Devendra Banhart Wore an Issey Miyake Dress to Record His New Album

Singers will try anything to deliver a killer performance in the recording booth. The secret weapon of choice varies from vocalist to vocalist: slippery elm tea, echinacea throat spray, personal steamers, hot water with honey. While recording his latest album, Flying Wig, Devendra Banhart relied on a less conventional (and far more stylish) aid: a shiny blue dress by the late designer Issey Miyake, given to him by his producer Cate Le Bon.

“The dress set the scene in a very particular way,” the singer-songwriter explains. “Issey Miyake changes the way you stand, changes the way you sit, changes the way you hold yourself and feel in your body.”

The glittering pleated dress delivered the goods. Flying Wig is Banhart’s eleventh album, recorded with Le Bon’s guiding ear (and sartorial recommendations) in a cabin-like LA studio surrounded by redwoods and pines. On the record, Banhart sings like an open-hearted siren, with beautiful, downtrodden melodies floating over lush atmospheric instrumentals. The record is a study of contrasts, sad and playful, folksy and contemporary, simple and studied. There is a pop sensibility lurking in the fog of melancholy. Over the last two decades, Banhart has grown from the poster child of whatever freak-folk was to a modernist maestro of eccentric soft listening—and Flying Wig only further enunciates that progression.

GQ caught up with Banhart as he geared up to head out on tour to talk about solitude and collaboration, his adventurous sense of personal style, and why he always brings an empty suitcase with him when he travels to Japan. (Hint: it’s not just for clothes.)

Devendra Banhart: Very much so. Initially, it was supposed to be co-produced. I asked Cate [Le Bon]. She said, “yes.” The plan was we were going to co-produce together. Then that shifted, and, in that shift, true collaboration was born.

Five minutes into the first day, I watched Cate’s conducting of the session, and the response was so obvious and immediate to me, “No, Cate’s producing. I can just focus on what to write and what to sing.” I called my manager. I said, “Cate’s producing now. I’m just going to work on lyrics.” You think that would be divisive with even more boundaries being set. But, in that delegation of focus, we ended up creating much more space for actual songwriting collaboration.

The perfect example is the song that may mean the most to me on the record called “Charger.” Because I had this chorus, Everything’s burning down, and I needed another line. There needed to be some hope. I didn’t know what it was. I just kept thinking about it. Without knowing that I’m even working on that, Cate naturally says, “I’ve always had this line: The grass is always green.” I was just like, “Holy shit. Yes. Can I please use that in that?” That chorus is half my line, half Cate’s, and it makes the song.

I think that’s a small example of how the whole record came to be and the collaborative element of the whole thing. I spend 99% of my time alone, I’m not going around collaborating, and it was so nice.

Touring is, in many ways, like a summer camp reunion or even the most social I’ll be for the whole year because I’m really there with my chosen family. The people in the band are my friends, but the rest of the time is pretty solitary work. In Sigrid Nunez’s last book What Are You Going Through, she has this line: “Every writer walks around with a banner that reads loneliness.” I was like, Oh, goddamn. Yeah, I can relate to that.

It’s part of the gig. You can have a family of a thousand people, but you’re still going to have to cultivate something like a type of loneliness or a type of space in order to work. It is really important to follow through with this type of loneliness. If you don’t explain what kind of loneliness you mean, it just sounds like, “What a shitty life.” You’re torturing yourself. You’re shooting yourself in the foot constantly in order to make art, like, “I need to suffer from my art.” Which is a cliche, of course, that I think is a mainstream cliche that the world has about making any type of art.

The reality is that it’s a very healthy cultivation of a type of loneliness that is more like a sanctuary. Solitude as a sanctuary. Solitude as a way of actually, ironically, connecting with other people because you’re getting so in touch with yourself that you’re reaching something beyond your identity. I’ve gone kind of extreme, and I live alone, and I just have this ... My work. My house is built for working. Most of the time, it’s in that zone. I’m obviously not painting with anyone, and I’m barely writing with someone. Tour is such a beautiful opportunity to be around my chosen family. With the record with Cate, I kept some space. In that space, so much of Cate’s writing and artistry emerged. That’s why it became so collaborative.

Editing is a huge part of it. It’s a good position to be in when you’ve got a lot of material to edit. That’s better than not having enough because then you’re just making shit up to fill in the space. A nice place to be is where you’ve fully filled the space in, and there’s no room whatsoever. Now you get to remove what can be sacrificed, basically. That’s a nice place to be, and it requires an objectivity that’s nearly impossible for any artist. That’s why it’s really important to work with a producer.

Cate’s amazing at that. She would say something so poetic. She’d say, “We’re just trying to find the stone that sings amongst them all.” It depersonalized it, it poeticized it, and it also anthropomorphized it in a way that I could even see the unnecessary bits as objects, as these pieces that create space. You’re really not getting rid of anything; you’re simply making space. That’s such an important part of any song.

The whole record is inspired by a poem by a Zen priest named Kobayashi Issa. The poem is just: This dewdrop world is a dewdrop world, and yet, and yet. It’s the whole poem. So much there. Everything was anchored to that poem itself and inherently inspired by that. An attempt was made to get to that kind of concise simplicity.

I’m done with trying to get to know myself, first off. It’s never going to happen. I’ve given up on that one.

