What’s in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. This week, we’re featuring vocalist, producer, filmmaker, and professional scooter rider Oliver Tree.

When Oliver Tree walks into The Verge office, everyone snaps their head. It’s impossible to not notice his ostentatious presence: massively wide JNCO pants, a violet and fuchsia ’90s ski jacket, Gucci suitcase, and… a bowl haircut. Oh, and he’s got a Razor scooter with him too. It’s not unfair to say that Oliver Tree is a walking, talking meme. The visual schtick, along with accompanying deadpan humor persona, were deliberately crafted by Oliver Tree to appeal to a meme-friendly generation. And through that lens he serves up catchy, hip-hop infused pop with an electronic kick. Come for the memes, stay for the music.

This combination has been integral to Oliver Tree’s success. His single “When I’m Down” went viral in 2017, racking up tens of millions of plays online. He replicated the formula for “Alien Boy” and again with “Hurt,” nailing down a very specific vision that’s designed to cater to people’s eyes and ears. “Hurt” in particular was a flag plant for Oliver Tree’s ability to create infectious melodies — the song spent 16 weeks on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart, peaking at position 12. Now, he’s released another new single, called “Fuck,” and is preparing for his full-length debut, which will be released this year. In the meantime, Oliver Tree treats us to a peek inside his world, which includes lots of scooter stories, a busted iPhone, and mountains of Cheetos.

First of all I really need to know about your pants because I had JNCO pants and you don’t see them very often.

These are JNCOs that are no longer for sale. JNCO shut down last year, but I was able to pick these pants up through a buddy who lives north of the Rockies, this guy Little Ricky. He’s a JNCO dealer and he has a warehouse with 300 pairs of JNCOs. He basically has every type ever made: khaki JNCOs, short JNCOs, leopard JNCOs, he has it all.

To be honest I was surprised that they lasted so long.

It’s kind of the end of an era.

Tell me about your style.

This outfit is made up from everything I really thought was cool as a child. So these were the pants I always wanted. These are the sunglasses I used to wear. This is the haircut I’ve had my entire life. I was too scared to get any other type of haircut. My mom picked it for me. The jacket I stole from my mom, but she wasn’t really using it so I don’t think she misses it too much. And then socks and sandals is just my favorite footwear combo.

Who do you think has the best style right now?

My biggest fashion inspiration is Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber. Solid. Him and my parents. My parents showed me how to really unharness my swagger.

Let’s move on to your bag.

This basically has my raw essentials. I take this everywhere I go. It’s a fake Gucci bag I got in China in the underground market. Well, I guess I should just show you.

Yeah! Let’s get into it. Your suitcase is filled with Cheetos?

I’m traveling a lot, so one of the main things I need is a source of energy. There’s not many great food options on the road. So I just bring my main food with me everywhere and my main energy source.

Do you have any favorite flavor?

Traditional hot. You can have one too. My treat. I’ve got plenty. I bring them to share.

How many Cheetos is a meal?

Well it depends if it’s the big bag or a little bag. If it’s a little bag I can do about 13, and if it’s a big bag I only need two. I also have one liter of Mountain Dew here.

So what if someone offers you a salad?

Sometimes I’m feeling healthy and I’ll take a salad and crumple up a couple of Cheetos on there. Usually I say flat out no though.

I can’t think of a more perfect substitute for any type of food. It’s perfect on any occasion for a meal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m an intense energy person and these things really keep me on the edge. They keep me going and keep my chi really high. It’s basically the ultimate snack.

And then I have a portrait I painted of myself. I keep that with me just in case I ever lose touch with who I really am.

If you forget your passport just show that.

I pretty much use this as a legal form of identification.

Not a lot of people know this but I’m big into watercolors and pastels. I think this thing took me about a month to make. And I don’t have a house so I bring it everywhere.

The eyes are really intense.

That was based off of the music video where I died, and this is the white-eyed version of it. That’s my understanding. When I painted it though I was a bit drunk so I can’t remember. It’s an emotional piece and every time I look at it I just see so much of myself.

