Mini Golf
A Golf Wang Tirade & Growing Up
I have a confession:
I like clothing because of Golf Wang. The Tyler, the Creator brand.
I was a senior in high school with friends, venturing into that odd glassy compound for someone’s interest. It was an odd time, the aftermath of Flower Boy when many, including myself, were becoming fans of Tyler, the Creator’s work, and seeking out the storied retail space of his brand and all its rules and unspoken codices. I was closeted, unconfident, and deeply repressed - in other words, Tyler’s bright, ordered, gay world was a not-so-subtle way to explore myself. But that enthusiasm didn’t translate to an understanding of this complex world.
In the store, staring at the rows of square folded tees and bright viscose prints, one of the people working there complimented my shoes. They were my Dad’s hand-me-down skate shoes, Macbeths, grey and blue with bulldogs on the insoles. This rarely happened to me, and it felt good. Great even. Was I paying attention to what I put on my feet? Did it mean something? Could it for me? Wondering these questions I gazed up at a pair of fuzzy purple and green converse one-stars: Golf Le Fleur two-tones. I figured these could mean something, that moment perhaps, and so I bought them. The obsession that continues with my writing a fashion thesis and this substack altogether
Golf was the first time I could see myself reflected in a brand, after all, that brand was essentially my favorite artist. But it was more; it was colorful, it was loose, it was sharp yet fun, considered yet affordable. Golf Wang emerged from the Odd Future brand and march world, quickly evolving into patterned button-downs, more complex outerwear, and a thorough line of obscene and inflammatory language and imagery. Golf Wang was Tyler’s uniform, and as he grew up his clothes seemed to as well. What emerged as a Supreme imitation to accompany a Supreme ensemble became influenced by knitwear, political symbology, tailoring, handbags, and workwear.
And one season it just snapped together. In a creative maelstrom that lasted about three seasons of clothing from 2018 to 2019, Tyler morphed Golf Wang into his Golf Le Fleur title, before only reserved for shoes. Detailed and sophisticated prints emerged alongside refined colorwork, quality materials, and experiments in leather goods, eyewear, and fur that transformed the brand from an everyday streetwear brand. While many now associate Tyler fans of the era with dickies, cardigans, and other inversions of skater-prep, these seasons came at a time when marriage between luxury and streetwear was still young and definitively east coast in taste. But while Aime Leon Dore and Noah were building in clout, Tyler introduced a west coast world of unprecious prep - cardigans and satin trousers that were made to be worn as skaters wear their dickies.
Regardless of his fans, Tyler presented a world in which the “streetwear“ brand could infiltrate a thousand styles, characters, and worlds. Golf could be for a woman prepping for a business meeting or a scummy skater fisherman alike. Video collections for this era transcended the runway video, they became stories and scenes scored to French Jazz and Tyler remixes. It was alluring, clever, and aspirational all at once. Unlike the Supreme copycats of the streetwear boom, it was something completely fresh, and it was going somewhere.
This also came with the redecoration of the Golf Store. Everything that connected the store to its deprivation of Supreme’s store layout was smoothed - the skate bowl was covered, new specially made flower islands were added, and images from Tyler’s 2000s imagination artfully adorned the walls. Soon, a bookstand was added and magazines curated by Tyler appeared for any and all to read, introducing the masses to Ren Hang and soul Jazz cuts. At a time when streetwear stores became less friendly to loiterers amidst raising demand. The Golf store seemed to invite visitors to truly interact with the space and the brand.
Kind of. You couldn’t take pictures inside, fine, but you also couldn’t touch anything. No feeling the quality of that gorgeous red cardigan or that white fur, no examining the corduroy on those magical floral puffers, and if you complained about it… the room would emanate a look and a thought that you clearly didn’t get it. The Golf Store retained a vestige of the Supreme business model by hiring people who were notoriously rude to all who entered. To some extent, this was thanks to a certain weeding out of exclusionary, annoying, and white Odd Future kids and poseurs alike. This appealed to me in high school not necessarily only because it was cool & made me feel cool, but because I felt appropriately labelled as lesser than.
