In a candid interview with Mr Porter’s The Journal and The Daily, Banheart talks about fashion, his free spirited upbringing and new album (Ape in Pink Marble).
With music that is unclassifiable – “freak-folk” and “trippy-hippie tone poetry” are just two of the more vivid attempts to brand his mode of troubadouring – so his clothing choices are always idiosyncratic and never less than noteworthy, from the dress he wore in high school (“I was challenging the belief systems of my peers”) to his penchant for cutting down boots in order to create avant-shoes.
We should expect nothing less from a man of such singular background and non-binary sensibility (born in Houston, raised in Venezuela, middle-named Obi after Obi-Wan Kenobi, an avid skateboarder, played his first gig at a gay wedding, dated Ms Natalie Portman, collaborated with Antony And The Johnsons, had a song about bestiality used in a mobile phone ad), who’s previously rocked both bindi-and-beard and Native American looks, who boasts multiple tattoos of hermaphrodites, and who once opined: “Old Chinese ladies just have the best style.”
Mr Banhart’s ability to take the menswear basics and give them an off-centre edge has been noted previously. To celebrate the release of his new album, Ape In Pink Marble, we present three shining examples of Mr Banhart at his sui generis best.
