Internet X doesn't believe in putting someone in a good outfit just because it looks good.
That sounds obvious until you realize how much fashion around music can feel like exactly that: nice clothes, a cool photo, post it, and move on. For Internet X (real name Xavier), the stylist behind some of DESTIN CONRAD’s recent album eras, that’s not enough. The clothes have to make sense for the artist, the music, the era, and whatever larger story they’re trying to tell.
“Everything is super intentional,” he says. “I never put him in a piece for just the shits and giggles of it. I always see the greater goal in the clothes.”
If you’ve been paying attention to DESTIN over the last year or so, you can see what he means. As the music has moved from the sleek R&B and pop world of LOVE ON DIGITAL, into jazz with wHIMSY!, and now Caribbean influences with ROADRUNNER, the fashion has moved with it. Not in an overly literal, costume-y way, but enough that every era feels different while still looking unmistakably like DESTIN.
That kind of world-building is exactly what Internet X loves about styling.
Growing up in New York, he started playing with fashion through YouTube, making videos where he styled friends at different stores around the city. At the time, it was mostly instinct: he had an eye and wanted somewhere to put it. Interestingly, his original career plan wasn’t fashion at all. He went to school for music management because he wanted to develop artists.
In hindsight, that makes perfect sense.
Even now, the way X talks about styling sounds a lot like artist development. He thinks about who someone is, who they could become, which audiences they should reach, and how every visual decision helps build that story. Fashion became the language he used best.
After leaving school, he was asked to style a music video almost by chance. He said yes, quickly realized he loved the work, and started taking it seriously. Early opportunities put him in rooms with brands like Diesel and Supreme and forced him to learn the business quickly.
He also became clear about the kind of career he wanted to build. “I like working with queer people of color,” he says. “I definitely want that to be my lane.”
For Internet X, that’s not just a preference. He sees styling as a way to help queer artists of color get the visibility and fashion opportunities other artists are often given much earlier. The goal is not just to make them look fly. It’s to help them take up space.
Enter DESTIN CONRAD.
Funny enough, they first worked together for YAMS. Internet X styled DESTIN for our Pride Issue shoot in 2025, and he went into the day already thinking bigger than one editorial.
DESTIN had been on his radar, and X saw immediately how much room there was to play. “I wanna show him every facet of styling that he could fit into,” he remembers thinking. “I wanna really show him what I feel like has been missing.”
Apparently, the audition worked. He connected with DESTIN’s team after the shoot, and just a few weeks later they were working together for Paris Fashion Week. From there, the partnership kept growing.
The thing Internet X kept seeing was a world. Not just outfits and mood boards. An actual fashion ecosystem around Destin.
He thinks about brands that could become long-term collaborators, magazines whose audience matches a particular album, and fashion houses that naturally fit Destin’s world. One early instinct was Who Decides War. Internet X felt Destin belonged in that universe, started bringing the brand into Destin’s looks, and eventually that relationship became a collaboration.
That’s where styling starts sounding a lot like curation. You aren’t simply asking, Does this look good? You’re asking, Does this belong here? That question became even more important as Destin started moving between genres.
When the wHIMSY! jazz era arrived, Internet X knew he couldn’t just throw him into a vintage suit, add some glasses and call it jazz. So he went full student mode.
He researched jazz’s origins and how its fashion evolved across eras. He studied how Black and white artists dressed, how men and women interpreted the style differently, and what contemporary jazz musicians are wearing now. He went to libraries, looked through jazz books, watched Blaxploitation films, and kept digging until he understood the world well enough to start messing with it.
“I always wanna be very well-informed in the worlds that I’m working in,” he says. But the research isn’t about perfectly recreating history. “How can we pay nod to the tradition but also create a new lane where it’s like, this is what it is now?”
For Destin’s latest Caribbean-influenced era, that meant another research rabbit hole. Internet X looked into Jamaican fashion and designers, both past and present, but a trip to Jamaica gave him a different kind of inspiration. Instead of simply reaching for the most obvious cultural references, he started noticing the landscape: colors, grass, textures, and details that could make their way into the visual world in less expected ways.
“I wanna have inspiration that is unexpected,” he remembers telling Destin. For X, the obvious reference is usually the least interesting one.”
“It’s very much a game of, let’s learn the history, and then let’s warp it and see what we can take from it to create our own world within this world.”
That freedom is also why he loves working with Destin. Every musical shift gives them both another excuse to experiment. The fashion doesn’t have to stay frozen because the music doesn’t.
When I ask what he enjoys styling most, X initially says music videos and editorials, then changes his answer mid-conversation. Final ranking: music videos and red carpets.
Music videos give him control over the full picture. The clothes can work with the lighting, camera, environment, and movement to create what he calls the most “curated, perfectly captured moment.” And red carpets? One good photo can become the photo.
He has favorites. A BlueMarble x Paris Fashion Week look with an absolutely unmissable hat is near the top. There’s also a Palomo moment from the GLAAD Awards red carpet featuring dramatic blue feathers, and a suited Amiri and David Koma tour look from the wHIMSY! era that he describes as “so perfect.”
Internet X is a theater kid, and you can hear it in the way he talks about clothes. He thinks about character, story, and what the audience understands before anybody says a word. “Clothes will make you feel something,” he says. “It’ll make you feel and also understand something about somebody before you can even really know them.”
That’s especially true in music. Before someone learns the backstory behind an album or catches every lyric, they’ve probably already seen the cover, a music video, a performance clip, or an Instagram post. The clothes are already helping tell the story.
When it works, the fashion doesn’t distract from the music. It makes the music easier to step into.
As his career grows, Internet X wants a roster that reflects the range of queer people of color across music and entertainment without every client looking or sounding the same. “Jordan Aaron Hall from the new A Different World show is high on my list. I love Alemeda. Also, Kara Young is so cool!”
“I wanna progress the art form,” he says. “I wanna push the boundary when it comes to styling as an art, but I also wanna support and uplift queer and Black artists.”
For The Curator Issue, Internet X is a good reminder that curation goes way beyond playlists. Sometimes it’s hearing the right song. Sometimes it’s knowing the right designer. And sometimes it’s looking at Destin Conrad and thinking, Yeah, that giant hat is absolutely the move.