud Light collaboration, which will be available at a New York City pop up on August 4 and 5, and then online, has been a long time coming.

As outrageous as the partnership may sound, it’s not just Malone signing his name away to a big-money brand. While the line includes typical merchandise items like accessories, sweatpants, and hoodies ranging from $10 to $250, the clothes are Malone to the core, and there is something earnest about them. When Malone explains the design concept, he sounds like a deeply intelligent weirdo citing his love of Greek mythology and medieval themes. “I told them I was super interested in mythological shit, and then that’s where the dragon and the sword and everything all came into play,” says Malone about the collection. “There’s so many different ways to recreate those creatures of the past that people talked about, and legends, and make them your own.” Other influences include Bud Light’s archive imagery from the ’80s and ’90s, chock full of cheeky graphic T-shirts; the 1996 Bud Light rodeo campaign; and Malone’s tattoos and his lyrics, which do appear scrawled on most of the pieces. Standouts are a pair of nylon black pants with cinched ankles that create a slight ballooning effect. “I call them ‘sneaky pants,’” he says, referring to their swishy sound. “You can’t sneak up on anyone in them.” There’s a plum-hue hoodie with a screen-printed old-timey cowboy pulled from the Bud Light archives with “Posty Co.” scrawled at the bottom, and a shirt with a webbed-winged dragon. Out of all of the models in the lookbook, Malone is the most electric and engaging. For the pair of white sweatpants monogrammed with “Bud Light,” Malone delivers an elegant Sigmund Freud pose with one leg daintily balanced over the other. Posty looks charming. He, in fact, looks great.

So how did we get here? Only a year ago Malone’s style was the target of a Twitter campaign that considered the singer a bad dresser who needed advice from the Fab Five of Queer Eye. Now, he has quickly climbed the sartorial ladder. (Full disclosure: I wrote an article about Malone’s lovable, bizarre look last year.) Since then, he has had his own Crocs collaboration—yellow globular things with tattoo-themed Jibbitz—that sold out. He’s looking stellar in intricate custom, hand-stitched suits. (Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness follows him, too!) And though he has experienced success in the wardrobe arena, Malone says that finding his style has been a trip. Go back to his earlier outfits, during his “White Iverson” period circa 2015, when he wore a sterile oversize white T-shirt, the sleepy tabula rasa of clothes. “I didn’t know anything, really. I would buy jeans and cut them in the middle of the knee and then single handedly pick every string out so they would have those cool danglies on the side,” he says. “I would do all that shit. Then I got more comfortable with my body. I got more tattoos. I got more comfortable not wearing long sleeves and big-ass shirts all the time. Over time, I became more comfortable with who I was and who I am and being able to express myself more openly, and not necessarily conform to what everybody else was wearing.“

Part of his success can be credited to working with stylist Catherine Hahn, a former costume designer, for about two years. Hahn has a cool demeanor, the ultimate California-chill vibe, something that probably is in sync with Malone. She’s unlocked Malone’s wacky personality, infusing Americana and good ol’ cowboy tones into his getups, sourcing people across America who specialize in the craft of hand-stitching and embroidery. Hahn describes their first meeting as having an instantaneous connection. “It was a creative connection that I felt. It just felt immediate, like straight out of the gate,” says Hahn. “We are kind of on the same wavelength as far as him wanting to wear these kind of ‘out there’ things. We’re just creatively very much on the same page.”

While Malone might be new in the realm of fashion stardom, he certainly is on the right, blazing path toward creating his own look. The merchandise line and his personal style speaks to his philosophy as a person. “I do what I like. I wear what I like to wear. I think it’s cool that I can—maybe if it hasn’t been worn before or in a long time—I can try it out and figure it out. That may give people the confidence to wear whatever the hell they want,” he says. “It’s important because a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, I like this but I’m scared to wear this because I don't want to get laughed at.’ But people will admire you in the long run for doing whatever the hell you want to do.” Cheers to that.

Post Malone x Bud Light merchandise will be available from August 4 to August 5 at 89 Crosby Street in New York City.

Originally Appeared on Vogue