The renaissance ended. With his Igor album, Tyler stopped confining his closet to Golf - going full luxury and embracing tailoring, Gucci, and everything beyond. Drops were begining to take on the feeling of 2018 leftovers as his tour raged on and merch took center stage. Awaiting the next video, the next experiment, this is what we saw:
Something had changed. Back to monochrome backgrounds and logo mania. “Fun“ textures for the sake of texture but without context or meaning. It wasn’t just a return to the “old“ Golf, it was a kind of filtered and tidied Golf without real paunch, without politics, and without music to accompany it. In the case of the middle photo, the relentless milking of the 2016 album Cherry Bomb’s flame pattern led to countless attempts to slap the pattern on jackets, “logo tees“, button-downs, and accessories. A few seasons later it became clear that this new design language intended to capitalize off of the pastels and knits of 2018 in a purely corporate pale shadow. These collections were getting so sloppy that fashion watchdog Instagram Diet Prada revealed the Golf Wang blatantly stole from a patchwork artist for a letterman jacket. Tyler revealed in an interview last year that Golf now had a design team, and while overseen by him, the brand was no longer run by him. That much was clear - for Golf was now like any other brand, indistinguishable if not for its name.
Tyler has realized his passion for design at a higher level, and under the new Golf Le Fleur, he sells perfume, nail polish, specially colored moleskin notebooks, and a two thousand-dollar trunk. The ads for these products - as banal as a hair pick, are sensational. He displayed the clothes for Le Fleur’s line at a remote Malibu pop-up that resembled a Dr. Seuss illustration to share the knits, button-ups, and loafers that cost hundreds and made up his ensembles for every event surrounding his last album. The pieces each resemble a different aspect of the garments he attempted in 2018 - from the style of the accessories to the patterns and branding attempts. Unlike 2018, these clothes are only accessible in two boutiques in California. Tyler does not sell Le Fleur clothes online because he wants fans to seek them out, see them, feel them, and ultimately wear them. The irony is that while he has created dream products, they have become inaccessible to the true range of those who want them and can afford to wear them as he imagines.
Last summer I went into the Golf store for old times. It looked so similar in its wood and bright wallpaper, but the old platform had been returned to its original gaping skate bowl. Tyler tweeted last year that he does not allow people to skate in the bowl due to the threat of lawsuits, although the recently opened Babylon store has an active skatepark which requires a simple signature from all participants for participation. Curious, I approached someone and asked if they remembered the books, the odd flower seats for trying on shoes, anything. He did not remember.
I write in the wake of a new Golf store in New York City. A place to reflect a new Golf and to hold its new collection which features a puzzle fleece that my partner aptly titled “Minecraft merch“ and an incomprehensible button-up with an odd boxing graphic across the front. What is this space? What is it for? Why was it built? What does the construction of a place that celebrates an old memory without grace mean? What will this new space say about how this new Golf Wang sees itself?
You enter the store and there is a big shirt. On it is a logo - a brand. The shirt is all brand. The walls are white and the rails a “Golf yellow”. The wallpaper is too familiar, and is that one of the old flower islands… but now a “G“? It seems a sterile place - not dignified enough to qualify as a haunted house like the LA store might. It is efficient, bringing you up and very quickly down without any pretense of allowing or wanting you to stay. The New York store presents a brand without history, a brand that has morphed into an image alone, and into a replica of a replica. The store has come full circle, aesthetically regressing into a Supreme store but without any art, hype, or allure.
I cannot say that people are not buying from this era of Golf Wang. Tyler has more fans than ever, international tourists flock to the Los Angeles store, and the opening of the New York store shut down the block for hours. But there is something that has been lost. There is some aspect of authenticity that existed in that direct communion with artist and fan, with something that felt hand-made by the artist you admire and appreciated by him. It was always easier for Golf to be a brand, and so that’s what it became. But what this store reveals is that in this new incarnation space can and will become corrupted if the clothes do. I believe that a space can mean something for how a piece of clothing is seen, and that stores can become experiences that change us and how we desire, what we desire, and why.
I do not know if someone could have the experience I had in high school in this new store. I do not know if someone could learn what I learned in that store. But if this new space tells me anything it’s that spaces can be composed of pure toxicity and bad intentions. I can realize that just as I found so much of myself in the Los Angeles store, I also found a lot of self-hatred and an admittedly odd way of processing my immanent queerness. I no longer have the need to sacrifice the ugly, ugly aspects of a place to provide me something I can find elsewhere. This store can be a part of me, and I can step away from it today, but I can also ask for new and kinder stores that will not replicate or concentrate bad feelings. Golf taught me a good lesson: Never trust a brand.
Know this readers, I would never be so annoying now as to proclaim total affinity with Golf Wang, nor would I be so annoying as to desperately make time to visit the New York Golf store next time I am there.
I have grown up. I will be at the Rick Owens store down the street, being twice as annoying as before while lusting over a pair of boots that cost two hundred times the retail of that first pair of Golf le Fleurs. Some things never change.