That’s from a newer music video, right?

The record is called “Hurt.” It’s a song I made about a scooter accident I had when I was 18. It was a semifinal run at a pro competition. I’m in this 20-foot roll in and out of nowhere this little pebble shows up. I hit this thing and just go flying — break my left wrist, break my right wrist, and break the joint that connects the thumb to the hand. At that point I had to start considering other career options because scootering was just not safe. I needed something that had a little bit more longevity for a career choice. So I started making a segue out of the professional scooter world and focused on this Oliver Tree project.

We went to Ukraine to film the music video for “Hurt,” and made that with a small loan of a million dollars. Atlantic Records supported us. I want to shout out Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald – they were really the people who helped finance this and bring it to life. It took us two years to sort out the financial side, and I don’t think we could really be happier with the outcome.

What phone do you use?

This is an iPhone X. Let me turn it over because it’s busted and that’s even funnier. I was in Madrid, out clubbing and blogging and it fell off the stick. And I have a Juul. Strictly marijuana. There’s no tobacco in that.

How did you get the Solo cup design put on your clothing and the monster truck for “All That”?

From a legal standpoint, it was hell. And we’ve been asked to not use the logo anymore. We couldn’t use it in other videos. The whole coffin scene in “Hurt” was supposed to be Solo cup, but they were not too thrilled with the idea. After the last video they just said, “Please never use our stuff again.” But we don’t care because I already got to use it in the first video.

The original designer is a woman who basically got ripped off by the company. She worked for the distributor and submitted it for a company contest, but didn’t get any of the royalties from it. It ended up becoming a phenomenon, but they owned her design at that point. Her name is Gina Ekiss.

Are there other wheeled activities that you’re into?

I’m really big into scooters and electric scooters. I’ve got like, 13 pocket rockets. I drive monster trucks. I actually spent five months training for my first music video learning how to jump monster trucks. This guy only let one other person drive his monster truck, which was Jay Leno, so I’m very honored that he trusted me. It’s in the first music video for “Alien Boy.”

I was surprised that the guy would let me borrow this truck because these trucks are like, half a million dollars. It’s a huge liability. You have to be properly trained by a professional.

Do you record on the road?

We’re making films on the road. We’re working on a documentary. We’re doing half hour, 45-minute films on the trials and tribulations of what a starting out project looks like in all reality. The drama, the violence, the frustration, the suffering. We cover it all. We have already put on a couple videos. We did a behind the scenes for “Hurt.” It’s how to make a million-dollar music video.

What’s your songwriting process?

I don’t do any songwriting on the road because I’ll go live life for three months, and then I’ll go write music for two months straight and write every single story I have to tell. Once I get burnt out on it and start making the same songs, I go back on the road and experience life. If you don’t live enough experiences you have a limited spectrum of things you can write about, so it fuels the fire.

There’s a lot of hats artists have to wear nowadays. If you wear the same hat every day it gets really old. So it’s refreshing to be able to have it broken up into different parts of the year: This month we film, this month we tour, this month we make music.

I produce and write music with other producers, but with vocals I’m essentially improvising all of that, besides maybe a song or two here and there. I freestyle and see what comes out. If it doesn’t make total sense but I like the idea I’ll carve out and chop up all these little parts together and then I’ll rewrite lyrics to it. I would say about 85 percent of the lyrics are improvised.

So backing up to the bag…

Couldn’t afford the real one. I had a friend who told me about this market and was like, “You gotta go here, this is the best underground market in Shanghai.” So I went to check it out. It’s illegal to sell Gucci there because there’s actual Gucci stores. It’s really hush hush. They can sell all these other items like Supreme, because there’s no Supreme dealers there. But there’s tons of Gucci stores.

Because it’s sketchy for them you have to ask for Gucci and they’ll pull you to these back rooms, or take you to a whole different store a block away and into a little room covered in fake bags. Then they ask you to pay ridiculous prices for it, thinking you think it’s real, but all you have to do is negotiate. They really want to make a sale so they’re prepared to negotiate pretty heavily. I was able to negotiate a couple bags and this was the the real pride and joy and what I decided to take on the road with me.

