A decade ago, Jaden and a group of his close friends and family – Willow Smith, Mateo (Téo) and Moisés Arias, and Daniel and DylAn D’Artiste – started MSFTSrep to channel their creativity into making change. Via fashion collections, albums, creative projects and worldwide meet-ups, these “kids who got kicked out of the cool kids’ club” have come together to make a difference. We spoke to Jaden to find out more…

How did the idea come about to start MSFTSrep? 

JS: It started when we were younger, by people making fun of us, telling us that we were weirdos – in the way that we dress, the way that we talk, what we chose to talk about, what we studied…  Somebody in my life named OmArr Rambert, who has been working with my family for a long time, was like, ‘yo, you guys should start a group called misfits.’…And we ultimately landed on MSFTSrep, a group where young people can know, ‘hey, we might have such different lives from you, but we’re also weird, and we might feel like we don’t fit in either. We want you to know that there’s a place for you, for those people who feel like they don’t fit in, for you.’  

What does it mean to be a misfit? 

JS: Being a misfit has always been about just being different, and not necessarily fitting into the status quo… People grow these MSFTS communities all over the world. And then when they get to a certain size, and we’re around the area, we visit them…People come to us, and they talk to us about their emotions. They tell me about breakthroughs with their therapist, they write me long letters about how they feel about the world, they talk to me about sustainability. With a lot of those people that I have had genuine connections with, I keep those connections and we work together in the future. 

How can someone become a MSFT?

JS: I think if you feel this way that I’ve been describing, and if you also have an inherent feeling to want to improve society, to flow more harmoniously with human life, then I would say that you are already a part of the MSFTS movement and tapping into the ideology of the MSFTS movement. It’s just knowing that you are.

One way of being a part of what we’re doing is just by representing the movement on your body, wearing the clothes. And then educating yourself further and learning more about the things that we put in our collections. We put little nuggets in, showing you what the next semester of study is for us MSFTS: we’re learning about sacred geometry, or sustainability, or astrology, or ancient sciences and mathematics and architecture.

Another way to get involved is to just create and to make music and to say, “hey, MSFTSrep has inspired me,” or to hashtag MSFTSrep… There are so many different ways to get involved in evolving the consciousness of humanity, but the first one is representing the movement. The second one is talking about it, and what we want to do next.

What inspired the MSFTS Fall/Winter collection and the exclusive-to-Selfridges Portrait capsule? 

JS: The main collection is really an organised rebellion within the youth, and it’s showing that the youth is conscious. This is the uniform for those who are like, ‘Oh, I understand the structures that are trying to hold me down, the structures that are trying to make me less important in the world, and I realise that about them, and I see them and I’m conscious through them, and now I’m here to try to change the future of humanity into something more harmonious for humans and all of nature…’  

Can you tell us about working with New Balance, and about the latest collection with them. 

JS: It’s amazing. I love New Balance, and it’s so much fun doing things with them…We go to Boston, we sit there, and we try to design things that no one has ever seen…That’s another thing that I felt is really next-level is the shoes and the fact that I made a new silhouette for New Balance. I’m really proud of that. Shout out to New Balance, freaking love you guys! 

How does your creative process differ when you’re working on a MSFTSrep collection versus when you’re working on new music? 

JS: It’s kind of similar, actually. I start off by learning about something that I haven’t learned about before in detail, and I go deep into that. Then I put that into the collection or into the words of the music. 

Books and science are integral to the MSFTSrep DNA. What are you reading right now? Who’s your favourite artist? 

JS: I just read How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan – that book’s fantastic. [As for] favourite artists, I love Basquiat and the way that he expressed his art and everything he did. And the things that he would do – on and off the canvas – are really inspiring. 

You’ve talked about your ‘weird fashion sense’ before. How would you describe your style? Which designers and brands are you into?  

JS: I’m into Louis Vuitton heavy, I’m into MSFTSrep super heavy, I’m into Levi’s, and I’m into New Balance. 

What does a typical day with your MSFTSrep friends and family look like?

JS: Talking about our future plans, talking about ideas and information that we could implement and give into the movement and things that might benefit them….We’re always talking about, ‘Oo, what have we learned about that we should share with the community?...We’ll go into an art history class, and then we’ll all take something different away from it, and we’ll all go downstairs and we’ll apply it to something else.  

Moisés might grab from an art history class that he wants to put frames on his photos, like really elaborate, old-looking frames. Mateo might grasp that he wants to learn another language to put inside of his songs. I might grasp, ‘Oh, I love this old Italian style of dressing…I want to implement this into a fashion collection, or I want to take some of those big words that I learned in art history class and rap about them.’ That’s usually how we flow as a collective – we all learn one thing, and then we implement the one thing in a bunch of different ways.

What does the power of community mean to you?

JS: It means a lot… We were all trapped inside of our houses, by ourselves, isolating, some of us away from our families. We know what the power of community is and how important it is to us now. Before, I would give some long explanation of why I’d love to be alone, but now, honestly, I realised that I cannot function properly without a community. 

What do you want the future to look like? How would we get there? 

JS: I want a future where we can all live together harmoniously…I want to see a world where kids love school, where they love learning and education because it’s taught to them in a way that makes them happy…I want to see new schools being put up, I want to build sustainable homes for people who don’t have places to live. I want to see a world that’s giving back and is more focussed on making sure that everybody is okay…how happy people are is the most important thing, as opposed to the different things that we look at as a way of marking success. 

How can we all live more consciously? 

JS: By educating ourselves and not necessarily believing everything that we hear, that we see. By taking a walk over the mountain to see what actually is happening, instead of just believing the wandering traveller that came down the road. I think it’s as simple as that. 

What could living sustainably look like for people – if someone were to come up and say to you, ‘Jaden, I don’t know where to start.’ 

JS: There’s a book called Drawdown [ed. by Paul Hawken]. It details the 100 things we can do that would bring the Earth into drawdown… like intercropping certain species of plants, instead of just planting the same one over and over again; allowing cattle to roam on the grasslands, instead of just tilling the land all the time and releasing the CO2 out of the soil; composting on the land, letting it rest fertile for a while and not planting on it. There are so many different things that we can do to help sustainability, and that’s just one – or half of one – of the things that are in this book. If we just began to implement those things into society at a mass scale, that would change everything. And that would make the world such a better place.