Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1019393
BAL HARBOUR 123 "None of the fashion houses would loan to rappers when I started styling. Now I'm sure now every designer would kill to dress Kendrick Lamar." —David Casavant Casavant in his own styling work. "I couldn't be a painter without paint and paintbrushes." One of the archive's rarest pieces, surprisingly, is a pair of Helmut Lang briefs. Its most valuable? A Raf Simons camo bomber speckled with patches, the monetary worth of which David estimates at around $40,000. "Raf appropriated streetwear into high fashion," he notes. "You couldn't just take a hoodie and put a patch on it and get the same look that easily. He got the details right." Expressing disappointment in the fashion industry that he feels is only starting to recognize the influence of youth culture, Casavant began dressing celebrities, especially rappers largely ignored by big-name houses. "It used to be that none of them would loan to rappers when I started styling," he says. Recently, that included Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Kendrick Lamar, whom Casavant decked out in Craig Green and Raf Simons for his Grammy medley. "I'm sure now every designer would kill to dress him." "It's propelled beyond this image of the skinny white girl, and that you have to be rich and posh to be part of it," he continues. To Casavant, who's propagated the streetwear aesthetic and crafted the image of countless tastemakers, the zeitgeist is slowly catching up. "I hope that fashion is used less as a way to control people and more as a way to liberate them." PORTRAIT BY MATTHEW MORROCCO (DAVID CASAVANT); MATAO CHAMORRO