The real reason I’m buying the fake stuff is because I love the idea that people think it’s so cool and it’s a $2 item. That’s why I bought tons of fake pairs of Yeezys. I would tell people that they’re fake and my fans thought it was hilarious. People like Yeezy Buster would try calling me out, saying, “This guy’s got fake shoes!” I loved it.

Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

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For the past two decades, sculptor Sarah Sitkin has used materials like silicone and latex to play with hyperreal configurations of the human form. Some focus on absolute replication, while others play with abstract ideas and science fiction fantasy. Sitkin’s projects include commissions like a mask of Billie Eilish’s face split in half for the cover of Garage Magazine, an ear phone case, and grim sculptures for Syfy’s Channel Zero: No-End House.

Sitkin’s striking show and most recent body of work, Bodysuits, is now on tour at Superchief Gallery locations. The show started in LA last year and is currently on view in New York before it heads to Miami. Sitkin got on the phone with The Verge to talk about her molding process, finding body models, and rejecting mainstream beauty standards.

Content warning: This story contains photos of nude human body models.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

In this show, you started working with the whole body rather than pieces sort of stacked together as in some of your previous work. It’s very related, but had a completely different feeling. Can you tell me about that thought process?

Previously, I would approach my artwork more in an intuitive kind of way. I would assemble things until the concept emerged, and then refine it. Whereas Bodysuits was a whole concept for the show — what I wanted to do and how I wanted them to look and feel was already engineered from the beginning. The blueprint was there. I knew exactly what size molds to make, what type of molds I had to make, and how much time I had to make them and the materials. It was a new way of creating for me, and it took a lot of discipline.

Bodysuits felt like the culmination of almost my whole life as an artist.

The show looks incredible. The first thing that I felt when I walked into this space is that in our culture, you don’t often see bodies in a non-sexual context. And that was really awesome.

Isn’t that so shocking! We’ve all had bodies for millennia, but there’s this huge point of controversy. So like, you’re kind of uncomfortable when you walk in a room and you see a bunch of just unclothed bodies. But it’s the most common thing that we all share, and that we all can relate to, but we’re all uncomfortable by it. It’s just wild to me how much controversy just a simple, unclothed body still holds in 2019.

Can you walk me through that planning process of creating the molds and finding your models?  

I knew that I wanted to make these pieces that were the husk of people. And after going through it in my mind, and knowing that there’d be so many different body shapes, and to make it be able to be a wearable garment, certain design choices had to be made. In a perfect world, I would’ve loved to have the suits be full all the way to the feet, and the whole head as well. But, obviously, those wouldn’t be wearable garments, so I had to just refine it down to the most necessary parts of the body, which would be the torso.

I made a prototype suit in October of 2017. Just as, like, a proof of concept. I had a bunch of friends come and try it on and talk to me about their experience. We started the process of making an open call for who wanted to participate in the show. And we got a lot of initial response from people who wanted to be a part of the Bodysuits project, but we had to narrow it down to people who were healthy enough to do the mold process, which is really demanding on your body. Because you have to hold perfectly still in a standing position for just about an hour. You have to shave your entire body, you can’t have any kind of allergies to materials latex or silicone. You can’t have any respiratory issues, you cannot be a smoker. From there, we had a core group, I think, of eight people that were up for the challenge.

We take a mold of the person in the studio, there’s a team of three people in a very choreographed and very quick action in which we cover the whole person’s body in silicone, and then we cover that silicone in plaster, and then we eventually separate it and cut them out of the piece. And from there, we assemble the mold back together. And we do many, many flush coats of thin layers of silicone until we filled up again.

The experience of the visitor is so intimate — not just viewing the work, but the experience of trying on these suits. I imagine it’s a very intimate process to create them.

