Post Malone‘s eponymous brand, Austin Post, and Los Angeles-based artist Matt McCormick have co-designed a capsule centered around their shared exploration of Western iconography. In an exclusive interview with Hypebeast, McCormick expands on the works that inspired their limited-edition collection, placing a particular focus on the quintessentially American mythology of the cowboy.

Marking Austin Post’s inaugural installment of the Studio Series, the artist’s limited-edition capsule is part of an ongoing initiative powered by artists and cultural figures whose work aligns with the brand’s vision.

Indeed, the musician-turned-designer’s aesthetic and McCormick’s practice approach similar themes. McCormick’s mixture of various mediums and styles, exploring American archetypes with a Western sensibility, runs parallel to both Post Malone’s music and his recently launched label.

For instance, take McCormick’s Ceremony Of Certainty: Featuring a discolored inkjet desert landscape superimposed with a hand-drawn charcoal cowboy illustration, the artist shared that he aimed to “create a push and pull between the more modern technique of inkjet printing and the classic charcoal drawing style.”

“When I started making that work, I was really interested in using failing printers to make images with an almost roll of the dice mentality. There was something that would happen with the colors and textures of the backgrounds when run continuously through the old printers that would create a really interesting moment visually,” McCormick shared.

The tensions between the modern and classic, as well as the digital and human-made, are palpable not only in Post Malone’s sonic fusion of 808-powered hip-hop with Americana folk rock, but also in his brand’s juxtaposition of minimalist streetwear with Western classics like check shirting and suede trucker jackets.

For the new release, the partners have revealed five silhouettes in varied colorways, including tees, a hoodie, and a crewneck sweater, each featuring graphics based on the artist’s work. At the front of each garment, a discreet “At First Light — Season One” typographic print nods to the brand’s FW25 debut, while the back is emblazoned with McCormick’s artwork.

“It was really about getting the pieces to embody the same process that I used when making the original works.”

This isn’t McCormick’s first rodeo in fashion. Ten years ago, the artist launched his own brand, One of These Days, translating his visual language directly into ready-to-wear garments. “I’m no stranger to the process, but what was so great about working with Austin Post is that they really wanted to treat the art as art and not as a graphic, which was highly refreshing,” he said. “It was really about getting the pieces to embody the same process that I used when making the original works.”

Furthermore, Post Malone isn’t the first musician McCormick has collaborated with. His artwork has been used for album covers by a diverse range of artists — from Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny to rapper Don Toliver and country singer Zach Bryan. “Music is central to my existence. It’s always playing and always dictating my mood,” he shared. “Working with musicians has been such a gift because it has been a small way that I can be a part of that conversation. Almost every moment for me is carried along by music in some way,” he added.

Like McCormick’s pieces, Post Malone’s discography has unfolded in a dialogue of contrasts. His breakout 2015 single “White Iverson” was a viral R&B/hip-hop track, which debuted on Soundcloud with auto-tuned vocals and a minimal trap production. Almost a decade later, the sound of his 2024 LP F-1 Trillion was starkly different — a definitively country album featuring collaborators like Dolly Parton and Tim McGraw. At this stage in his career as both a musician and designer, Post Malone certainly embodies a contemporary facet of the rugged cowboy character.

For McCormick, the cowboy represents far more than romantic nostalgia or a superficial aesthetic. Instead, he understands it as a global “symbol of Americanism,” and an allegory for modern masculinity. However, rather than advancing any particular interpretation, McCormick prefers to “place seemingly incompatible or different cultural touch points together to create a dialogue that may not have happened otherwise.”

“It’s not that difficult to put on the costume and at least for a moment pretend that you embody the mythology of the character.”

In addition to Ceremony of Certainty, McCormick debuts Among the Low Light as another featured graphic. The development of the piece was “a way to treat the cowboy image as an almost faded memory of the past.”

Aiming to broaden the scope of his style, McCormick made an effort to mirror the effect of a screen print by hand-painting his canvases. As part of the ongoing series, he created a faded patina through a meticulous process, “slowly building the colors up by rubbing paint into the canvas over and over with a rag and a mix of paint and paint thinner.”

As one could easily gather from the paintings and paraphernalia in his studio, the cowboy is an ever-present character in McCormick’s world. He reckons that the archetype has endured for so many decades because it has offered a consistent “visual representation of America,” likening it to “a can of Coke, cherry pie, or Ford truck.”

However, he points out that “the major difference from these objects is that it is very easy for one to imagine themselves or see themselves in the cowboy.” “It’s not that difficult to put on the costume and at least for a moment pretend that you embody the mythology of the character.”

The Matt McCormick x Austin Post collection is set for release on Thursday, December 11, at 8 AM PT/11 AM ET exclusively on austin-Post.com.