Photo via Joanna Zarur
Like many 23-year-olds in 2015, Joanna "JoJo" Zarur doesn’t work in the field she went to school for. Under pressure from her parents, she studied pre-law and economics at Stanford. Her heart lay elsewhere—she’d always loved fashion, and throughout college she worked at a boutique on the side. A year ago she flew to Atlanta to visit a friend, who introduced her to a local artist on the verge of his big break: Young Thug. Thug recognized her from Instagram and asked her to style his first major video shoot, for "Stoner". Zarur accepted. She felt nervous—she’d never styled anyone professionally, much less a willowy rapper with a septum piercing who liked toying with gender constraints. She gave him a fluorescent orange beanie, a fruit-printed tank top, and a drape-y white hoodie. Thug and Birdman loved the video, and asked her to come on board as Rich Gang’s full-time stylist. Defying her parents, Zarur dropped everything and moved to Atlanta.
If you measure a stylist’s work by the conversations they start, Zarur ranks among the greats. Over the last year her work with Young Thug has shaped the discourse around masculinity in rap, inciting rage from stagnant hip-hop conservatives while encouraging a generation to explore new silhouettes. Thug’s nuclear charisma inspires equal parts adoration and flailing resistance from an American public unused to visual enigma. "Every time I dress myself it go motherfucking viral," he rapped on "Halftime", from this year’s Barter 6.
Of course, he doesn’t dress himself—Zarur does. Thug’s secret weapon in his assault on tedium and tradition, she’s styled most of his photo shoots, red carpet appearances, and videos ("Lifestyle", "Danny Glover", "About the Money" and more) over the last year. She tends to dress him in extremes—skin-tight denim, deconstructed gowns, crisp button-ups, scarlet nails, blazers over a bare chest, gothic capes, and billowing fur.
Zarur’s techniques are as unconventional as Thug’s taste is idiosyncratic. "I don’t look at it so much like fashion, I look at it more like art. I’ll get ideas from paintings and sculptures," Zarur told me over the phone last week. I’d been chasing her down for months, hoping she might be able to help illuminate Young Thug’s cryptic swag.
"You can’t just go to the mall and buy something and look like him," she explains. Many stylists throw labels at their clients and call it a day—Thug, however, demands silhouettes outside of what menswear can provide, so Zarur makes much of his wardrobe herself. She cuts clothes to shreds and builds new ones, splicing men’s and women’s garments into original pieces beyond categorization; she’s Dr. Frankenstein with Versace corpses.
Over the last year Zarur experienced Rich Gang’s meteoric rise—"we were like a family"—and watched it crumble just as quickly in a maelstrom of drama and litigation. She weathered false rumors, anonymous detractors, parental disapproval, and a physical fight with Thug’s fiancée. She helped re-align modern masculinity. She made a jacket out of a backpack. This is her story.
Pitchfork: So how did this all start?
Joanna Zarur: I studied politics and pre-law at Stanford. I loved fashion but my parents wanted me to be a lawyer. I always did fashion on the side as my hobby. I’d make pieces for myself. One day I came to Atlanta to visit one of my friends, and that’s where I met Young Thug. He was my first client, I had never styled before. I’ve just been doing that ever since.
Pitchfork: How collaborative is your working relationship with Thug?
JZ: When I met him he was so new to everything, you know? He would tell me what he wanted, and I would tell him what I wanted. I’d come to the shoot with a bunch of clothes and he’d be like, "I’m not wearing none of that, I’m wearing the jacket that you’re wearing on right now." It was scary at first. But every shoot that I’ve worked with him I’ve learned more and by now, I know exactly what he likes.
Pitchfork: Before you started tailoring for him would Thug buy women’s clothes off the rack?
JZ: It wasn’t even the women’s section, he would go to the kid’s section and buy a kid’s dress. When I first met Young Thug, Birdman came up to me and he was like, "You need to help him." They saw potential in him, 'cause he’s really creative and different, but if you’ve seen pictures of him before, he would wear all girls clothes. People send me pictures all the time of Thug wearing a five year olds’ leopard print dress as a shirt.
Pitchfork: So how do women’s clothing and silhouettes figure into what he wears now?
JZ: He doesn’t wear anything loose. He told me, "I only feel comfortable with really tight pants." I will go buy him a pair of men’s pants, and I cut and sew them to a women’s fit. I might buy a dress, and then I’ll cut it, and I’ll add a men's t-shirt, and do something crazy. Mixing men’s and women’s, that’s how I work. I’Il look at three pieces and make one out of it. I put Thug in this cool red coat with fur in one of his videos. Everybody called me, like, "What designer is that coat?" I was going by a theater costume store and I saw a red coat. I cut up this other coat I had with fur, and I added it to it. The other day I made a jacket out of a backpack. I have no limits.
Pitchfork: What do you think of the way Young Thug’s style makes people mad?
JZ: Everything about it, how he speaks, how he paints his nails, people are so mad about it.
Pitchfork: Does the hate ever get to Thug?
JZ: Definitely not. I don’t understand how he’s so above it. Sometimes he’ll do stuff on purpose that he knows will piss people off. If people start talking shit about his nails being red, he’ll put crystals on the nails. Talk about his jeans, he’s like, "I want tighter jeans." He goes out of his way to make sure people know he doesn’t care. He finds it funny, ‘cause at the end of the day, he’s setting a trend. He’ll look at Instagram and read the hater comments and laugh, and show his friends. He’s the perfect person for what he’s doing. I could not see anyone else doing it better, honestly.
Pitchfork: You and Thug must be close friends at this point.
JZ: We’re all like a huge family.
Pitchfork: Was it stressful working with all the members of Rich Gang while they were breaking up?
JZ: Very, very stressful. It was actually really sad. For a minute, we were all so close. We did everything together. I was always at the studio with them, we were always talking about ideas, all of us, Birdman, Thug, and Quan. We were a huge family. When Lil Wayne was like, "I don’t want no more part of [YMCMB], I want money," it was a shock. Everything turned upside down. I’m just happy that what we did was epic while we were all together.
Pitchfork: Anything else people should know about Young Thug?
JZ: He’s definitely not gay [laughs]. I hear a lot that he’s an asshole or stuck up—he might be one of the sweetest, most caring people on earth. He’s so respectful, "Yes, ma’am, no ma’am." My parents have met his whole family. We’re all really close. He always makes sure that everybody’s good, takes care of his family, his mom, his sisters. They’re all so nice and polite and loyal, literally have nothing bad to say about any of them.