It’s an extremely intimate experience. If you can imagine being completely naked and completely shaven in front of a team of three essentially strangers covering your body in a weird toothpaste consistency thing, you really get to know someone. You’re already forced into an intimate place, so you really start talking. You’re just immediately in a different, more vulnerable place. During the molding process, I get to know somebody and there are certain things that they tell me about their life, or certain feelings that they have about their bodies or insecurities, or to see them struggle with how their body has changed over time, or what they would like their ideal body to be. I keep note of all of those things. And those come into play in the more final stages of the mold.

Once I have the mold and a cast of the skin, I can add weighted pieces to the suit, like steel ball bearings or weights or sand. I can mix silicone very heavy and make it very squishy. I can customize silicone to feel and weigh and behave any way I want to. And so I made choices on the design for every unique suit on how I wanted the suit to feel, based on stuff I learned about them when we’re in the molding process.

Is this sort of model something you want to do again? Or do you feel like you’ve exhausted this way of molding?

The process of molding is an ancient practice, and I’ll never stop doing it. I grew up doing it in my bedroom, it feels almost like it’s a part of me and my existence in a way. I always catch myself like thinking about things in terms of molds and how they’re made. I’m always inspecting objects for where the mold seams are and how it’s fabricated. As far as the Bodysuits project is concerned, I would have loved to have a huge range of body types — a body suit for every archetype of human body that exists on Earth. But I think at some point, I would like to move on and see the next step in the evolution of my artistic practice.

One of the suits available to try on was a woman’s body who, I was told, was specifically requested to be made because it was the “average” American woman.

The show at Superchief Gallery, Los Angeles was really well received and it led to the Museum of Health and Medical Science (MoHS) bringing my exhibit to their museum.  

As part of the terms of the exhibit, they would commission two new bodysuits and would choose exactly what body. We did a very intense casting where we reached out to 300 applicants. MoHS really wanted the exact average American female from the most recent census, which was 2015. Thankfully, being in Los Angeles, there is a casting type for actors in which part of their resume includes all of their measurements. So it was very easy for us to find someone who had the exact measurements in every way of the average American woman, and she was extremely excited to be a part of the project.

About the male suit, can you talk a little bit about why that individual was chosen?

Yeah, these were chosen by the Museum of Health. They commissioned the suits, they got to make the decision about who was cast. A lot of the central theme of the museum at the time was about colon health. And so when we were casting, we really wanted the oldest person that could safely do the mold process, because it’s a very demanding process. We found this man and we didn’t even discover his beautiful scar until we were doing the mold and he was undressed. He’s a colon cancer survivor.

One of my favorites is the pregnant woman. It’s just so wonderful to see that included.

I was so excited when this woman wanted to do it. I was so scared. She was 38 weeks pregnant. And I was like, nothing can go wrong on this one. I mean, we need extra crew in here. We did this one a little different. We actually had her sitting. And that’s why her suit is cut so high. I was too nervous to have her stand. She wanted to, but I just couldn’t, I was too scared.

She was a trooper, she never once had any problem. She had said that the pregnancy was so difficult on her body and that she had learned to tolerate so much pain and discomfort that nothing could faze her.

I also really loved some of the details that you put on the inside of the suits that were really beautiful, too. It was like an extra little prize. If you turn around the suit there’s these little stories inside and you can imagine what they represent.

I think that was definitely one of my favorite parts of doing the interiors, because there’s so much discipline that goes into doing the silicone work with the chemistry and the timing. But with the interiors, I can approach this more free-form and sew things in by hand. And if I don’t like it, I could just cut it off and it’s no big deal. So doing the interiors was a lot of fun for me.

Your work is being picked up by some fashion entities like designer duo Fecal Matter. I would love to hear what you think about that.

Yeah, I’m kind of mystified and I’m thrilled that it’s resonating with people. I actually often work as a fabricator doing commission work for other artists, executing their ideas. I really loved working with Fecal Matter. We had a lot of conversations about how fucked up the fashion world is, and everyone’s relationship to the human body. And so I think everybody wants to almost eliminate their humanity from their body.

