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Just this morning, I brought you all the glory of Samuel Davide Hains. The unbearable hipster who described his street style in (what I described as) the most punchable way ever. Luckily for all of us, he did a follow-up interview with The Independent that was so absurd that I decided I needed to break it down rather than just casually update our original story.
Enjoy.
Samuel Davide Hains interview: A few burning questions with Melbourne’s ‘bucolic jazz socialist’
CH: ‘Leon Trotsky meets Albert Einstein meets John Coltrane’ is quite the sartorial triumvirate. What are some other historical fashion touchstones?
SDH: Basquiat for spontaneous street energy…like, my fly is undone right now but I’m not going to do it up. We must always embrace spontaneity in our aesthetic and in our creative practice. Linus Torvalds for utilitarian pragma-wear, open source philosophy and sharing the process (like jazz). The Simple Life era Nicole Richie – she gets it.
There are fashion decisions like wearing socks with sandals or unbuttoning the top four buttons on your linen shirt, and then there’s completely undoing your fly with the intention of not zipping it back up. Just what an incredible show of not-giving-a-fuckness.
For the unfamiliar, can you please explain what ‘neo-hippie bush-doof couture’ might look like?
Son of an oil baron enlightened for the weekend at a forest festival, or a sex pest in disguise as a self-consciously grubby spiritual leader with a chain connecting every orifice.
What’s mindblowing about this guy isn’t even his fashion – it’s how he can come up with such absurd, over-the-top answers at the drop of a hat (or beret, in his case). The son of an oil baron enlightened for the weekend at a forest festival? While yes, I want to hang out with that guy, how do you even formulate an answer like that? On the flipside, a sex pest in disguise as a self-consciously grubby spiritual leader with a chain connecting every orifice does not sound like someone I want to be around.
Your self-professed ‘bucolic socialist’ style bring to mind the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Would you consider a powdered wig acceptable for general street wear?
Absolutely. I’m into appropriating the justice system and Melbourne’s legal district. Crime and punishment, order and corruption.
I don’t even know what all of that means, but if people start wearing powdered wigs to grab a casual coffee at Starbs, I’m officially out of even attempting to keep up with trends.
Aside from ‘feeling myself’, what other aphorisms speak to you?
‘The best thing to hold onto in life is each other’ – Audrey Hepburn. I was in Ikea once and I saw a stock painting of her and was moved to tears. Since then I’ve only smoked Vogues, so elegant. I’m also really into fridge magnet wisdom and ideology, such as ‘keep calm and sparkle on’.
And here we have found my favorite part of the entire interview. Being moved to tears in a fucking Ikea while looking at stock painting of Audrey Hepburn is the type of stuff that you just can’t make up. I claimed that he was trolling all of us, but now I’m convinced this guy is the real fucking deal. You can’t just say shit like that and not mean it.
Do you have any photos from ‘all-orange Fubu with a spray tan’-era Samuel Davide Hains you’re willing to share with us?
No photos remain, they were burned in a house fire in unfortunate circumstances along with my mother’s first husband. But it’s okay, artifacts of the past prevent one from staying in the present. The only thing that remains is one fateful image from the previous era, when I exclusively dressed as an astronaut. My father was a connoisseur of the cosmos.
Welcome to the Spin Zone featuring everyone’s favorite hipster, Samuel Davide Hains. If my house burned down, I’d be devastated. To have the presence of mind to rock the quote “Artifacts of the past prevent one from staying in the present” takes bigger balls than wearing a pair of pants with your fly intentionally down.
How can I work dock architecture into my wardrobe? My housemates will scream if I bring home a shipping container.
Life vests because there’s something very poetic about an emergency situation. We need to be buoyed along in life. There’s also the rich browns of Big Ms and meat pies and the dulled, organic hues of driftwood.
In life, the goal is to have people say, “Did he just get off a boat?” when they see you walking around. Those are chill vibes. But if people are wondering that because you’re wearing a life vest in an everyday life situation, that’s when we aren’t connecting on an aesthetic level.
Aside from the docks, what other environments do you source fashion inspiration from?
The spirit of brutalism lives on in the accidental beauty of housing commission flats. Creative office spaces, they are what you make them. You can choose your own adventure, for example, my desk is covered with a curated selection of indoor plants.
And this just goes to show you that no matter how hipster you might consider yourself to be, we’re all basic at heart. Even this man has succulents on his desk.
Which major player in the 1848 revolutions of Italy do you most admire for their fashion sense?
Garibaldi because his use of neck ties was prescient and foreshadowed the sensitivity of the modern man, while his constant proximity to swords and flag poles affirm the ability to conquer. Such juxtaposition!
Crazy, that’s the EXACT same answer I would’ve given.
You won’t be seen in anything “less than extraordinary”. Can we please get some examples of more of your day-to-day outfits.
I have been getting into the label Vetements lately, like their yellow DHL delivery service shirt. I embrace the futility of subversion in the current fashion paradigm. Also, clergy wear and egg shell drapes.
Clergy wear and egg shell drapes. You can’t make this stuff up, guys. .
[via The Independent]
Image via The Age
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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I’m convinced this guy actually has no idea what he’s even saying, he’s just stringing together random words hoping that nobody questions it.
2:1 odds the first husband burned the house down because he had to live with this thing
This is cool but where is TGDAG?!
Working on it.
I honestly think they’re trolling people with these two articles. How the hell was the 1848 Italian revolution a question?
“What fashion statement do you most recognize with from the signing of the Magna Carta?”
“King John’s because his use of gloves showed the inability of the bourgeoisie to commiserate with the proletariat, however his authorization of the document affirmed that no man is above the volition of the people!”
Honestly this comment took me way too long to come up with as I tried to look up pretentious words to use.
This has to be satire. I hate this guy more than Kim Jong-Un.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. Words cannot describe how much I hate this person…I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone I’ve never met so much. I hope all the bad things in life happen to him and only him. I hate him so much that I want him to continue living his life the way he does. Then hopefully, he’ll meet a nice feminist hipster and they’ll settle down and have kids of their own. With any luck, their kids will grow-up to be Republican jocks who eat red meat, never buy organic food, and call their parents by their first names: “Jesus Christ, shut up, Susan. I’ll eat all the gluten I want!” Seriously though…fuck this guy.
I want to burn his personality to the ground.
See, this guy def loves the smell of his own shit. He probably audio records his farts and bowel movements and splices them all together in Garage Band to create a cacophony of butthole whispers and screams and place it in his shrine where the charred body of his father in law is crucified upside down and draped in the latest Martha Stuart Living Collection. The walls of the shrine are adorned in fascist symbolism where he writes passages in blood about how he wishes to be the leader of the 4th Reich uprising. The backwards overalls are also very convenient for his buttsexcapades with world leaders, religious zealots, and corporate dynasty family members in order to become part of the world elite.
I think it’s good we tell our kids it’s OK to be different, but just don’t let them be this different.
I mean his life vest/Marty McFly inspired outfit could catch on