Julien Edwards: The Intersection of Music & Fashion in LA
“Me and Pusha T are really cool. Me and Travis Scott are really cool."
Julien Edwards is a man of many layers, from promoting clubs in Hollywood to managing artists in the music industry to staying fashion forward at all times. Describing himself as “a being in the LA bubble,” the Venice and Inglewood-bred implant has many friends in the entertainment realm, watching the buzzing music scene change and blossom into what it is today.
He states, “In the last 10 years, there’s way more influence now in LA than before. Way more artists and producers are coming out of LA, the LA area, or the slight outskirts of LA like the IE. Even in fashion. Fashion is a really big melting point in LA. You have brands like RHUDE clothing, Fear of God, a lot of streetwear brands like Black Scale and Diamond.”
Given all the opportunity in the city of Angels, Edwards has had the pleasure of working and managing for artists such as K. Roosevelt, Jhene Aiko, SuperDuperKyle, Audio Push, Skeme — all people he is friends with to this day. Nearly a decade ago in 2010, he found his way into the Hollywood nightlife.
“I didn’t really go out as much when I was 21. I went out to this cool party my friend did the door at (I think Eden or something). My friend DJ Sean G was deejaying and I met Jerry Lorenzo through that, who is the founder and creator of FOG. We became really cool. He was actually promoting back then, doing clubs and nightlife. He brought me in under him.”
While most people may not know Lorenzo was a former club promoter, the fashion designer actually taught Edwards a lot of what he knows today. From there, he tapped into his extensive and coveted network of LA — the Jhene’s, the Hit-Boy’s, the Kendrick’s, people he’d known and grew up with — and started inviting them all out. Anyone who resides in the city understands the power in the words, “Hey, come to this cool party!”
Currently, Julien works for upper scale Hollywood nightlife spots such as Poppy, 1Oak, Hyde, and Beauty & Essex. This means blending the worlds of music, fashion, and nightlife into one.
“Music and fashion play a huge role in everything I do, especially music. Coming up in the wave of music and working with different people plays a huge part. Working in clubs, I get a lot of different relationships through the people I end up meeting.”
For one, up and coming artists are always trying to get their music played in the club. Two, most of his friends are in fashion or a part of it in some way. Everyone he hangs out with, from Jerry to Rhuigi (the latter of which was a former roommate), play a huge part.
So how do music and fashion feed off each other?
“Especially right now, probably since when Kanye really started blowing up, music and hip-hop are really influenced by fashion — just by what they reference, what they talk about, etc. Also with social media, everything is what people see. It all depends what they’re wearing.”
Prime example: artists like Future, Thugger, Gunna, Lil Baby are constantly name dropping their favorite high-end designer brands: Balenciaga, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, the list goes on.
“How fashion is influencing hip-hop, a lot of artists are very in tune with how they’re styled, how they dress, what they’re buying. A lot of brands go to these artists and try to make them creative directors. Look at Virgil, he came up under Ye in music, moved into creative direction, and then into fashion.”
Going back to his point earlier, social media is the most powerful platform for artists to use fashion as branding for their own career. But for Edwards, the most fulfilling part lies in what happens offline: building connections with people. His biggest joy comes in his ability to connect the dots between certain people and brands.
On the flip side, the most difficult thing in nightlife is “trying to make everybody happy. Sometimes you have an event everybody wants to go to, and it’s hard to get everybody in. Not everyone’s gonna be happy.”
A typical night usually begins with dinner, then arriving at the venue around 11:15pm. By this hour, he’s already reached out to his targeted list of invitees and informed them to arrive before 12am — before it’s packed or at capacity.
“I just host and make sure everyone’s having the best time possible.”
As far as celebrity encounters, Edwards is extremely plugged in — to say the least.
“Me and Pusha T are really cool. Me and Travis Scott are really cool. I’ve had Rihanna hang out. It was really packed and I kept stepping on her feet. [laughs] I was like ‘yo my bad.’ She’s like ‘oh it’s cool.’ But I knew it wasn’t.”
