Merch Alert: Interview Shirts By Farfetch BEAT and Tabboo!

Last week, we teased the return of the iconic Interview t-shirt at a steamy Pride party at The Cock. The three-piece limited-run capsule collection, out today, is exclusively available via online fashion hub Farfetch BEAT and pays homage to this magazine’s long history of queer iconography. The designs feature original typeface by the legendary drag icon and artist TABBOO!, as well as portraits of the queer icons and Interview favorites Candy Darling and Divine. Below, our editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg gives us a primer on the artist’s legacy, and models the exclusive t-shirts alongside our fashion director Dara.

20 percent of the collection’s proceeds will be donated on behalf of Interview and Farfetch to the Hetrick-Martin Institute, the oldest and largest advocacy organization for LGBTQIA+ youth in the United States.

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I’ve known Tabboo! for a really long time. I knew Tabboo! from Wigstock: The Movie. He does a major song, “It’s Natural,” in the movie. I don’t know if it’s available outside of YouTube, but I just watched it last week on JetBlue, so maybe it’s streaming now. It’s fucking major, and if you’ve never seen it, it’s sort of the best. You guys, see it.

But I also knew Tabboo! through the pages of Interview Magazine, because I was obsessed with Interview when I was a teenager. Tabboo!’s handwriting was all over early ‘90s Ingrid Sischy-era Interview, and is, to me, the coolest handwriting ever. Tabboo! did the Deee-Lite World Clique album art, all the Deee-Lite everything. The lyric from “Deee-Lite Theme” on that album, “from the global village in the age of communication, “New York City”—that is New York to me, and Tabboo!’s handwriting is all over that album cover. 

I’ve also known Tabboo!, in real life, for 20 years now. Tabboo! is having such a well-deserved renaissance as a great, important artist, which is phenomenal. I also just know him to be a hysterical, really fucking cool person with a legendary history at places like the Pyramid Club for being a punk rock drag queen and a forefather, foremother, whatever. But he’s also just fun to yap and kiki and laugh with. So, when we started talking about artists to work with for this limited-edition t-shirt for Farfetch BEAT, Tabboo! was the obvious perfect choice. 

​​So, we had a launch party for the collection at The Cock that was super fab. There were a million people there, like Julia Fox and Jenny Dembrow. Scott Ewalt was DJing. He DJed my first night at The Cock in 1998, and was literally the first cool gay guy I met when I was a teenage intern in New York City. We had people like Emily Ratajkowski and Jason Nikic, our publisher, in the basement of The Cock with a gaggle of naked gogo boys dangerously close to them. I couldn’t believe it.

Anyway, I feel very particular about the Interview logo, because it’s changed so much over the years. You don’t want to overdo it, or do it the wrong way, or use the one that I don’t want you to use, if you know what I’m saying. So, I’m not going to ask just any artist to rewrite the Interview logo—but Tabboo! doing the t-shirt art is great. We used the ‘70s Andy Warhol’s Interview logo and one of Tabboo!’s amazing drawings of Candy Darling that we talked about on the phone. Tabboo! Looked all over his house for it and then he found it and it was fab. We stuck that on one of the shirts and it’s beautiful. That’s my favorite t-shirt I think.

And then Divine—who doesn’t love Divine? Divine is God. Divine is Jesus. Divine is…no longer the filthiest person alive, because that’s been ruined too, by the fucking Republicans. They took Divine’s well-deserved title. Anyway, I love the Divine t-shirt, too. Divine is the ultimate for me, as my mom is from Baltimore. She took us kids to see Hairspray in the movie theater when I was 12 because she had been a dancing teen on the dance show that Hairspray was based on! So she accidentally introduced me to drag and Divine and I became immediately OBSESSED with Pink Flamingos and I got grounded when I saw it because I was still 12 and it was X-Rated! So here’s my mom now, proudly wearing Tabboo!’s Divine tee in an XL. 

I take a medium in all of these, but I also love it really small, and I love it really big. Divine is baby pink, Candy Darling is white, white, white, and Andy Warhol’s Interview is ivory. Get one, get all three, whatever. Just enjoy, and happy PRIDE.

Interview’s limited-edition T-Shirt collection with Tabboo! is exclusively available on Farfetch BEAT now! Shop it now before it’s gone, people!