Interview: Kid Cudi Talks About His Surface to Air Collaboration

Inspired by "Thriller", Tron and the fashion sensibility of his friend Kanye West, Kid Cudi dropped one of the year's best collaborations earlier this month. You've seen the collection, now hear what the face of our October/November issue has to say about working with Surface to Air, and his first foray into fashion design. Click to read our interview with Mr. Rager.

As told to Noah Callahan-Bever (@n_c_b)

"I’ve always been into fashion, but I really got into designing and thinking about it with a more serious approach from watching Kanye. He opened my eyes up to a lot of things fashion-wise. Just him telling me what type of suit to get. My first suit was a Dior suit—my first real suit that I bought myself and it was like, “Woah!” It made me love suits, and now I have multiples. I definitely got that enthusiasm about designing and fashion from him."

"I told Aldric (lead designer) that I wanted to make a jacket that was a cross between 'Thriller' and Tron. I love the style of the Surface to Air jackets already, so I was like, “I want you to keep the same cut, very European cut, and that style, that motorcycle style, but I wanted to have a futuristic twist to it and I wanted to have that ‘Thriller' edge to it, that iconic look.”

I was really inspired by “Thriller” on the color pallettes and then Tron really inspired the cut, how it’s just very form fitting and the stitching is very cut, very edgy.

It was something that, within a couple emails, Aldric got it, he knew what I was looking for, and we came up with the design within five emails, back and forth. They were really enthused, so they were working really fast on it. During the process of it, we had the idea for the Mr. Rager thing to be able to do the “How can we promote this?” and that came about."

Watch the Mr. Rager video HERE.

"The leather jacket ordeal was very organic because I love leather jackets and I’ve always wanted to design my own. I already had affiliation with Surface to Air, they knew that I supported their brand. When it came time, they were like, 'Oh, yeah! We’re definitely into it. We know that you been supporting us, let’s do something. That’ll be cool.' It happened very organically and that’s how you want things to happen. That’s the best way to do it."

"There will definitely be some things that I’ll be doing in the future. It’s tough to say now, especially with all the other goals that I have if I have time, but it’s definitely something that I’ll have on my to-do list, to do some more designing. I don’t know if I’m going to come out with my own line or not. That’s something that takes a lot of dedication, but if I can get a collabo off here and there, I’m definitely going to do it."

Buy the KID CUDI x S2A jacket HERE.

Follow Kid Cudi on Twitter.