Tyler, The Creator Spent Years Cultivating His Prized Collections. We Got a Look Inside.
Introducing Tyler, The Curator, the two-time Grammy-winning artist with exceptional taste in Cartier watches, old-school cars and more.
Style is never dependent upon resources, just as taste isn’t determined by a price tag. The truly stylish, and those with intriguing taste, rarely begin developing their personal aesthetic at the point when their bank balance reflects their success. For Tyler, The Creator, two-time Grammy-winning artist, producer, director, composer and designer, the collecting bug that set in motion the eclectic nature of his passions and career started with, well, Hot Wheels.
“I didn’t play with toys much as a kid,” he says, “but Hot Wheels. . .was definitely my No. 1 collection. I had probably seven, and some I kept until my teen years.”
Tyler Okonma, as he was known back then, is a professional chameleon. His past several albums have involved creating personas he inhabits for the promotional cycle of the project and then switches out for whatever’s next. His last two releases both won Best Rap Album Grammys and brought him global attention.
Of all the obsessions you see on these pages—many long-lived, some relatively new—music remains his first love. On the days we spend with him in LA, Tyler, 31, is constantly humming, crooning and rhyming. In the past 15 years, he has veered from alt rap to rock to soul and R & B, but always with hip-hop overtones, knowing wordplay and a raised eyebrow. And in the accompanying videos, which he directs himself (as Wolf Haley), he has offered glimpses of an interior world he’s fiercely protective of.
He’s never invited anyone in—until now. “I’m a pretty private dude, so doing this for Robb Report was, like, a big task for me,” he says. So why do it at all? “I think you guys are very tasteful and just cool,” he says. His next response, though, speaks to how he approaches his work and, to an extent, his life.
“I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to change all the colors of my cars anyway.’ I might as well get the ill photo of the whole collection, and I might as well show all these cool trunks because who knows, man, something could happen in three years where I try to go bald and become vegan and start a family and I don’t want any of this shit anymore. So why not document it while I have the most pride for it, which is the era I’m in right now.”
He’s never invited anyone in—until now. “I’m a pretty private dude, so doing this for Robb Report was, like, a big task for me,” he says. So why do it at all? “I think you guys are very tasteful and just cool,” he says. His next response, though, speaks to how he approaches his work and, to an extent, his life.
“I said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to change all the colors of my cars anyway.’ I might as well get the ill photo of the whole collection, and I might as well show all these cool trunks because who knows, man, something could happen in three years where I try to go bald and become vegan and start a family and I don’t want any of this shit anymore. So why not document it while I have the most pride for it, which is the era I’m in right now.”
He got his first set of wheels for his 19th birthday. It was “this gross, square-ish Honda Accord. Ill shape. Then I got my [BMW] M3 E92. Frost white, two-door. I loved that car. And then, I always wanted a [BMW] M3, an old-school E30. And once I got that, I saw what a Lancia was. I was like, ‘What is this? This car is cool.’ And once I got into that and understood what that ’80s rally shit was, it was a wrap.”
Tyler had no qualms about changing the colors of his rides, switching out tires and accessorizing. He doesn’t hold with the “keep vintage, vintage” brigade. “That shit is so corny, bro,” he says. “ ‘Oh, it was made this year. Don’t touch it.’ Why would you buy something and not make it yours? People be like, ‘Oh, it still has the original engine.’ I don’t give a fuck. That engine is slow as hell. Update my shit. I want AC. It’s hot in this car.”
When I saw that Rolls-Royce [the Carmargue] that looked like it was in the vein of that Fiat and those Lancias, my brain exploded. You know people hated that car when it came out? Crazy. I think it’s beautiful. It looks like a Clif Bar.
“And fuck the original paint,” he adds. Or if you love the original paint, more power to you. But if you want to make it black, and you’re like, ‘But this paint was put on before the internet was made,’ then change it. You bought it. Why not enjoy it? ’Cause you could die tomorrow and be like, ‘Always wanted it black, but everyone on this car forum and message board is going to respect me because I kept the original paint, even though I’m dead.’ ”
Tyler’s collections don’t sit there gathering dust. “I drive most of [the cars] when I can… My Cullinan is my everyday. It’s truly a first-class seat on a plane. But then my BMW—if I had to rob a bank, I would probably use that car. Because I just know it so well, I control it differently. I drift in it, making a little left turn and letting the ass shoot out and stuff, before I go back on the straight.”
