Table of Contents
- Key Highlights:
- Introduction
- A Meeting of Minds: The Studio Visit That Sparked a Collaboration
- The Barbershop Poster Reimagined: Archive, Sanctuary, and Engraving
- From Monument to Wardrobe: Translating Visual Practice into Costume
- Music as Structural Component in Halsey’s Practice
- Celebrity Patronage and Curatorial Intent: Usher’s Collecting Philosophy
- Making Clothing That Lasts: Practicalities of Tour Wardrobe and Airbrushed Surfaces
- The Tension Between Museum Durability and Public Interaction
- Broader Currents: Artists as Costume Designers and Performative Collaborators
- Where to Encounter the Work: Public Projects, Performances, and Private Commissions
- What This Collaboration Signals About Contemporary Cultural Production
- Looking Ahead: Possibilities for Future Projects
- FAQ
Key Highlights:
- Lauren Halsey and Usher moved from a studio visit and a commissioned barbershop engraving to a full-fledged creative collaboration that produced a custom, airbrushed tour outfit worn on Usher’s stadium shows.
- Halsey translated her multidisciplinary, Afro-futurist practice—rooted in community, archival forms, and saturated palettes—into wearable art and large-scale public activations, including a forthcoming Hollywood Bowl takeover and her sister dreamer sculpture park.
- The collaboration highlights how contemporary artists navigate patronage, public-facing projects, and performance design, transforming private commissions into broader cultural narratives.
Introduction
When a musician who has defined generations of R&B calls a contemporary artist and asks them to dress a stadium tour, the encounter does more than fuse two creative worlds. It reframes the role of the artist as a cultural interpreter and extends a local archive—stories, rituals, images—into arenas that draw hundreds of thousands of people. The relationship between Lauren Halsey and Usher began with a shared curiosity and mutual respect: a gallerist introduced the singer to Halsey’s work; a studio visit turned into a commission for an engraved barbershop poster; then came an invitation to turn Halsey’s sculptural sensibilities into a tour wardrobe. The result is a collaboration that compresses memory, community, and spectacle into objects that function simultaneously as art, costume, and cultural statement.
This piece traces that arc. It looks at how Halsey reimagined a Black barbershop poster as an engraved artwork for Usher’s Atlanta home, how she translated sculptural and neighborhood-specific aesthetics into neon-saturated stage clothing, and what both creator and patron see in the exchange. It situates the collaboration within Halsey’s longer practice—public sculpture, Afro-futurist references, and participatory activations—and situates Usher’s role as collector and storyteller who seeks art that “speaks to history.” The account explores practicalities, symbolism, and implications for contemporary art’s relationship to performance, community, and commerce.
A Meeting of Minds: The Studio Visit That Sparked a Collaboration
The origin story begins simply: a gallerist, Easy Otabor, introduced Usher to Lauren Halsey’s work. Both were at different places in their practices. Halsey had established a reputation for work that draws from the visual vernacular of South Central Los Angeles—signage, storefronts, communal spaces—and stitches those forms into monumental sculptures and installations. Usher, an eight-time Grammy winner, has long collected art and sought objects that resonate with personal and communal histories.
A fall 2024 studio visit became the hinge moment. Halsey was in the middle of production on sister dreamer, a sculpture park that amplifies neighborhood presence and social memory. Usher and his wife, Jennifer Goicoechea Raymond, toured the studio and engaged with the production process. That intimate exchange led to a commission: Halsey would create an engraved ode to the classic Black barbershop poster for Usher’s Atlanta home.
The barbershop poster piece reflects both intimacy and curatorial rigor. Usher, who curates his home collection not merely as blue-chip display but as storytelling, selected a Halsey work precisely because it connected to a lived experience. “For Black men, those barbershops are a sanctuary,” Usher said, underscoring the emotional logic behind the commission. For Halsey, the project was a riff on iconography she has long mined—architectural forms as hair designs, communal rituals made into visual archives. She superimposed Usher into the tableau as a protruded engraving, turning the poster into a hybrid of portraiture, public image, and sculptural object.
