St. Vincent on her first ever onstage look and her new Gant collection

Those lusting over St. Vincent’s recent 70s sleaze aesthetic – the vibrant flares, the wide lapel blazers – are in luck; the artist has collaborated with Gant on a collection that encapsulates this era. The nostalgia-steeped look, complete with bombshell blonde bob, was imagined for her latest album, Daddy’s Home.

“It’s a combo of last night’s heels on the morning train and glamour from far away… And then you get up close and there’s dirt under the fingernails,” says the artist, whose off-stage name is Annie Clark. We’re chatting over computer call, cameras off. Clark’s avatar is a glitter-faced couple, not unlike the silver-splattered beauties that walked down the Spanish steps at the recent Valentino couture presentation. The characters in Clark’s photo, however, are smiling maniacally. “They just look like they’re going to murder-suicide,” she quips.

For Clark, things “always come music first”, with the corresponding look emerging afterwards. Daddy’s Home draws inspiration from downtown 70s New York and blonde heroines, namely Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence and Andy Warhol's muse Candy Darling. “I just love Candy Darling, who came from Queens but completely reinvented herself in New York in a way that feels so beautiful and romantic,” says Clark. The album also nods to the artist’s father’s decade-plus stint in prison for white collar crime.

While St. Vincent and Gant may seem like odd bedfellows, the collaboration came about rather organically. When pulling looks for the Daddy’s Home promo, Clark’s stylist, Avigail Collins, picked out a suit from the Swedish-American heritage brand’s collaboration with British interior designer Luke Edward Hall. Shortly thereafter, Gant Creative Director Cristopher Bastin reached out to Collins to discuss a collaboration. “It’s been lovely to work with them,” notes Clark, adding, “I kind of think you shouldn’t work with people you wouldn’t want to have dinner with.”

The result is a tightly-edited capsule of oversized Oxford shirts – “I’m going to f***ing live in that shirt,” says Clark – standout suiting and scarves that harken to 70s festival signage. While the look is undeniably cohesive, there is an element of mismatch, as if the pieces were picked up from thrift stores or inherited from some stylish relative. “The pants and suit jacket don’t match,” notes Clark. “It’s sort of like, ‘Oh, I had money for the pants but not the jacket’.”

“Daddy” is hardly the first character Clark has inhabited onstage. Her last album, Masseducation, was paired with looks heavy in shocking pink (also very Valentino) and latex. “It’s all me, for sure,” says Clark, when I ask about these various alter egos. She recalls a recent conversation with American contemporary artist Alex da Corte, who often inhabits characters within his practise. “We were having this conversation about persona,” says Clark. “To have been a queer person of our particular age – Alex and I are the same age – there is always a bifurcation, always a dance that you’re doing with public-facing society and internal life.” The notion of persona existed long before Clark became St. Vincent, so to her it feels “natural and authentic to play with identity in that way.” “It’s all part of me, but it’s sort of like, what are you going to amplify?” she says.

I ask Clark if she can recall her first ever onstage iteration of herself. “Oh my god, yes, I can,” she says. She prefaces the anecdote by saying that while she “loved fashion” during her adolescence in Dallas, Texas, it was more of a “creative pursuit.” “It’s not like we had means,” she says.

“I remember playing at a bar in Denton, Texas and my dad had gone on a trip to Italy with his second wife and brought back a pair of leather pants. So this idea of, ‘Wow, exotic Italian leather pants’,” says Clark. It was the early aughts so naturally the pants were low – very low – in a stiff leather that “doesn’t exactly stretch or breathe.”

Clark paired the pants with “some shirt” she was “probably sweating through”. At the time, she recalls thinking that perhaps she wasn’t pulling off the pants. Fortunately – or unfortunately – her mother had videotaped the show so she could definitively find out. “I went back and rewatched it,” says Clark. “…And realised the leather pants were giving me, like, the most hellacious camel toe.”

Gant x St. Vincent is available from today.