The Spencer Singer Method for Styling Famous People

With clients like Billie Eilish, Lily-Rose Depp, and Gracie Abrams, the 27-year-old art history major has established himself as one the most original and creative stylists around.

Spencer Singer is not a stylist who cares about where he sits at a fashion show. In fact, he doesn’t really go to fashion shows at all, which makes him something of an enigma in the attention economy.

At 27, the stylist already has Gracie Abrams, Lily-Rose Depp, and Billie Eilish as clients, but the work is not about him or his signature style. Rather, it’s about building a look, whether it’s working with Chanel on custom couture for Depp at the Oscars, or putting Rosé in Saint Laurent for the cover of . He doesn’t simply put all his clients in one signature style or head-to-toe runway looks but mood boards a whole story around them—a nod to his background as an art history major.He has so many projects in so many places—New York and LA and plenty of time in airport lounges around the world—that his life seems to move at a frantic pace. Which is why it’s surprising that in person, he’s soft-spoken and witty, and all too happy to talk about the books and designers and celebrities that inspire him.

You have three different storage units. What’s going on with that?What is in there?Oh, what is your secret?Tell me more about what you mean by character based.Where did you go?

A combination of a lot of different things, definitely one of them being my hoarding. [.] There is a constant flow of different types of projects, so maybe if I’m working with one talent, I’ll overprep and get a ton of stuff, and then if it’s not used for that specific occasion, save it for the next project. Or I just have things that I find and think are special and maybe don’t have a use quite yet, but that I would like in the future to use for an editorial or things of that nature. It’s a funny thing that my job has become really this collecting of so much stuff, but I try to put it all to use.A lot of stuff that I really love collecting is vintage designer stuff, a lot of old Commes and Junya and Prada. I’m an eBay freak.It’s kind of the joy of the hunt. I have a lot of saved searches—I wake up every morning to a lot of saved searches from eBay. I’m always like, if I buy something for myself and it doesn’t fit or I want to get rid of something, I can find a use for it. Honestly, The RealReal is a big one too. If I have days off, I also really try to go to thrift stores or flea markets, and I don’t know. The way that I like to style is, I’m not someone that really likes pulling a full look from a runway and shooting it as is. I think my approach to styling is more character based.I’ll start all of my projects with a lot of reference imagery. I was an art history major.I went to The New School. I was working in fashion, but kind of wanted to work in art direction when I graduated. I was kind of art directing my own shoots and projects and started working with Jen Brill, and she was working with Gracie Abrams at the very beginning for a bit, and she asked me if she brought me on board to style for her, and it was kind of just a really perfect collaboration. And then it’s spiraled from there into I guess what it is now. But I never saw myself as a stylist. I never really wanted to be one.

How many years have you considered yourself a stylist?Back to shopping, are you texting clients saying “get these shoes”? Just to wear in their daily lives?How are you creating characters?How do those conversations go?And then you’re working with Chanel on top of that.What I want is one of those late-’80s Chanel berets with the band.Are you good at delivering news gently?Can you give me an example?

Maybe four or five years that I’ve been on my own as a stylist.I think that goes back to why I have so much stuff! If it’s not for right now, I’m going to buy this because I think this could be really good for a more formal event that Billie has in the future. But it’s not—there’s no shade—but I’m not dressing them for their trip to the Bahamas or something. I work on more public-facing stuff. All of the girls that I work with have great style, and so I think that there’s a natural progression. We’ll work together on a shoot and then I think that that becomes part of their daily sartorial choices.Pulling references from different movies or different editorials or just different things that I find online or in the street that kind of inspire me. Trying to build a vision. I’m a big book collector and big magazine collector. I’m always trying to put clothes on people that really feels either true to them and something that they would wear. Or maybe it’s kind of some sort of character, whether that’s really outlined or more abstract.That kind of collaboration is what makes the work so amazing. I’ll put together different ideas, and then we’ll have a back and forth about references that we like, silhouettes that we like.For Chanel in particular, it’s a really special time because there’s no creative director there. So for that Grammys look for Gracie, it was me working with the amazing Chanel team and with the atelier in Paris. There were a few different silhouettes and dresses from the ’90s that we really liked, then there was this one dress that had a veil on it that we really loved. And then we were going back and forth, and at the very end we had this one illustration and I was like, oh, this kind of reminds me of one of my favorite films, , the dancers of it. It was going to be a purple dress at first, but we were all kind of scared that it was going to be too Disney princess, and I was like, I can see that it needs to be the color and the length of the dress from the red shoes. So I’m pulling stuff outside of the Chanel world, but making it feel really true to the brand and also really true to Gracie.That was quite literally on the mood board for Billie at the Grammys.Yes, definitely. There’s so many different variables, especially with something like red carpet dressing, and I definitely don’t see myself as just putting dresses on girls. Also, there’s maybe things that I am obsessed with fashion-wise that look great on the runway but actually wouldn’t really translate on a red carpet.I think it comes down to maybe proportions and accessories and how far you want to take it. Something can look amazing on a runway or in an editorial that actually feels like costuming in person.

You seem so good at honing in on people—your clients all seem to look very different, and obviously that’s intentional, but is that your approach and do you think there are through lines of your looks?They’re kind of like theater kids in that way.And what are some of the younger brands that you like?For her David Foster Wallace years. That’s my favorite look of hers.Do you have dream clients?What if something like Cher . . .I want to see her archives for sure.Do you say no to people? Are you at that point in your career?You gotta get it back.

I would definitely hope that there’s through lines. I’m working with people that have really strong sensibilities and really strong points of view and that are really creative people as well. And so I think that it is a really fun task to kind of hone in on, what are things that you are interested in? For the Nosferatu press tour for Lily-Rose, we wanted to do things that were maybe slightly within the world of the movie, but also not too literal. It’s also such a fun excuse to just play dress-up.Obviously bigger talent that I work with have relationships with bigger brands, but I think one thing that’s also really important to me is working with younger brands, working with more emerging brands that maybe have different narratives than a Chanel or a Prada.I work really closely with this New York–based knitwear brand called Judy Turner. When I first started working with Billie, what we were pulling was a lot of streetwear, skatewear brands from the ’90s, and so I started reaching out to all of them.No, I mean, that’s definitely part of the mood board. Billie wears a lot of skate shoes from etnies, and we were sourcing a ton from the early 2000s, and then I reached out to them and I was like, we would love to work on custom etnies. So we’ve done two rounds of maybe 15 shoes that we worked on, and for the last round that we had just, she performed at the Grammys in a pair.I feel so well-matched with the people that I’m working with now. I think that I am such a yes man and so open to different experiences and to different points of views and to different people and projects. I wouldn’t say that I have a short list of people that I want to work with, but I think that there’s a lot of people that could be really fun to work with. But also I feel I’m not in any rush to get more clients.What if Cher knocked on my door? Hell yeah.Oh my God, 100%. Also I just want to hang out with Cher.I think I’m definitely always up for a challenge. I do balance all of this with an editorial practice and with other types of styling work, and so I think just trying to be really thoughtful about the work that I’m choosing and if it is a good match. There’s so much happening that it is hard sometimes to—I don’t know, I feel like I’ve lost my personal life.Yeah. Yeah. I am trying to be kind to myself without saying yes to everything.

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