This initial commission set a tone: the collaboration would not be a surface-level celebrity endorsement but an exchange rooted in context and mutual trust. Halsey walked Usher through production and fabrication, inviting him into her process rather than presenting finished objects for purchase. That approach shapes how the artist adapts her language for different platforms—domestic interiors, sculpture parks, and now, stadium stages.
The Barbershop Poster Reimagined: Archive, Sanctuary, and Engraving
Barbershop posters are fragile archives. In Black communities across the United States they function as visual anthologies—stylized silhouettes and diagrams that catalog haircuts and fashions alongside a social life. These posters hang in storefront windows and on barbershop walls, touching generations who sit in the chairs beneath them. Halsey’s decision to engage this visual genre is an attempt to honor those micro-institutions, to slow down and preserve a communal archive whose significance often exceeds its material value.
Halsey’s engraved piece for Usher doesn’t simply replicate a poster; it reconfigures the poster’s logic. Traditional barbershop posters present architectural forms—fades, tapers, afros—in flat, instructional panels. Halsey translates that flatness into relief through protruded engraving, turning the poster into a sculptural surface that both projects and recedes. By superimposing Usher into the composition, she layers celebrity into communal ritual, suggesting that public figures and neighborhood spaces are not discrete categories but overlapping circuits of meaning.
Usher’s rationale for the commission clarifies the interpretive stakes. He framed barbershops as sanctuaries for Black men: places of conversation, mentoring, and brotherhood. Those social functions imbue the poster with resonance far beyond visual style. The engraving becomes less a decorative object than a mnemonic device: it preserves the look and, more importantly, points to the spaces where identity is shaped, advice given, and intergenerational connections forged. The work acts as both an intimate domestic object and an index of community ritual.
That dual identity—private artwork embodying a public tradition—echoes a central tension in Halsey’s practice. She occupies the space between sculpture that belongs in civic life and objects that circulate in art markets and celebrity homes. The barbershop engraving thus functions as a test case for the possibilities and challenges of translating local cultural forms into art objects that will be exhibited, collected, and photographed.
From Monument to Wardrobe: Translating Visual Practice into Costume
If Halsey’s sculptures revolve around saturated color, layered signage, and archival gestures, how does that vocabulary translate to clothing designed for a stadium? The answer lies in both intent and method. Halsey approaches clothing as another compositional surface. She thinks in palettes, textures, and silhouettes with the same rigor she brings to sculpture. The stylist Yashua Simmons worked with Halsey to make a look for Usher’s stadium tour: an Atlanta Braves hat, a Gucci leather jacket, and denim pants airbrushed by Halsey. The pieces were not mere embellishments; they were constructed to be part of a larger narrative about R&B’s history and communal tradition.
Halsey describes herself as dressing “like a highlighter on purpose.” That description captures the way she manages saturation and energy: neon accents, electric hues, and a chromatic intensity designed to read across distance. Onstage, color functions as a visual amplifier. In a stadium, audiences register color and movement first; fine detail arrives second. Halsey leveraged that insight, aiming to create a total image that reads at scale: the outfit needed to read both in person and in broadcast close-ups.
Her design strategy began with conceptual muses—figures who stood in for everyday women rather than recognizable celebrities. The garments paid homage to “the everyday woman and her beauty as a wearable art piece.” This choice reframes the costume from being a portrait of fame to being an extension of community imagery. Halsey embedded that ethos into fabric choices and airbrushed surfaces. Neon hints appear in the garments not as superficial flash but as compositional anchors, channeling the same saturated energy present in her sculptural installations.
