- Photos:
-
Andre Benjamin’s unique sense of style hasn’t gone unnoted. GQ inducted him into the fashionable clique early. Vogue’s fashion master Ann Wintour has even given him pointers. In the early 2000s, OutKast flirted with the hip-hop clothing industry briefly with the OutKast Clothing Co. Some of us still remember their t-shirts where the O’s sported wings. That was then, this is now. Dre, as he is affectionately known, has since stepped his rag game up big time with Benjamin Bixby, his personal line that was launched at Harrod’s in London and can be found in Neiman Marcus, right here in the A.
The genuinely warm ‘Hey Ya’ star, who showcased his elegant side in “Idlewild”, was more than eager to share his fashion odyssey with Metromix at his fab Neiman Marcus welcome.
How did you hook up all of this up?
How did I hook all of this up? Man, you don’t understand. It took a lot to get to this small part. I guess the early little signs of it started in high school, just liking clothes, doing little things so we could have our own little style. From dying jeans to cutting them up to finding vintage pieces and making them fit a certain kind of way so it started there.
After I became an entertainer, I could design clothes for my tour and for videos. Then they were more like costumes. They were a bit more outrageous but it always had a rebel spirit. So I got an opportunity to design clothes for my videos. Like when you’re looking at the “Hey Ya!” video and you see like these green checkered pants; those were designed. I picked out fabric from here in Atlanta, from like local fabric stores and I got a seamstress to put it together. I started to get people asking, ‘man, where did you get those pants from?’
So how did you get from there to here?
I had to wait until I found someone who could get me in the right doors, to get me in the right factories in Italy and the right factories in Hong Kong. So I waited around. . . Fortunately I met this source and production guy who happened to live in Atlanta. . . I met him. I had my laptop. I had sketches of stuff that I wanted to do. He said, ‘Man, this is some cool stuff. I think it could be something that can work and I can get it done. I can get it made as long as you pay for it.’
At that point, I just invested in myself. Even up until this point, it’s all just been, me investing in myself. At that point, I went to factories in Italy. I went to factories in China to get the collection made. . . [then] I had to hire a fashion consultant to bring [the collection] to all the stores I wanted to be in. Thank God we ended up being here in Neiman Marcus and in Barneys [NY], in Collette in Paris and Harrods in London so the momentum was there.
That does sound like a lot.
There’s so much that goes into one garment that I didn’t know. I kind of jumped into this business. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just loved clothes. I didn’t know what it took and I had to find out quickly and I’m still learning, every day. It’s been a long road but I’m happy that I’m here.
So who inspired your fashion sense? Was there someone in your family who inspired you?
Yes, I’m glad you said that because my cousin. His name is Travis Benjamin, and Travis, he was an A-Town prep and Atlanta was all about being a prep. Like me and my mom, you know, we didn’t have a lot of money. Travis, he was a little bit more well-off, so the preppy style, he could buy all the new clothes. I would basically get all of my cousin’s hand-me-downs so he would give me his hand-me-downs but his clothes were so great that I would still look fresh seasons after. He was the person I would watch. He was a little bit older than me and then he went off to go to FAMU [Florida A&M University]. He had the cool style. He always had all the girls. He had a nice car. That was the person I looked up to.