While he’s pretty happy with his current lot, there’s always space for one more. Maybe three. “I want a LaFerrari. That’s my dream. Make that shit dark Kelly green. When I get that car, I’m driving five miles per hour everywhere. I want everyone to see me in that vehicle. One day I’ll have a F40. One day I’m going to get the Lamborghini truck, the old one. Jay-Z pulled up on me in one, and I was like, ‘You are a psycho, man.’ ”
Watches
Who says fast food isn’t good for you? The unlikely piece that informed Tyler’s current collection of predominantly vintage Cartier was a SpongeBob SquarePants watch he found in a Burger King kid’s meal when he was around 13. “I based a lot of my watch taste just off of how light it feels and how it could be colorful, too,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to be gold and iced-out.” In fact, that’s just not his style. “I’ve seen some Rolexes, vintage ones, I really like, but aside from that, I’m just OK with the Cartiers. They bring me joy.”
As was obvious from his willingness to kneel perilously close to the swimming pool’s edge to get the perfect light for this shot, Tyler is decidedly not precious about his precious pieces. “I perform in my watches,” he says. “I’ll jump in the water. I’ll bike with them. I sweat in them.” Like Andy Warhol, he rarely winds most of them, not least that highly covetable Cartier Crash—a watch that became red-hot after being seen on both Kanye West and then Tyler a few years ago—which has never told the right time more than twice a day. “The battery doesn’t work,” he says. “The fucking strap is sweated through. It’s dirty; it has dents in it. I’m not spending all this money on these things that I claim I like and not enjoying them. I’m living in all of it.”
Each piece is loved for different reasons. Speaking about his striking square-faced, red-strapped Obus—a Cartier from the 1980s he successfully bid on at a live auction in Monaco last year—he likens its oversized blue Roman numerals to a Picasso, saying it looks sketch-like, whereas the strap reminds him of places he has stayed in Rome and Paris. “It’s [like] these super-over-the-top gaudy hotels where it’s lamps everywhere and red velvet, and it’s like, ‘Dude, I just need a bed,’ ” he says. As for his Crash, he loves its references, intended or coincidental, to surrealism, with which he is well versed, reeling off modern adherents Marion Peck and Mark Ryden: “I love these things that are regular, but kind of skewed.”
“I got into magazines pretty heavy,” Tyler says of his teenage years. “Anything with N.E.R.D or Eminem or skateboarding. And because those are three different types of things, it opened my eyes to so many other things. And it just grew.”
He has an extensive library of magazines and coffee-table books, ranging from Japanese and British style mags to US hip-hop and street-culture titles, vintage newspapers and large-scale monographs on fashion, art and history as well as random subjects such as street style or architecture. For Tyler, the accumulation of knowledge is a pleasure. “I do like learning and having random facts about stuff… I’ve always liked books and [finding] information. I wish more people did that. I wish more people were on the internet sharing information of shit they like and not spending that time talking about, ‘Oh, I’m disappointed in Ron,’ ” he says, referring to some fictional celebrity. “Ignore it and tell us some information, so I can learn from that.” Not a fan of gossip, then. “It’s terrible.”
Music
To explain fully what music means to him, Tyler talks about death. He wants to explore loss—not of life but of opportunity. “I’m not scared of death in itself. What I’m scared of is the music that I won’t get to hear after I’m gone,” he says. “That’s the biggest bummer. Every day I’m on YouTube, scouring, looking, listening, clicking, learning. Like, dude, isn’t it crazy? One of your favorite songs of all time, you haven’t heard yet?” The moment of discovering something new is magical. “Shout out Shazam. Shazam is truly like inhalers, insulin, the internet—like, greatest inventions of all time.” What’s the last track he identified with the app, then? The iPhone comes out. “ ‘Breeze’ by STUTS. I haven’t listened to it since, ’cause it was in a random restaurant, but it probably had some good chords that I liked.”
As much as I love music, I’m not a super snob—yet!—about hi-fi and McIntosh and stuff. But I do have some really nice speakers set up in my room, not too much low end, not too crazy. I listen to most of my music in the car, but sometimes, if an album’s coming out, I’ll invite friends over and we’ll listen to it in the front room, front to back. We don’t speak, we’re not on our phones. And that’s fun.”
Trunks
“These trunks, I used to throw them in the street as soon as I bought them,” says Tyler, by way of establishing that he isn’t overly delicate with his collection, a theme that runs through our conversations. When he talks about them, though, it’s with a breathy kind of awe. “Sometimes, I’ll just look at this trunk wall and some of these wood canvas boxes, which to some is just luggage, but I’m just looking like, ‘Man, the time they put into this,’ ” he says. Like his cars and bikes, the steamers serve their original purpose. “Anytime I travel, I use these,” he says. “When I played at Something in the Water, Pharrell’s festival, I put all my shit in here—my toothbrush, clothes and boxers.”
His interest in trunks was initially piqued by the colorful prints Takashi Murakamicreated for Louis Vuitton, and he tried to make his own back in 2014. But it wasn’t until a few years later, when he saw Balenciaga’s colorful, oversized and striped picnic-style laundry bags, that an infatuation began. “I wanted every fucking color, but I couldn’t put my computer and stuff inside of it because it wasn’t protecting it,” he says. “So, the first little briefcase I got was a Louis Vuitton one with a taxi on the side, or some bullshit they painted on it. Ever since that moment, I was like, ‘Oh shit, I could fit clothes in this. This is the perfect size and shape. How did they make this?’ Then the obsession started.” Never satisfied with just collecting, he wanted to know everything about their origin. “I dive into that time, and I just get obsessed with the history of it.”
His collection is broad, ranging from vintage to ultra-rare to modern, vibrant pieces he has designed himself. One Vuitton trunk from 1904 still has its ripped label stuck on from when it boarded the Queen Elizabeth in 1949 and is embellished with hand-stitched cotton LV monograms embroidered onto the leather. Another has a blue, green and pink leopard print—Tyler had it made for his Golf Le Fleur fashion label.
We found this hip dude in the middle-of-nowhere France who is a trunk maker, and he made the first Le Fleur trunk for us that we sold last December. He made two for me, and he made this super-special one-of-one Le Fleur one.
Whenever he’s on tour, Tyler goes treasure hunting at antiques stores, but his latest acquisition came after he spotted a guy at Virgil Abloh’s in memoriam Louis Vuitton show in Paris, for which he composed the soundtrack, holding a particularly striking Louis Vuitton carrier. “I’m like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ ” he says. “I needed it. I had to have it.” But this piece, which looks like the trunk version of his Cartier Crash with its asymmetrical wave shape and blurred monogram LV logos, is proving to be a bit more precious. “I will say, that’s the one trunk I didn’t throw in the middle of the street when I got it.”
Jewelry
Giant daisies, a palm-sized bellhop figurine and a re-creation of his own Igor character face are just a few examples of the gem-encrusted pieces in Tyler’s over-the-top jewelry collection. If his watches feel almost reserved, his neck candy is straight-up in your face: each one a custom creation. Early pieces were made by LA jeweler Ben Baller, but recent designs have been executed by Alex Moss, based in New York City. Both Baller and Moss were tasked with creating the artist’s more outré pieces referencing characters from each of his albums. Caryn Alpert, another LA jeweler, is frequently tapped for Tyler’s less flamboyant pieces—a necklace she created using four of his draft sketches ended up encrusted with large amethysts, sapphires, rubies and diamonds, among many other stones.
His creativity, however, gets more fully expressed in his thematic pieces revolving around previous albums. “You got the Cherry Bomb piece of the face, and then you got the Flower Boy necklace, where I was like, ‘Man, I want a garden. I want to wear a garden on my neck.’ So, I fucking drew [it] up and figured out like, ‘Oh, I’ll do the bumblebee, and I’ll do the flower, and this and that.’ ” One of his pride-and-joy pieces is the Bunny Hop necklace featuring a yellow-diamond-encrusted bellhop (that alter ego again) holding two pink-sapphire cases that open at their hinges. It hangs from a chain of gem- encrusted “gumballs” and received endless press after he wore it at the BET Hip Hop Awards last year while picking up another gong.
But his collection is as much for his own pleasure as for public consumption. Even the undersides of some of his pieces come decorated. One example: The flipside of his flower necklace spells out “Scum Fuck Flower Boy.” It’s certainly not the kind of thing you would find at any Place Vendôme jeweler. But hey, that’s precisely the point.
Bikes
Tyler, The Creator is a biker. And like his love affair with cars, this one runs deep: He can recount every bicycle he has had since his mom gave him his first to teach him to ride without training wheels. Mountain bikes, BMX, one that “got stolen from my grandmother’s house. I was bummed,” all the way up to what you see here, just a handful of the two-wheelers in his collection.
“They’re the coolest thing ever to me,” he says. “I love biking. It’s freeing. It’s meditation. It’s a massage. It’s peace. . .Sometimes we’ll do 50 miles on the BMX.
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