The practical steps involved are both technical and artisanal. Halsey conducts daily sampling: she tests fabrics, experiments with garments, and moves in and out of downtown factories to understand what is feasible. That hands-on approach mirrors the fabrication work of a sculptor who must manage materials, labor, and production constraints. For stagewear, additional factors shape choices: durability under long runs, breathability for high-energy performance, seam reinforcement for choreography, and colorfastness under spotlights. Airbrushing adds a layer of visual uniqueness but also introduces maintenance demands; tour costumers need strategies for touch-ups and spares.
Costume, in Halsey’s account, is also archival. Usher calls these pieces “archive,” objects that outlive a single show. Costumes enter a musician’s visual legacy when photographed, catalogued, and later displayed; here a gown or leather jacket becomes a document of a performer’s era, collaborators, and influences. Halsey’s outfit for Usher therefore operates at multiple temporalities—immediate spectacle, ephemeral performance, and eventual archival artifact.
Music as Structural Component in Halsey’s Practice
Halsey’s work has long engaged music as a structural component rather than an occasional collaborator. She cites music as a “backbone” of her practice, and her projects demonstrate a propensity to extend sculptural language into performative contexts. Recent projects include a video commission for Lauryn Hill in London and a major collaborative event at the Hollywood Bowl planned for September 29, where Halsey will present a stage with Erykah Badu, Flea, Anderson .Paak, and Charles Gaines.
The Hollywood Bowl undertaking exemplifies how Halsey thinks about total environment. She does not limit herself to a performance bill; she stages the whole precinct: stage design, costume, pre-event activations, and participatory elements. One example is a mini-golf course built in her sculptural language, designed to be played by children. The mini-golf activation collapses the distance between an art object meant for protection and display and one designed for touch, play, and temporality. Halsey treats the Bowl event as an opportunity to extend her sculptural language into live experience—to test what an art object can be when audience members are invited to move through, touch, and use it.
Music allows Halsey to push beyond museum conventions where art objects are often isolated under glass or roped off. She uses the stage to experiment with costume fees, dressing stagehands, and designing moments that a gallery cannot easily accommodate. Performance situates her sculptures within time-based sequences: entrance, crescendo, encore. These sequences change how an object is read; a sculpture that functions as set in one moment can become a backdrop for a song that recontextualizes its meaning.
Halsey’s methodological commitment—dressing environments and people, building playful activations, and collaborating with musicians who are themselves storytellers—positions her practice within a lineage of artists who expand sculpture into lived experience. The resulting projects operate simultaneously as site-specific artworks, concert design, and community engagement platforms.
Celebrity Patronage and Curatorial Intent: Usher’s Collecting Philosophy
Usher’s involvement provides a useful case study in how celebrity patronage can shift the meaning of an artwork. His curation blends blue-chip names with artists who articulate community narratives—Gordon Parks, Rick Lowe, Richard Prince, and now Lauren Halsey. Usher and his interior decorator, Nicole Fuller, seek works that do more than signify wealth. They look for objects that “speak to history,” that contain “deeper storytelling” rather than pure prestige.
This collecting philosophy reframes patronage as partnership. Rather than acquiring art solely as decorative capital, Usher commissioned Halsey and engaged in studio visits, a practice that invites artists to share process and context with patrons. That involvement matters: it narrows the distance between creator and collector, and it allows the collector to shape how art is deployed in domestic or performance contexts. For Halsey, the relationship has gone beyond commissioning an artwork for private use. It led to a public-facing collaboration in which her art-language was scaled for a mass-audience performance.
The dynamics of celebrity patronage are nuanced. On the one hand, celebrity attention can expand an artist’s audience, provide financial resources for ambitious projects, and create opportunities to experiment in new mediums. On the other hand, increased visibility can complicate the artist’s relationship to community and to the original contexts of their work. Halsey’s practice demonstrates an attempt to manage that tension by maintaining commitments to local narratives—her sculptures remain rooted in South Central Los Angeles—even as she accepts commissions and produces work that circulates in elite or mass-cultural spaces.
Usher’s articulation that the story “is always following us” captures a reciprocal gesture: the art informs the musician’s environment and the musician’s public platform amplifies the art. When both parties prioritize storytelling and context, collaboration can become a vehicle for preserving and projecting cultural memory.
