Ian Connor lives in the Valley. For the self-proclaimed “King of the Youth,” a flashy mantle earned by bedding porn stars, antagonizing deli owners, and counting fat stacks of hundred-dollar bills while hanging with A$AP Mob and Virgil Abloh, this uncool address seems inconsistent. But then again, Connor is also the dude who broke bread with Kanye West and Paris Fashion Week’s judgiest cognoscenti in Skechers sneakers.
It’s the most shopworn, self-congratulatory trope in personal style to loudly mix highbrow with low but Connor’s among the best to do it. In certain corners of the Internet—namely Instagram and Tumblr—Connor’s worshipped for unimpeachable taste and dauntless cheek. Once, in Paris, he hurled free designer clothing out his hotel window to the clamoring kids below. Another time, he offered untold dollars to a stranger in a vintage Raf Simons tee to buy it off his back. Connor openly worships the Belgian designer, calling him “God,” and collects his most esoteric design motifs as tattoos on his chest. It’s an act of hyper-Stanism that warrants awe or side-eye.
Connor’s not one for moderation. Nor specialization. Right now, he’s styling for Wiz Khalifa, collaborating with Edison Chen’s Emotionally Unavailable, consulting for Guillermo Andrade’s FourTwoFour boutique on Fairfax, merchandising a new store, Shalon & Rogers, in Houston, and designing a few SKUs for Pink Dolphin. His label allegiances are manifold, having modeled for BAPE, Astrid Andersen, and Shane Gonzales’ MIDNIGHT STUDIOS, for which he also handles light PR. But most people recognize him as the short kid with bleached dreads standing stone-faced for Rihanna and Anna Wintour as a model for Kanye West’s “Yeezy Season” at New York Fashion Week. He was the one who kept checking his phone.
A photo of Connor’s grinning mug became the all-over print on a Wil Fry jersey that’s been modeled by Left Brain and worn by Trinidad James as well as certified Cool Teen™ Mike the Ruler (for those of you interested, there are also matching shorts). And on social media, Connor’s thousand-yard stare greets you in London, Tokyo, Paris, and New York with a frequency reminiscent of the Travelocity gnome.
All of this vaunts him further in the eyes of his kingdom. Many of the 175,000-plus kids who follow him on Instagram call him “dad,” to signal their fealty and admiration. What began as a curiosity follow for me graduated to a hate-follow and then quickly escalated to a low-grade obsession with two or three accidental deep likes.
Because here’s the thing: The more you get to know about Ian Connor, the more you give a shit. His jolie-laide features make him ceaselessly interesting to look at and, despite his reckless and sometimes sexist persona, when he anoints something as cool, he’s rarely wrong.
