tmtinterview

Mikey Trapstar always wanted to work with Rihanna. Amazingly, this wild dream turned out to not be that far-fetched. Rihanna, who Mikey considers a “style icon,” has been a supporter of the UK brand and one of the first to co-sign it since its early days. Still, Mikey says he couldn’t have imagined designing the tour merch for “Monster,” the six-date concert tour RiRi co-headlined with Eminem. It’s funny how things work.

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The “Monster” tour kicked off in Pasadena, CA on Aug. 7, and beyond the music, fans went nuts for the merch that was designed by Trapstar. The collection included graphics that superimposed Rihanna and Eminem’s faces with different images of “monsters”—using fans, bat wings, and werewolves.

Complex sat down with Mikey when he stopped by their offices to talk about the merch, how the collaboration came about, the inspiration behind the designs, and why he decided to shoot an editorial for the collection, which you can get an exclusive look at right here.

How did the collaboration with Rihanna come about?

It’s going to sound funny and crazy but I basically saw her out and she approached me and said, “I want you to do my merch.” So the next day I got a call from Ri’s manager and Eminem’s, too. They brought me into the room and they were like, “Are you sure you can do it?” and I’m like, “Of course I can.” Then I gave them a mood board straight away. It was between me and a few other designers but they liked the mood board and they ran with it.

What was the conversation like when you were talking about what the tour merch should be?

I wasn’t familiar with merch as much. I just thought merch is what people did for the fans. But there was a reason they picked us, because they didn’t want it to look like just merch. So they gave us free creative control and we just had a mission to make merch not look like merch, so even if you’re not necessarily a die-hard fan you’d want to wear the clothes out of the concert, out of just being a fan of the person. I wanted to make the new era Iron Maiden because, you know, people don’t even listen to Iron Maiden but they’ll still wear the T-shirt because they see it as fashionable. So that was the aim. Along with sticking to the monster theme of the “Monster” tour.

Read more of the interview on Complex.com or after the jump!

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