Making Clothing That Lasts: Practicalities of Tour Wardrobe and Airbrushed Surfaces
Designing clothing for stadium tours involves a different set of technical priorities than making a gallery sculpture. Stadium outfits must endure frequent use, intense lighting, sweat, choreography, quick changes, and repeated laundering. They need to be photographed from multiple distances and under varied lighting conditions. Translating a sculptural palette into textile dye and airbrush requires both technical knowledge and careful testing.
Halsey’s workflow—sampling daily, working with downtown factories, testing palettes—aligns with industry standards for high-performance stagewear. Airbrushed details offer visual uniqueness but demand maintenance strategies: airbrushed pigments can be susceptible to abrasion and fading if not sealed properly; multiple uniforms may be required, and wardrobe teams need touch-up kits for on-the-road repairs. Fabrics must be chosen for tensile strength and flexibility—leather jackets might be reinforced at seams, denim may be pre-shrunk and pre-faded for consistency, and accessories like hats must be structurally sound to tolerate vigorous movement.
A tour stylist such as Yashua Simmons plays a critical role as translator and integrator. Stylists manage the relationship between artist, designer, and production team; they ensure that costume aligns with choreography, lighting, and branding. In this collaboration, Simmons likely coordinated between Halsey’s artistic vision and the logistical constraints of tour life—selecting underlayers, advising on alterations, and organizing backups. The end product reads as both personal expression and a unit designed for the practical rhythm of performance.
The wardrobe also becomes part of a performative archive. Photographs, press coverage, and fans’ social media preserve the garments beyond the tour. Musicians accumulate costumes and display them in retrospective exhibitions or private displays. For Halsey, who thinks of the pieces as archival, this afterlife is part of the artwork’s lifecycle: a jacket worn onstage becomes a material index of the collaboration and a documented artifact of cultural exchange.
The Tension Between Museum Durability and Public Interaction
Halsey consistently tests the boundary between objects that are meant to be preserved and those designed for interaction. Her mini-golf project for the Hollywood Bowl, for instance, intentionally creates sculptural forms that invite contact and play. That move runs counter to a museum convention where objects are protected and access is limited. The artist’s refusal to prioritize inviolability insists on accessibility and community use.
That tension is also visible in the movement of works from public spaces to private collections. An engraved barbershop poster installed in Usher’s home becomes partly removed from the public landscape it references. The work’s meanings can shift when extracted from its original cultural geography. Halsey navigates that displacement by embedding narrative and process into each piece: by walking collectors through fabrication and context, she helps preserve the work’s connections to its source community even when the object is re-sited.
The choice to stage public activations—mini-golf, concert-stage landscapes, sites like sister dreamer—represents a deliberate counterweight. While private commissions expand visibility and resources, public projects allow communities to access and participate in Halsey’s aesthetic world. Her practice thus balances the private and public, the archival and the ephemeral.
Broader Currents: Artists as Costume Designers and Performative Collaborators
Halsey and Usher’s collaboration fits within a broader pattern of contemporary artists partnering with musicians and performers to shape visual identities. When visual artists step into costume design, they bring techniques and aesthetics that can alter the visual grammar of performance. They also push musicians into different narrative modes: a garment can suggest lineage, highlight marginal figures, or reframe a performer’s relationship to their audience.
Historically, these partnerships have ranged from album cover art to full-scale stage design. Visual artists bring to performance a capacity for narrative density—images that carry references, archives, and sociopolitical commentary. For Halsey, whose work is saturated with references to Afro-futurism, local architecture, and Black cultural practices, costume offers an immediate way to broadcast those references to diverse audiences.
The partnership also flips usual expectations. Musicians often commission outfits to reinforce an already-established identity. With an artist like Halsey involved, the wardrobe can become a site for identity construction—an invitation for reinterpretation and communal inclusion. Halsey’s comment that Usher “wants me to be me” points to a rare creative freedom. When musicians grant visual artists such latitude, the resulting work gains authenticity and narrative complexity.
