It’s hard to think of any fashion brand better suited to a collaboration with the buoyant and bright producer DJ Khaled than Dolce & Gabbana. Both make loudness into the highest luxury: Khaled with his larger-than-life, inspirational-speaker persona, whose songs are stuffed to the gills with the biggest stars (Bieber! Quavo! Chance! Wayne!), and D&G with its Technicolor approach to la dolce vita, each collection overflowing with patterns and baubles and chains and headpieces. It’s a match made in heaven, or at least in South Beach. “The collection combines Miami’s urban style with the atmosphere and mood of the Mediterranean,” the designers say by email. “DJ Khaled has a curious approach to the world...and we believe we speak the same language.”
The new capsule collection is exactly how you’d hope and expect it to be: clashing prints of purple flowers and green jungle plants, and an illustration of a lion as a centerpiece for shirts, jackets, swimsuits, and even pillowcases. “In our opinion, today more than ever, people need positivity and genuine emotions...so colors, prints, and mixes are the explosion we wanted,” the designers say. The collaboration is done largely in a fabric signature for both D&G and Khaled, who is almost always seen in public in silky shirts with banana leaves, cheetah skin, or poppy florals. He often has special clothes created so that he and his four-year-old son, Asahd, can match, and on special occasions, he makes sure they both match one of his custom Jet Skis.
Here, fresh from the studio in his hometown, Miami, where he is finishing up a new album—“I can promise you this, all your favorite artists are on the album”—Khaled explains how he came to be the prince of silk prints and, quite possibly, the most confident wearer of clothes on earth.
GQ: I see you’re enjoying a beverage—can I ask what it is?
DJ Khaled: I'm having grape Ciroc mixed with passion fruit and star fruit, and the fruit is actually cut up in there, floating.
Do you take time every day to have a little bit of celebration like this?
Yeah, I definitely celebrate every day, because life is beautiful and God is great. Not just having a drink—I pray every day, kiss my family, and just give thanks. But the reason why I'm having a nice little drink is we wish we were on a tropical island, so we're going to bring the tropical island right here.
That's kinda what you do—bring the tropical island everywhere you go.
Tropical is just who I am forever. I love nature. I love flowers. I love the sun. We got to embrace the light, but we also have to be the light, because the light is love. God is love. And through this pandemic, you can't get caught slipping, meaning slip into the darkness. I had to tell myself, Khaled, you’ve got to be the light. I've been like that from birth, but I'm talking about on another level right now. I can't fall for the trap because of the pandemic.
At least in terms of fashion, I think the Dolce collection is sort of the antithesis of the pandemic vibe, which has been more about gray sweatpants.
We all been through so much—we have to rely on our spirit, on our blessing. And I try to remind myself and the fans out there: We got light. To bring light through music, through energy, through whatever.
When I linked up with Dolce & Gabbana, it was just an automatic connection. I just sent them a bunch of pictures of my vibe—flowers, colors, textures—and explained to them about the light and love. They came back with the sketches and the first round, and I'm like, This is it.