The importance of Frank Ocean’s style was underlined again this week when he appeared on the Boys Don’t Cry live stream wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain T-shirt from the label Undercover. It’s as political as it is sartorial. Musically and stylistically, Ocean subverts expectations and norms. He’s not an R&B singer and he doesn’t dress like Kanye West. As a person of colour, his anti-peacock image resets the subtext about how black celebrities and singers are expected to dress.
Ocean’s look has become more refined, and his re-emergence after a quiet couple of years has been drenched in fashion references. His video for Calvin Klein’s #mycalvins campaign earlier this year felt like a mini music video. Barefoot in an oversized black suit and a white, buttoned-up shirt, his hair referenced the haircut of now – the Mr Robot undercut – while the found footage, mise-en-scène and lighting felt very Talking Heads (David Byrne was recently a reference for Balenciaga).
Ocean’s appearance in the ad shouldn’t have been a surprise. Eagle-eyed Frank spotters will have noticed the visual references to Raf Simons (as well as Gosha Rubchinskiy), the new chief creative officer of the label. It’s probably the most fashion move of his career so far.
Ocean’s initial image was defined by a stick-of-rock bandana in white and red. He wore it when he was a member of Odd Future, and it felt like a piece of juvenilia (a Karate Kid reference?), a bit of costuming that stood out awkwardly as his music matured out of the mixtape era, although it did merit its own Twitter account.
Ocean seemed to have got the memo that menswear moves at a glacial pace, and his later looks were subtly stylish – so subtle that some might have called them normcore, but they could be more accurately described as classically modernist with a pop-culture twist.
Ocean incorporated designer pieces into his look, but he did it his way. He wore black Givenchy sweaters, navy Dior Homme suits and maroon Maison Margiela trousers, but he accessorised them with sportswear brands such as Supreme, Common Project and Nike. When he embraced florals, on a pastel T-shirt at the Brits, it was Supreme’s take on the cover of New Order’s Power Corruption and Lies. And when he wore couture, a custom-made Band of Outsiders canary-yellow suit (the shade of that season), he drew comparisons away from the catwalk and towards Richie Tenenbaum.