This model also influences audience perception. Fans who encounter Halsey’s garments at stadium shows may be introduced to her sculptural language for the first time. Others who know her work could see the concert outfits as extensions of a larger project. Either way, the collaboration amplifies the permeability between contemporary art and mainstream performance.
Where to Encounter the Work: Public Projects, Performances, and Private Commissions
Halsey’s commissioned barbershop engraving resides in Usher’s Atlanta home and therefore is not part of a public installation. The collaboration’s most public manifestation is the tour itself, where Halsey’s airbrushed garments have been worn in stadiums. Photographs and broadcast footage extend the reach of those designs to global audiences.
For audiences seeking in-person encounters with Halsey’s more publicly accessible work, the sister dreamer sculpture park represents a primary location. The source conversation referenced the project in production; her practice includes site-based works that invite local engagement and sustained observation. Additionally, the Hollywood Bowl takeover scheduled for September 29 will be a major, large-scale instance of Halsey’s attempt to present a totalized art experience—stage design, musical collaborators, and participatory activations such as a playable mini-golf course.
Halsey has also been involved in institutional and gallery-based commissions, including media-based projects like the Lauryn Hill video shown in London. Those works demonstrate her facility across scale and medium: gallery installations, filmic commissions, public sculpture, and now, performance costume.
For collectors or institutions interested in acquiring or commissioning similar works, Halsey’s practice demonstrates the importance of engagement. Studio visits and conversations about fabrication, context, and intended use are part of how she shapes commissions. For patrons who prioritize storytelling and community connection, Halsey’s approach offers a model: works are best conceived when artist and patron enter a collaborative production process.
What This Collaboration Signals About Contemporary Cultural Production
At least three broader implications emerge from the Halsey–Usher collaboration.
First, it underscores the porousness between contemporary art and popular performance. Artists are increasingly visible on stages and in mass media contexts previously dominated by stylists and fashion designers. Their involvement enriches the semiotic load of performances, introducing narratives and archives that transcend commercial image-making.
Second, the collaboration demonstrates an artist’s ability to translate neighborhood-specific imagery into forms that resonate across contexts. Halsey’s work, rooted in South Central Los Angeles, has legibility in a stadium partly because its visuals—vivid color, patterning, signage—register at scale. The artist’s challenge is to retain specificity while adapting for mass viewing. The success of Halsey’s outfit suggests a model for artists who wish to scale local narratives into popular formats without erasing their origins.
Third, the partnership highlights how patronage can be oriented toward preservation rather than spectacle. Usher’s collecting ethos—seeking works that “speak to history”—shows how celebrity patronage can be used to amplify cultural memory rather than simply acquire prestige. That orientation matters for artists who want to retain political and ethical commitments while stepping into more visible mainstream arenas.
The collaboration will not resolve the tensions inherent in the movement between public and private, or between sacred communal objects and collectible art. But it does offer a blueprint for partnerships grounded in mutual respect and contextual awareness.
Looking Ahead: Possibilities for Future Projects
Both Halsey and Usher expressed openness to future work. Halsey mentioned interest in contributing to stage concepts or “a small show” that might arrive unannounced. Usher emphasized the idea of “levelling up” when two storytellers converge. The possibilities for further collaboration are extensive: stage conceptualization for full performances, immersive installations accompanying tours, public sculpture commissions tied to music festivals, or even curated exhibitions that pair Halsey’s sculptures with performance archives.
The Hollywood Bowl event offers a laboratory for these future ideas. Halsey will deploy her sculptural language across multiple modes—costume, stage, activations—and partners like Erykah Badu and Anderson .Paak suggest a musical program that will complement and converse with the visual design. That event could serve as a prototype for how artists can translate sculptural practice into mass-performance contexts while preserving participatory and community-oriented aims.
