The Los Angeles electronic-rock duo The Hellp are notorious for their sardonic interviews. But sit down with them in the coffee shop of a Lower East Side hotel lobby, as I recently did, and you’ll find that Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy are quite genuine in their passion for music and clothes. Dillon, an accomplished photographer—he shot the cover of Rosalía’s newest album, LUX—is from a small town in the Four Corners region of Durango, Colorado. He started The Hellp in 2016, when he was 20. On the first album—recorded, thanks to a budding friendship with a janitor, in the organic chemistry lab at his college—he played guitar, piano, and xylophone. He met Lucy later that year, and asked him to join the band. “He said, ‘When I'm on my deathbed, the one thing I'm going to regret is not being in a cool band. I want you to be a part of it,’” recalls Lucy. “Even back then, this fool was a visionary.”
Late last year, the band released their excellent third album Riviera. (“The Hellp are no longer merely reassembling different sounds but defining their own,” Pitchfork’s Lydia Wei wrote in her review, “one that’s darker and suaver, a moody rock-electronica LA Gothic.”) “I’m just a simple guy from a simple town [in Northern California] who grew up skateboarding and listening to punk rock music,” says Lucy. Despite that background, Lucy and Dillon have become known for a rakish style that evokes the most fashionable rock icons of the 1970s and the 2000s. “I only cared about sports growing up,” says Dillon. “Somehow, all of a sudden, I like jackets.” Here the duo discuss the transformative power of a cool garment, working construction in runway Saint Laurent denim, the brands that are next up for an archive revival, the indie designers to watch out for, and much more.
Dillon: Two different ones. One post puberty, one pre. In maybe sixth grade, I got this tight Nike Pro vent top and sometimes I would wear it under dress shirts to school. I felt like Superman. Like, Maybe I can make a friend. Didn't make any friends. And years ago, I had this Rhude sweater that Travis Scott also wore. For some reason I was one of the only people it actually got shipped to. I went to SXSW and wore it every day. I didn't know anybody, but people inevitably came up to me like, “Oh man, you should come with us. That sweater is cool.”
Dillon: You really can just wear a cool piece of clothing and it can change everything for you.
Lucy: I remember my dad and I got matching pairs of these really sick Christian Hosoi Vans Sk8-His that had the Japanese rising sun on them. And realizing around high school we were both into the same music, which is also how Noah and I began connecting when we first met. It was also the blossoming world of men's fashion, when it really truly was a counterculture in 2010 to like 2014.
Dillon: Four Pins era.
Lucy: Four Pins was instrumental, and the 4chan fashion board, way back in the day when it was actually really on the tip. We were wearing Rick Owens and all that.
Dillon: Don't forget lookbook.nu. We're aging ourselves.
Lucy: I was really into Karmaloop, 10Deep, Blackscale. Fall-winter 2012, I had a camo Blackscale backpack with matching skinny jeans. I had graphic tees with that print, hats, socks, the whole thing. At the time, Supreme was the thing, and BAPE, but 10Deep just did it so much better. Recently I’ve been rebuying old 10Deep. I dropped about $2,000 on old 10Deep on auctions in Japan and stuff right when we got off tour. I’ve just been buying all these old graphic tees. If I never started wearing 10Deep, I wouldn't be here right now.
Dillon: It’s uniform dressing. My dad did construction. I was always on the job site pouring concrete, building houses, and I was too afraid to wear nicer clothes, but I wore the exact same thing every day. A lot of other jobs I've had have been of that nature—manual labor—you wear the same thing. It's the same thing here. I have stains on my jeans. I don't really feel that special wearing this. It just feels like the thing that I wear. I don't really think much about it and then I move forward. I'm kind of shocked sometimes—I'll walk by an old woman in the airport and she'll say, “I love your jacket.” Then I realize, Whoa, maybe I am kind of cool.
Lucy: It's funny him saying that he was too scared to wear nice clothes—towards the end of my construction career, we were much more up to wearing designer clothing. I used to wear the nicest shit to work.
Lucy: Yeah. I sold them to some kid maybe six years ago when I was dead broke, but I had a runway pair of FW13 Saint Laurent DO2’s that I built like four houses in, man. They were so destroyed. The ass, crotch and knees were blown out. I had them repaired so many times. They aged so well.
