“...It just seemed super surreal,” Nicki Minaj told reporters outside Marc Jacobs’ SS18 show, squinting somewhere into the middle distance. “Everything was… erm… next level… colours…I loved it… I loved all the print”. Though it may have taken a good few seasons for fashion critics to unclutch their pearls – Suzy Menkes’ quiff made an emphatic slump at the very sight of that now-viral video – Jacobs was clearly left enamoured by the rapper’s astute observations, having cast Minaj as the face of Heaven, his angsty teen offshoot.
And she was right! There were colours and there was print. But such is Minaj, a pop-cultural polymath. When she’s not sparring with washed-up BBC journalists or warning the Barbs of her cousins’s friends engorged testicle, she’s thirsting over Chris Whitty on Twitter. Now, she’s posing, splay-legged for Harley Weir, with Jacob’s Kiki boot clonked onto the end of her legs – a monster shoe if there ever was one. The musician also models Heaven’s new collaboration with London artist Claire Barrow, a pink hair extension shaped into a jaunty Ascot-style fascinator on the side of her head.
Elsewhere, Paloma Elsseser, Sky Ferreira, Mena Suvari, Yung Lean, and Steve Lacy also star in the brand’s SS22 campaign, with further collabs coming from photographer-skater Ed Templeton, 1994 TV series Hi Octane, and 1950s show Gumby. Though Minaj, with her Jesy Nelson features and big Barbie bling, might seem at odds with Heaven’s slew of subcultural muses, among them Brian Molko and Christina Ricci, the collection is emo enough – holey, frayed knitwear, vinyl trousers, camouflage mini skirts, graffiti print baby tees, and acid-gamer hoodies. Head to the gallery above to see more of what’s in store.