There is also potential for Halsey to expand the archival impulse that informed the barbershop engraving into larger public commissions. If artists continue to collaborate with musicians and public figures who prioritize cultural storytelling, new avenues for community-based archives and performance-linked public art will emerge.
FAQ
Q: How did Lauren Halsey and Usher first connect? A: A gallerist, Easy Otabor, introduced Usher to Halsey’s work. Following a studio visit in fall 2024, Usher commissioned Halsey to create an engraved barbershop piece for his Atlanta home. The studio visit and commissioning process led to a broader creative relationship culminating in a custom tour outfit airbrushed by Halsey.
Q: What is the barbershop engraving and why does it matter? A: The piece reimagines the classic Black barbershop poster—an everyday visual archive of hairstyles and social ritual—into a protruded engraving. For Usher, the barbershop symbolizes sanctuary, conversation, and brotherhood; Halsey’s work preserves and elevates that cultural meaning into a sculptural form that functions as both object and narrative device.
Q: What did Halsey create for Usher’s tour? A: Halsey airbrushed an ensemble for Usher that included an Atlanta Braves hat, a Gucci leather jacket, and denim pants. The pieces incorporated neon hints and a saturated palette to read at stadium scale and function as wearable art that references everyday beauty, community, and an Afro-futurist sensibility.
Q: Who coordinated the tour wardrobe? A: The outfit resulted from a collaboration between Halsey and Usher’s stylist, Yashua Simmons. The stylist serves as a bridge between artistic vision and the practical constraints of touring, ensuring garments align with choreography, lighting, and durability requirements.
Q: How does Halsey’s sculptural practice inform her costume work? A: Halsey approaches clothing as compositional work—sampling fabrics, testing palettes, and considering how color and form read at scale. Her sculptures often engage neighborhood signage, Afro-futurist motifs, and archival gestures; she applies similar principles to costume, aiming for saturated color and symbolic resonance that functions in both gallery and performance contexts.
Q: Where can the public see Halsey’s work? A: Some projects, like the engraved piece for Usher’s home, are private. Public-facing opportunities include Halsey’s sister dreamer sculpture park and the Hollywood Bowl takeover scheduled for September 29, where she will present stage design and activations with high-profile musical collaborators.
Q: What are the practical challenges of artist-made tour costumes? A: Tour costumes need to withstand repeated wear, movement, and intense lighting. Airbrushing requires sealing and maintenance; fabrics must be chosen for strength and comfort; and backup garments and touch-up kits are typically necessary. Collaboration with experienced costume teams and factories is essential.
Q: Does celebrity patronage compromise the artist’s community commitments? A: That depends on the terms of the collaboration. In this case, Halsey maintained ties to her community-based practice—continuing public projects and emphasizing narrative—while accepting commissions. The collaboration with Usher included studio visits, mutual engagement, and decisions that aimed to preserve contextual storytelling rather than merely commercialize imagery.
Q: Will Halsey and Usher work together again? A: Both signaled interest in future projects. Halsey expressed a desire to contribute to stage concepts or small, unannounced shows; Usher emphasized the uniqueness and historical depth Halsey brings to storytelling. Future collaborations could include stage design, immersive installations, or public events that fuse Halsey’s sculptural language with musical performance.
Q: How does this collaboration fit into broader trends in art and performance? A: It exemplifies an increasing tendency for visual artists to collaborate directly with musicians and performers, bringing archival, political, and community-based perspectives into mainstream performance contexts. It also highlights how artists adapt material practices to new formats—costume, stage design, and activations—that challenge museum conventions and invite broader public interaction.
The Halsey–Usher collaboration maps a contemporary form of cultural exchange: one that moves from neighborhood ritual to domesticated artwork to stadium spectacle without losing the thread of communal meaning. It suggests a future where artists not only make objects for galleries but shape the visual and social language of performance, ensuring that large-scale spectacle can still carry the textures and stories of local histories.