Dillon: This was when Chandler and I were first meeting. He sent me a photo of him on the job site with the Dalluge hammer and tool bags and Saint Laurent pants and a flannel. I thought, This guy's insane. I can't believe he's ruining these clothes.
Lucy: I thought we were on the same wave, but I remember when you sent me a photo installing a window. You were wearing an oversized grey t-shirt and Adidas track pants with safety glasses. You were code switching.
Dillon: Riviera is a bit more restrained [than our previous albums]. It [makes us think] about the French Riviera; escape from Paris, the south in the summers. We co-opted it for America, thinking about this giant coastline from Santa Barbara down to San Diego as the American Riviera and how disparate and alone everyone feels in this megalopolis. It’s this beacon of hope that keeps propelling us forward, even if it may not exist.
Dillon: I'm glad you can hear that. We're not reference guys, but there's definitely a litany of things that embed themselves inside of you [as a listener]. When you're making a beat, kind of blacking out, they come out, hopefully naturally and very subtly.
Lucy: On the last record there were a lot of people that were telling us what to do, trying to put their fingers on it. I don't think it was nefarious. We're exciting people to work with in their eyes. This time, we didn't really listen to anybody. We returned to live experiences; a lot of real-life audio recordings and really spur of the moment things. We successfully captured a moment in our lives.
Dillon: Lou Reed, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Growing up, I saw the photo of Kanye at Paris Fashion Week with the leather blazer and Red Octobers. I was like, “That's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life." Zac Efron, 17 Again. That's truly what made me realize what clothing was. I saw that poster and I looked up the jeans that he was wearing. But nowadays, I don't know. I see a grandma walking down the street and think, Wow, she really knows how to layer.
Lucy: Back in high school, Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, when he was mixing Rick [Owens] with Black Scale. That was the craziest thing I'd seen. Tom DeLonge hit this moment where it was skin tight jeans and leather jackets and he just looked so cool all the time. I remember being in high school and thinking, Oh, that's how you dress when you're tall and skinny.
Dillon: I really like [Pier Paolo] Pasolini too, classic director style. It really works. It's really subtle.
Dillon: I thought the Timmy Chalamet run was insane, the pink Chrome Hearts... It was really cool to see a celebrity just really do the thing. Bol Bol had some crazy fits.
Lucy: Personal style and men's fashion has been so cannibalized. It's just so contrived now. It feels like there's no adversity or barrier to entry anymore. The rappers look like the streamers, who look like the boxers, who look like the actors. There's no more delineation of subculture and personal style. I said this in an interview once when people made fun of us, but I said if you could successfully wear a tight leather jacket, you really are in so many ways at the top of the food chain of personal style. Nowadays if you go online, it's all these kids who [have money and are buying] Dior and Saint Laurent jackets. You can't bypass the right to wear something like that. You go to Goodwill. You go through the ringer and you got to finally figure out how it's supposed to fit. But now everybody can just use usurp that and buy the nice jacket.
Dillon: You used to wear the leather jacket because—to be really reductive—you're the greaser. It was a part of a real lifestyle and that's why you were wearing the thing. It was your uniform for your mode or line of work and a thing that you adhere your principles to. Now, it's like, Well, one day I want to be Lou Reed. The next day I want to be JFK.
Lucy: There's nothing rock and roll about still having your garment bag for your Saint Laurent jacket. Throw that away, dude. Why do you still own that?
Dillon: The first outfit I was wearing was [Christophe] Decarnin-era Balmain. He’s next up. The kids are already on that a little bit. 2011, 2012. And Olivier Rousteing’s first two seasons, he was modifying the Decarnin stuff, so Balmain for those four years, wildly underrated. Just so sick.
Dillon: I honestly didn’t until now. I really like the boots and overcoat that I have. After that, I think Raf Simons is going to come back around again. That's my take. I'm not going to explain why, but I think Visvim will too. FBT’s…
Visvim never left, baby.
