What is the Story Behind Young Thug's Dress?

Young Thug has been among the most consistent and popular artists over the past decade. Fans and artists alike have expressed their love and admiration for Thug in light of his incarceration, and he is now widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of this generation. However, Thug's appearance in a dress on the cover of his 2016 project Jeffery, previously titled No, My Name is Jeffrey, left many fans polarized at the time. With hindsight, the cover has become iconic as it depicted the eccentricity of Thug that has made him so popular. Let's look at the story behind Thug's dress on No, My Name is Jeffrey.

Jeffrey's cover features Young Thug in a periwinkle dress that covers the rapper's entire body. Before this, Thug made many androgynous fashion choices, such as wearing Uggs, skinny jeans, skin-tight shirts, and colorful diamonds. However, Thug upped his personal style for the cover, and the photographer of the shoot, Garfield Larmond, stated that Thug immediately knew he wanted to wear the dress after seeing it for the first time.

Thug first saw the dress in a meeting with VFILES founder Julie Anne-Quay during his role on the VFILES mentorship panel. Larmond recounts this event in an interview with FADER, stating, "So, we were just looking through the photos at the end of the shoot, and [Thug] said, 'What’s that? I need it.' He saw the piece in New York, and said immediately, 'I want that for the cover.' Like, there was no thought about it. He just saw it and knew he wanted it." After seeing a picture of the dress, Thug shipped it from the designer Alessandro Trincone's home in Italy to Atlanta, Georgia, for the album shoot.

After receiving the dress, Larmond stated that it took Thug an hour just to get the dress on. At a listening event for No, My Name is Jeffrey, Larmond stated, "When we got on set, it definitely took like, an hour and a half to put it on. Then once he put it on and I started shooting, they noticed a piece was off — like something really intricate. So we had to take another thirty minutes to pin stuff up, get the hat right. It took hours. Hours on top of hours." 

Alessandro Trincone designed the dress as a participant in VFILES crowd-sourced season 7. Trincone won the VFILES runway contest in 2016, the same event in which Young Thug first saw the dress. The dress came from Trincone's " Annodami " collection and drew inspiration from Japanese-style kimonos and trousers. Coincidentally, Trincone designed the dress with many of the same ideals of Thug regarding gender identity. Trincone wrote, "The androgynous identity of my inspirational garments reinforces my belief of no-gender boundaries between men and women."

Trincone stated that he knew of Young Thug before the album cover but believed Thug was "too fashion" for the two to cross paths. However, Trincone was ecstatic with the album cover and felt it reinforced many of his beliefs when designing the dress. In a statement with VFILES, Trincone said, "When I saw the cover image here in Italy, it was like, around 2:30 a.m., and I was completely shocked. I couldn't sleep for the feelings that I felt—so excited, so happy, and so proud of it all. I'm so happy to collaborate with Young Thug." Trincone also stated that the album cover "exactly centered my point, which is that everyone can wear whatever they want to. Everyone can be themselves. Ignore what people are saying and thinking.”

Many fans and artists doubted Thug's decision to sport a dress on Jeffrey's cover. Fellow Atlanta rapper T.I. publicly stated that he felt the dress was a publicity stunt, and Thug only did it for attention. Many fans reflected this sentiment at the time online, and the cover became both controversial and confusing for many. Despite this, Jeffrey's cover has since become iconic, and many people have cited its importance in addressing hyper-masculinity and gender norms.

While many Black artists in the past, such as Prince and the Isley Brothers, often dressed in a more androgynous fashion, a homogeneous image of Black masculinity has since formed over the past few decades as Hip-Hop became a dominant force in popular culture. With the dress, Young Thug showed the ability to push back on ideals of masculinity within the culture. Thug's dress showed many others that they could define what it means to be a man on their terms, which is an incredibly powerful statement.

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