Orelsan: "Rap and fashion have always been super linked"

Après six ans d'absence, le rappeur Orelsan a tranquillement débarqué, jean slim noir et veste de survêtement sortie des nineties, il y a deux mois et demi avec son puissant clip "Basique". Trente millions de visionnages et un tout nouvel album plus tard, et avant d'entamer une tournée dans toute la France, le Caennais a pris le temps d'un café pour parler mode.

Like many of his colleagues, Orelsan has his own Streetwear brand, called Avnier.Created discreetly three years ago with his friend Sébastian Strappazzon, she begins to win.In particular by its next collaboration with Umbro, already illustrated by the Orelsan jacket in the video of "Basic".Explanations from the interested party.

Orelsan in the clip of "Basic"

Barely out, the "basic" clip was a box.We notice your jacket with Umbro and Avnier.It was to boost sales?

- Difficult to say because the jacket has not yet been released [the Umbro X Avnier collection will be marketed on November 23, editor's note].This strong jacket was the perfect room for the clip, which has a military side.It is a khaki jacket that Umbro has never done, because no football team has this color [the brand with double diamonds specializes in football equipment, editor's note].

I wear it with a Norse Project T-shirt and Umbro pants, but it's really the jacket that we hold back.When the clip came out, everyone asked me "But what is this phew jacket?"On the internet, it had to be a comment on 40...

This is the first time that I have been going out a clip since I have my brand.At the beginning, I did not want to put myself forward with Avnier, I did not want us to believe that it is just merch '[merchandising, derivative products, editor's note].Now, it's been three seasons, the brand works well and we have a great network of stores, with the best shop in each city - in Paris, it's in Center Commercial.I am super proud, and I can only assume it to death.

Should you understand that you are going to sell avnar during your concerts?

- Sure.I want to do the thing thoroughly!The only thing I don't know yet is if we will do exclusive pieces for the tour, parts that we will only find there.We have something for micro-capsules, like recently that with 823 Swiss graphic designers, which we had to make in just ten copies.

The right figures for "basic" and "the party is finished" should therefore support the brand.

- The success of the album should be good for the brand, and I'm happy.But it's much more than merchandising.

That's to say ?

- I also do a little merch 'by selling t-shirts with the Orelsan logo, but it's not the same approach.With Avnier, we really create clothes.We think, we discuss, we are looking, we draw, we work on materials, design...It goes much further than using a logo on a T-shirt.

You can put a t-shirt with the head of the coolest guy in the world, Pharrell Williams, but you're not going to dress that like that like that.While you can get dressed at Bape or G-Star Raw.

How to explain that a large number of rappers have their own brands?

- [he thinks] it is true that there are many: Jay-Z [Rocawear, editor's note], Drake [Octuber's very Own], Pharrell, who has three brands![A BATHING APE, Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream Footwear].

I think rap and clothes have always been super linked.It is music where, unlike others, the personality of the singers plays a lot.Habit becomes an extension of personality and music.

It feels a lot with the clips.From the start, we always wonder how we are going to dress.In my first clips, I wanted to put such a brand or any other, and I always ended up customizing my shoes or my jackets, to try to find special things.When you make a clip, you want to have a brand that looks like you 100%.Not to advertise someone, or to wear the thing of the moment...

Is that why you co-created Avnier?

- I always liked clothes.For fifteen years, Sébastian [Strappazzon] has been wearing clothes from his streetwear brand, aka one.He had had my contact with a friend, and we sympathized.

One day, he offered to make a capsule for alias One, and I answered him "it's cool, but I want us to make a new brand together".It was four years ago.We looked for noon at fourteen o'clock to imagine lots of potential ideas, to finish on something simple, a brand that would do everything we want to wear.

Why this name, Avnier?

- We wanted a word that belongs to us, which only designates our brand.We were then at the time of my penultimate concert and we liked this word, "penultimate".It is a word that means lots of things and at the same time does not mean anything at all.We contracted it to invent a word to us...

How is creation with Sébastian Strappzzon, in Lausanne, and you, in Paris?