The body is such a point of contention and stress and anxiety and loathing for almost everybody. Especially people in the fashion world, who maybe understand that acutely more than most people do because they work specifically in that field shaping bodies.

I also loved the fashion shot where it’s this very calm, pretty scene and the model is holding a bunch of limbs.

That was a Gucci campaign. Yeah, that was rad. I’ve been working with this fabulous photographer named Petra Collins and we’ve been doing a lot of stuff together recently. And I love what she comes up with. That was Petra’s idea. We wanted to do something that was kind of an homage to a vintage horror movie, kind of behind-the-scenes type thing. So I brought the most obvious-looking props that I had in my shop. I love working with Petra, she’s fabulous.

I have read about your conscious avoidance / rejection of mainstream beauty standards, and the ways your work is a reaction to that, which really resonated with me.

I was raised in Los Angeles, which is an epicenter for the entertainment industry. There’s a lot of attitudes and cultural stigmas about bodies. It was an interesting time and place to be a young person coming into themselves because there were kind of two worlds: the kind of mainstream highly visible world of the entertainment industry, and then the other side, the punk, skate, counterculture movement that was going on, which I identified with so much more. It definitely shaped me a lot as an artist. I definitely developed a resentment toward the pressures that the world and that culture puts on having these idealized bodies.

I grew up working in an art store seeing the same celebrities come into the shop that I would see on-screen and in movies. So seeing these people in real life, versus like the airbrushed and Photoshopped version of them on billboards was such a huge divide. Like, some fantasy was lifted and I knew that it was all just a farce. Knowing that definitely is still a huge part of my work, my old work, my current work. The Bodysuit project definitely is wanting to lift the illusion. It’s a weird intersection to be in an artistic practice that is all about making illusion, but also wanting to use it to illustrate the illusion.

Bodysuits is on view at Superchief Gallery NY until May 5th. Contact the gallery Info@superchiefgallery.com  to make an appointment to try on a suit.

Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

What’s in your bag? is a recurring feature where we ask people to tell us a bit more about their everyday gadgets by opening their bags and hearts to us. This week, we’re featuring English singer and songwriter Anne-Marie.

Anne-Marie has an impressive musical resume, with heaps of nominations and wins at awards shows around the world (including a recent nom as Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2019 Brit Awards), a long list of charting songs that float between the worlds of tropical pop and dance, like “2002,” and is just off a jaunt where she shared the stage with Ed Sheeran on his Divide Tour. Now, without a pause, she’s on her own headlining Speak Your Mind Tour. It’s quite a lot, but everything Anne-Marie does in life, she does with obsessive acceleration. Consider, for example, that before she was a singer touring around the globe, she was a karate world champion.

As Anne-Marie empties out her backpack for The Verge, it quickly becomes evident this tendency funnels its way down to her everyday items. From a book that convinced her that humans do, in fact, need to sleep, to scores of scrunchies, there’s no middle ground for Anne-Marie.

So tell me about your bag.

So, this is a backpack. I can’t just carry around a handbag because they’re too small for all the things I need. So I’m a backpack lover. I have so many backpacks because when I leave the hotel I don’t go back until the end of the day, so I need everything right with me that I could possibly need. This one is by Axel. My stylist got it for me. We work really closely together. I wouldn’t say I’ve always had an eye for style, or that I’m a fashionista, but I know what I feel comfortable with. It’s always been really hard working with a stylist, so it’s more like, I tell her what to get and she gets a better version of what I’ve told her to find.

This is really strange. But I have a razor with me. [Laughs] I shave my arms and legs at really weird times because I’ll forget and then I’m like, “Oh, I need to do something with my legs.” And face wipes, I need those to shave my legs with! So, that happens.

Yeah. That’s real life, folks.

Yes. Obviously dry shampoo and deodorant, which I think every girl needs. And then this is all my makeup and oh, here’s something I live by. You need some moisture in your face or things that are good for your skin overall. I love this stuff called Skin Food, which is why I’ve used it all up. I use it every morning and every night on my face. I can’t live without it. And then I have under-eye patches.

Do they work?

Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Maybe in my brain.

What kind of phone do you have?

I have an iPhone X. But I just cracked it the other day, so I’ve got to figure that out. Every time I go to a shop they’re like, “Truly, get the insurance just in case,” and I’m like, “No, I’ll never smash it,” and then this happens. My charger. I don’t know how many of those I’ve had over tour, but it’s the running joke that I have a new one every week. I bring a hat because I just love hats. Everywhere I go, to and from places, I always wear a hat and then take it off. This is one of my favorite hats because it’s got loads of different flags on it. I think I’ve had the most compliments on this hat from people.

What brand is it?

It’s just Topshop! Basically my whole clothing thing is menswear. I also have a jumper because my body temperature is like, three degrees lower than everyone else’s in the world. So I’m always cold. It’s from Urban Outfitters Men’s. A hairbrush, because my hair is a bitch. I have a book.

A real life book.

An actual book! It’s called Why We Sleep, because I don’t sleep and I keep trying to have an argument with everyone about how I think it’s just pointless and boring to me. I’ve started to read this book and now I realize it’s definitely not pointless and I definitely need it. [Laughs] So yeah.

And I have headphones. They’re one of my favorite things in the whole world.

These are Bose noise-canceling?

Yeah.

You have so many sunglasses.

I’m addicted to sunglasses. I have two pairs in here. Two for the price of one! And I have a third pair in the other room. This is a rare occasion for me to only have three with me today. I normally have, like, 10 in my bag just in case I decide to change up my outfit. I feel like sunglasses can change the whole look. And I love that. And then this is just extra jewelry. This is really cute because when I did a photo shoot once there’s a lady altering stuff because I always feel like I have to get bigger trousers to fit my hips. But then the waist is always too big so I have a lady there tightening the waist. And there was this particular top that had all this material left over. So she made a little bag from it!

That’s so cute!

It has loads of jewelry in it. I’m addicted to that as well. I like everything shiny.

Have you had time to go jewelry shopping on your tour?

No. When I was last here I found a little jewelry store at the corner of a road. It was a proper tiny one where you could find loads of beautiful things in. I was trying to search yesterday for that little shop and I couldn’t find it anywhere. But I found sunglasses on the way so it’s fine.

I’m addicted to scrunchies as well.

This is a proper ‘90s throwback.

Yeah. I’m an obsessive person. If I like something I have to get loads of it.

What model is your iPad?

It’s an old one. I’m not sure, I’d have to find out.

When you’re on the road how do you write songs?

I’m all in my phone really. On the recording app thing. So there’s just loads of little bits of recordings that have me going like, [sings] “When I see you.” [Laughs]

I mean if I have a pen and paper I write it down, but it’s mostly on my phone because you can get inspired at any moment. I actually find it easier to write when I’m not in the studio because it’s more freeing and there’s less pressure. So I take whatever’s on my phone into the studio and if it’s good enough, we’ll write to it.

Do you record mostly in a traditional studio or do you have a portable set up?

Always in a studio. I don’t have that kind of stuff with me so I always have to wait until I’m in a session with a producer where I can actually have a microphone.

So how long is this current tour going?

The Ed Sheeran tour has been going since the end of April and I finish at the end of September. The US tour has been going for nearly six weeks now and I’ve been doing my own one in between. I did a really bad thing where I packed all of my show outfits and forgot that I would have days where I’d need normal clothes.

So the whole time I’ve been going to Urban Outfitters every day and buying new T-shirts. It’s a long, long tour, but it’s been amazing, especially with doing my own one in between. It’s such a different experience from being in the stadium as a support act to doing your own headline in a really intimate venue. It’s crazy.

I so prefer the smaller venues.

The sound is better.

Oh, that’s interesting.

I mean from my point of view in a stadium, the sound kind of bounces back into my microphone. So then I’m hearing like, three instances of my voice with each song.

I’d love to know who could tell that this is my bag from just the pictures. I wonder who could guess that.

I bet your friends could for sure. Like, yep, I know those scrunchies.

Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales

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