Dillon: Mad Men series finale, Don has this smoked out utopic idea of harmony and unity. If culture goes that way… I'm thinking about [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani. He was voted in because people are so tired and spiritually are yearning for some sort of hope. So, if we go through this Western spiritual psychosis, at least performatively for a few months, Visvim will be the brand. But if we double down on the aesthetics of what has been happening now in our cities, like Gotham, then it's going to be Decarnin and Raf Simons.
Dillon: Ten years ago when we were having our first real experience with modern internet fashion, we knew every little brand. There are so many kids making cool brands now. I'm not that tapped in. It's insane the level of talent that's happening. And there's so much of it being made that not a lot of it is necessarily sticking in the zeitgeist. I see a lot of cool things that I don't really remember or fully even interact with.
Dillon: Honestly, I barely buy clothes. I’ll buy two jackets a year maybe. I’ll get lucky on some old Dior jacket or something. I do love Paloma Wool. It’s the perfect brand for the every-woman. I’m obsessed. They sent me a pair of baggy suit trousers. I really like them, but I’m too afraid to wear them sometimes. I feel like I’m lost in them.
Lucy: The only newer brand [I’m into] is by a buddy of mine, Alexander Digenova. That's the jacket I'm wearing right now. I've known him for a long time, but he has a really cool visual style and language right now that I love. His camos remind me of 10Deep. He’s honestly making the best fitting t-shirts in the game right now.
Dillon: You know raimundo langlois? They're a New York brand that makes jeans, but there's this pair that look better on me than any pair of jeans that I own. They’re really straight leg, kind of baggy. I feel like I’m cosplaying a better version of myself I haven’t earned yet. I can't wear the baggy jeans because I haven’t got past whatever this is.
Dillon: Wherever you can find it.
Lucy: Slim pickings.
Dillon: Well, unfortunately that’s over now, too.
Lucy: They’re all gone.
Dillon: Used to be all in Latvia, Italy, Bosnia, but you can’t find them on eBay there anymore.
Lucy: The best place to buy jeans is a time machine to 2012.
What boots should people be wearing right now?
Every musician over 50 now seems to get a movie biopic whether we want them or not. What rockstar biopic would you actually want to see?
Dillon: I really just wanted a Bruce Springsteen Nebraska one, which they just made, but I haven’t seen it. They did the Velvet Underground one, but that would be a really cool actual biopic with actor actors. I really like Tár. If they did some sort of biopic on Chopin… On the other side of spectrum, it would be cool to see a Butthole Surfers one. Your favorite band's favorite band's favorite band. Or conversely, make The Hellp biopic now. Hire kids that are just four years younger than us. You know, really go off in that.
Lucy: I would love to see one about the Jesus and Mary Chain.
Dillon: Two times. First, it was my Catholic confirmation suit and I wanted to look like a Beatle. I spent $600. It was every dollar I had. Second, we signed with Atlantic Records and we got some money. I bought a campaign Dior fall-winter 2007 Navigator leather jacket that was like $10,000 everywhere you could find it. But I somehow haggled the guy down to four or $5,000 and I still couldn’t believe I was spending that much money.
Lucy: Yeah, when we signed to Atlantic Records, I bought a fall-winter 2015 Saint Laurent runway jacket with Python lapels. I think I spent $3,000, but then I had to spend another $700. Because one guy on Grailed in Denmark wouldn't respond to me, I had a kid on Facebook marketplace in Sweden take a train for a couple of hours and get it for me, then priority ship it to me, because I had a show in two days and I needed the jacket for it.
Lucy: The jacket with the studs that I'm wearing in the photos [above]. That was my Christmas present to myself. It was a fall-winter 2015 Saint Laurent runway jacket.
Dillon: Haven't bought much recently, just those lapel pins I’ve been wearing. I found them at the London Tower Bridge, which Chandler and I are obsessed with the history of. We always tour it when we go to London, and in the gift shop, they have all these pins.
Lucy: Shot in the dark. I’m going to say Talon of the Hawk by The Front Bottoms. I think every young man should listen to that record.
Dillon: Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol. They’re wildly underrated. Everybody knows the name, but no one really talks about it when it comes to this revival and what's going on. They were the coolest band at that time, but they weren’t necessarily the best band. That album is genius. It’s brilliant.