- We are written a lot.When we do a collection, we are called all the time, we send parts, then we meet to draw together.It's really an exchange, everyone brings their ideas."Here, I like the idea of fleece shorts.What do you think about it ?"

Afterwards, we do prototypes with a stylist who makes us patronage and everything.I did not push delirium until I learn to sew...At the same time, there is no need to master the whole chain from A to Z.I made a film well ["How far away" in 2015, Editor's note] when I still don't know how to use a camera.

For the rest, Seb 'manages the whole production more - we make everything with small factories in Portugal -, and I, a little more the com' and experiments, with the capsules and collab '.Like the one with Umbro.I've told them about this idea for two years...

Extract from the Umbro X Avnier collection

This collection plays a lot from this nostalgia for nineties clothes.

- Séb 'and I are fully in this return from the 1990s and Foot Fashion.It has a reassuring side for us who have grown up in nineties and are fans of all brands of these years.I feel like I don't be completely has been.

In addition, there is a dream Christmas side.For four-five years, I have bought myself all the clothes I dreamed of when I was little: Jordan survival which at the time cost 1.000 francs, agassi, redskins leathers, unlikely things that I saw in rap clips, all the BAPE stuff, in the time not found...

No sneakers?

- Before, I was a fierce basketball.Finally, a relentless who had no sorrel - I had to have thirty pairs.And then, to camp in front of the stores, it was never really my thing...

Now there are so many everywhere, that I don't know where to turn...And, there, I found this pair of Solomon a year ago [of the Shelter, Editor's note], and I only put that!I find the model great, I bugged it.

Where does your taste for fashion come from?

- It started when I was 13, and I was rolling.I was fully, I watched all the videos, I read all the magazines.As soon as I saw a guy in a photo, I absolutely wanted to know the brand of his pants.

I knew all the parts of all brands, of this niche market.At the time, I even made impressions on t-shirts.

And then, there were guys like Pharrell or Lil Wayne who began to wear skaters' marks, and I fucked myself, the guys bring together everything I like! There is something to do! "

How do you perceive the appropriation of streetwear fashion by large luxury houses?

- The questions about prices are always a bit bizarre.At Avnier, we sell at the price that it costs us.If our sweatshirt is 50 balls, it is that with the margins of the stores, it really costs us 50 balls.Same for a room at 300.Some will put things at 1.000 balls just to say "luxury", while their products are rotten...

Afterwards, rap, especially American, has always been very linked to luxury brands.There are guys who rap dressed in Gucci.I don't mind, and I like some luxury brands.And so much the better if they are interested in Street culture, especially since it often goes through partnerships, like Vuitton with Supreme.

One day, it won't work anymore, and they will get elsewhere.Fashion is really something that moves, there is always something else that is created.

The Umbro x Avnier jacket is designed for men as for women

Right now, fashion is very much wondering about becoming more mixed.What do you think ?

- That it is a fashion.

At Avnier, we only draw by thinking about us, that we would wear.We did not feel legitimate to draw clothes that girls could wear.However, we realized that 60% of our customers are female.I find it super cool!

If fashion can be envisaged as mixed, it's good.After, if one day we decide to do something exclusively feminine, we may go through someone else.I really know nothing in dress and company...

And why not a man's skirt?

- Like Young Thug [American rapper who poses in a dress on the cover of his mixtape, editor's note]!It's true that we never know...We could make a kilt.It would be funny, especially since Supreme hasn't done it yet.I have to hurry before they have the idea...

Afterwards, I never said to myself by looking at a girl "hey, she put a piece for boy".It is anchored in the world of now.In high school, I found the girls super cool who dressed in streetwear, who came out a good pair of Jordan.I fell in love with a direct!Now it's more common, because everything is mixed.

Why you think ?

- Internet, Twitter, Instagram.There are no more cleavages.When I look at my insta ', on the same thread I will see the novelties of Louis Vuitton then of a strange brand like Land Lord New York, Aimé Leon Dore, then of Friend or Sandro.

Interview with Orelsan, rapper and co-creator of the Avnier brand, by Boris Manenti