The feeling I get when wearing a dress has not changed. I’ve been doing it since I was nine years old. It unlocked something in me, and it gave me permission. It gave me power. It made me feel beautiful. Now, when I wear a dress, I do that for those reasons, or just because it’s fun, like for my or a friend’s birthday. I want to glam it up a little. There’s that casual, “I’m just going to wear a dress because it feels fun and glammy.” Then, there’s a more medicinal and almost even near shamanic reason to put on that dress. Maybe that’s a little too much of a platitude, but it’s maybe not really. In fact, I think it comes close to this spiritual ritual. I put on a dress when I need extra power.

I sang this record in a Issey Miyake dress that Cate gave me because it helped me transition into the portal of recording in a way with a bit more nobility and dignity. A little bit more power. It set the scene in a very particular way. Issey Miyake changes the way you stand, changes the way you sit, changes the way you hold yourself and feel in your body. You’re not necessarily slumped over. You really start to pay attention to your posture with Issey Miyake.

Plus, there’s a sci-fi aspect to that material and how it looks and feels, which has its own kind of fantasy and romance to it. When you’re wearing this material and this cut, it’s changing the way you stand, the way you sit, and the way you sing. That’s changing how you feel, how you feel about yourself, and how you see the world. It’s so interesting.

Recently, I finally played Caracas [the capital of Venezuela, where Banhart grew up]. I’ve been trying to play there for 20 fucking years, and every year it falls through. Somehow, this last year, it happened. I couldn’t believe it. I wore a dress because I grew up wearing dresses. I certainly didn’t see any straight men just enjoying wearing dresses anywhere in my life and my world. It would’ve been so fucking cool to have seen somebody that I could identify with because I didn’t feel like something was wrong with me; I felt like something was wrong with the world for thinking something’s weird about me. I wore that dress, imagining, maybe, the nine-year-old me in the crowd, seeing someone they could identify with. It would’ve meant a lot to me, so that’s why I did that.

Then we just played the Hollywood Bowl, and I wore that dress because, fuck, the Hollywood Bowl is big. It’s a lot of people. I just was like, “I need extra power here. I need to feel beautiful. I need to feel strong.” That’s sort of where that comes from.

Half the time, it’s basically been this gardener-therapist style. That feels like that’s been my steez for a minute that I’m comfortable in. Then I’ll balance that with an Issey Miyake dress or some Staud. Lately, I’ve been really wearing a lot of Staud, stuff like that. I’m starting to look like what my style has always been, at least in my mind.

When I was a kid, [my style] was a full-on 1960s feral child. I still remember traumatizing this guy when we were on tour. I would just be barefoot. I’d wear tiny little shorts, and I’d be wearing no shirt, just this long hair and big beard. That was just my style. That was comfortable, and I felt pretty free. That’s how it was.

I remember stopping at the gas station and then going into the bathroom. I’m sitting there, taking a shit, and I forgot to lock the door. This guy opens up. He's a huge guy, covered in tattoos. A real tough-looking guy. He sees this tiny, little emaciated creature whose shorts are at his ankle, so I’m naked, because I’m not wearing a shirt, or even shoes, or socks. It’s just a naked guy on the toilet. The look on his face. He goes, “No,” and he starts walking back slowly. I fucked up his life. [Laughs]

I like a couple of the big houses. Prada, of course, I really love, and I’m a fan of. I go to a Prada store or a Dries [​​Van Noten] store like I’d go to a gallery. I go to check out the new collection. It’s like looking at a drawing and seeing how it was drawn. I can appreciate that. I often won’t buy anything; I’ll just go like I’m going to a museum. [Banhart wears a Dior suit, Dries Van Noten shirt, and Prada shoes in the music video for his song “Twin.”]

I like some small independent designers who are just starting. There’s a Venezuelan designer, and her brand is called Costaiia. I love what she’s doing because it references a lot of indigenous Venezuelan culture and uses gorgeous, natural materials. I also like Norlha. It’s really high-end Tibetan stuff, which has beautiful, interesting cuts.

Then, basically, it’s a lot of Japanese brands that I don’t even want to tell you about because then everybody knows! But I love them so much. When I travel to Japan, I go with an empty suitcase. I turn into a hungry ghost when I go to Japan. I’m just like, “Oh, my God. Things fit me, and they’re beautiful, and I can’t buy them online.” They make it difficult, which I totally appreciate. [In a set of promotional images for the new record, he wears a suit from Tokyo’s United Arrows with his mother’s shirt.]

I will say this. The suitcase isn’t just filled with clothes. I’m also very much into baths. There’s even a magazine about bathing culture, and I’m into that. Half the suitcase might be clothes, the other half is bath stuff. You can’t get that stuff anywhere else. It’s a lot of bath stuff. That’s a very self-love kind of thing that I do for myself. I’m really into baths.

Somebody asked me what’s the most important thing to me, being somebody who doesn’t have a family. I don’t even have a relationship, which is fine. Let’s not even get into that… But I have a Buddhist practice. That’s probably the answer to the most important thing to me. Then, aside from that, the most important thing is having a new song to sing. Somebody asked me, “What do you care about?” It wasn’t in an interview, just hanging out. I really thought about that. Oh, yeah. Having a new song to sing.

We’re about to start playing these songs, and it feels so nice to be presenting these new songs. It’s such a dumb and simple answer, I know. I apologize. But that’s about it: Just having a new song to sing. I didn’t have that before the record was written, and recorded, and put out. It feels so nice to have a new song to sing, and a new reason to buy more dresses, too.

This interview has been edited and condensed.