The show starts out in a revolving scene of Tyler the Creator waking up, brushing his teeth, and picking an outfit out for the day. Take note of his huge, green, backpack-looking closet as he scrapes together a basic outfit and is interrupted by a knock at his front door. Opening the door, we find his friends with bikes and footballs as they are fitted with bold colored prints, all paired with Vans skate highs. The models are all friends of Tyler’s or reappearing characters from past music videos. None of them are exactly models, as it is clear when they walk down the “runway." However, they look the part, and you can tell that Tyler put a lot of effort into picking these individuals to walk. But even with all the effort Tyler put into the models, the entire show still seems like it needs work. The direction that Tyler wanted the show to go is clear, but was it the right direction?
The runway is very unusual; it's shaped in a circle made out of wooden skate ramp material and connected to three small skate ramps in the middle for later in the show. Each model stops three times and Tyler enters into the mix several times, as well. Each time they walk down the runway, they exit to Tyler’s door and change quickly to enter back through and onto the circle. The models look carefree and semi-confident as they don’t seem to know what they are doing exactly. Some look nervous and others look extremely bored throughout this whole process. But, they all seem to possess a factor of the designer throughout the show.
The whole set looks like it would be straight out of Tyler the Creator’s music video, “F*cking Perfect,” which was featured on his album “Cherry Bomb.” It has big sunflowers all around, and the clothes match the video's color palette, too. For the most part, everything ran smoothly; almost too smoothly. Until they incorporated the skate ramps about a third of the way into the show. Now there were two models that brought their skateboards with them down the runway. They skated for the rest of the show, but they seemed to not know how to do any tricks as they proceeded to try different techniques, but failing. The ramps had the potential to be something spectacular, if only the designer got actual skateboarders.
The clothes are clothes that you would imagine to pop into Tyler’s head -- patterns that you have never thought of, colors that wouldn’t be coordinated together, and hats that were essential to Tyler's whole GOLF brand. They were impressive, yes, but it was nothing new. These clothes have been on the GOLF website as well as the GOLF app for about a year now. It was nothing groundbreaking. People did comment on the internet, but the show shed a different light on the clothes, almost as if they were couture or a high-fashion line.
Essentially, the clothes seemed to be a hit and the new shoe line that Tyler showed at the end was to die for. He gave a small speech about how he wanted the clothes to inspire others and that he didn’t know what he was doing, only that he just liked making clothes like he liked making music. He then called his friend -- you may know him, Kanye West -- out to give him an envelope, asked a fan to open it, and gave shoes out to everyone who bought a ticket.
In my opinion, the show was just “eh.” Being a huge Tyler the Creator fan since the beginning, I had extremely high expectations. I believe anything Tyler does is done with a uniqueness that cannot be found anywhere else, and watching his videos or listening to his songs feels like you've actually entered his brain. But I didn’t feel that for the show. It was nothing new, and as I finished watching, I realized that I didn’t yearn to see more because I had lost interest in the show as much as the models. It felt just like his music video for “Fucking Perfect,” and while his effort to be different might have sparked something for some people, all I could think about was that his speech and his show weren't as genuine and different as I had hoped or expected.
See entire show below: