VOGUE - Meet the Designer Behind Beyoncé’s Grammys Halo and Rick Owens’s Fall ’17 Hats
“We’re in the era of the multi-hyphenate, but there’s a good chance Malakai is the only self-taught artist turned fire performer turned celebrity designer (among many other things) out there. His whole story would likely take a few thousand words to tell from start to finish—from his humble beginnings to working with Rick Owens and Beyoncé this year—so let’s attempt a brief summary.
Malakai was born and raised in Southern California, and around age 13, he got into the goth and punk scene and was, as he says, “dressing pretty eccentrically and sewing my own clothes. I started out by recycling and refurbishing things, and I had this new romantic-meets-goth aesthetic that I mixed with more indigenous, pagan elements. I would paint my face and wear makeup and had very full-on outfits.” He moved to San Francisco as a teenager in the late ’90s; met a group of likeminded creatives; became a DJ and performance artist (doing everything from fire performance to stilt-walking); and began traveling internationally for Cirque du Soleil, Coachella, and Torture Garden. At that point, he started to make costumes and headdresses to transform into characters onstage, which soon led to people asking him to make one-off fashion for them, too.
Then he was introduced to a team of artisans in Bali, and everything changed. “I started going to Bali just to explore, and I had the opportunity to work with a few people there, which developed into my brand, House of Malakai,” he explains. “I synergized myself with their skill level and their craft, which led me to do more sculptural headpieces and jewelry. The dedication to artistry is amazing in Bali—they’re very, very hard-working and skilled. We aren’t doing anything commercial, and it’s very organic in that way.”
Here, we talked to Malakai about meeting Beyoncé, why those Rick Owens hats were more complicated than they look, and his plans for the future.”
BY EMILY FARRA
May 9, 2017