Exclusive: Turnstile’s Franz Lyons on Making ‘Never Enough,’ His Air Jordan Obsession, and Starring on a Guess Jeans Billboard
Look, it gets reissued, it gets better material, it gets worse material, but the premise is still a black-and-red Jordan 1 will never go out of style. I like some adventurous stuff, but at the base of it all, I’m putting on jeans and a white tee. It’s all the same stuff I wore to go skating.
Denim is a big part of how you dress, so getting tapped to front this Guess campaign must have been pretty surreal.
When they asked me to do that, it was a super holy shit moment. Not only that, but they were like, “And you get the billboard on Sunset and La Brea.” I was riding by and I saw Brent Faiyaz up there, and [they] were like, “Hey, that’s where your billboard is going to be.”
How did this all come together? What was the photoshoot like?
It was all Nicolai, Garrett, and Leeroy at Guess. They just gave me the job. They said, “Show up at this time and this is what you should bring: whatever you want.” I brought Timbs. I brought the Visvim boots. And I brought a pair of Ricks. They all went with denim because I knew we were only doing the denim. It just ended up being that all-denim look in the Visvim boots, which was the hero shot for the billboard. That whole day was just so smooth. The photographer and everyone who works with Guess is just great. I got the utmost respect for [that team] because they really showed me love.
Courtesy of Guess Jeans
You obviously travel a lot with the band, but how do you shop these days? Are you going into stores or is it primarily online?
I mean, for real, I just love the stuff I’m into. The stuff that I like to collect, I am trying to get at every turn. If I’m bored on the bus in America, I’m on Facebook Marketplace looking for a place to buy Js or something. Or hitting up people in my shoe group in the hood like, “Oh, what y’all got for sale?” But shopping for real, the only time when I’m really trying to go crazy is when we go to Tokyo. You just go with no bags and come back with as many as possible. Best place in the entire world for all the cool stuff.
How do you approach packing for a big tour?
Number one: waterproof something. Number two and three: favorite jeans. The rest I split evenly between socks and underwear. For T-shirts, I keep it super minimal. Most of the time, I go for a straight white tee and bring four flannels. My name of the game is to stay dry and cop a little while I’m gone. But try not to overdo it. Sometimes it turns into a thing where I get to the venue, and I’m like, “I want to go find shoes,” but we’re not in the city center, and it would take you out of the vibe of the trip. Maybe instead, you need to kick it with your bros and be at the venue or go out on a hike or a walk with them or something.
What about footwear? I saw the boots in the “Birds” music video.
Those are Visvim, straight from Tokyo. They’re so heavy, though. That was the first day I wore ’em. I had so many blisters, dude. Those boots are so sick the way they make the jeans look because they’re eight-inch boots. So when my leg is forward, the back of the jeans is kind of standing up. The boots are doing their thing, all undercover.
