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On Monday evening, the woeful Knicks fans commenting on the team’s recent Instagram post had reached a consensus:
“We really lost while Yung Lean was in the house.”
Indeed, the 28-year-old musician born Jonatan Leandoer Håstad—better known as Yung Lean, founding member of the Sad Boys music collective and paragon of Sweden’s rap scene—was posted up among Madison Square Garden’s hallowed “Celebrity Row” while the New York Knicks lost to the Detroit Pistons last night. But the rapper’s presence at the game was a bright spot of the night, thanks in no small part to Lean’s very good courtside attire.
Befitting the wintry New York weather, Lean bundled up in a long trenchcoat rendered in washed-black, shearling-lined sweatshirt fabric, which he layered over a blue argyle sweater, blue jeans, and beat-up yellow Timberland boots. (A proper NYC footwear choice.) He accessorized, charmingly, with a beaded jade necklace and a pair of black leather Prada gloves.
In the Sad Boys multiverse and beyond, Yung Lean has long been an idiosyncratic style god. Over his decade of niche fame, the musician’s adolescent wardrobe of kooky sweats and cooked Nike Air Force 1s has matured to include wonky workwear and sleek designer duds. To his fans and otherwise, Lean’s offbeat, low-lift style has proven to be both covetable and easy to emulate. As the rapper told Vogue in 2016, “Whenever I talk to fans, they’re like, ‘Yeah, so when we started listening to Yung Lean, like, the whole school’s dress style changed, everyone’s attitude was different.’” His look is distinct enough that when Justin Bieber surprise-appeared in a 2021 Balenciaga campaign rocking a buzzcut, neck tattoos, and a hardo leather bomber, fans first confused the Canadian pop star for the Swedish rapper.
“I think my approach to clothes and style is kind of similar to others, but coming from Stockholm I’m doing everything my own way,” Lean told The New York Times in 2016. “But, honestly, I don’t follow fashion. I just enjoy clothes in my own way, buying them but also making them.”
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