Travis Barker Goes Polished Punk for Met Gala 2022

Travis Barker doesn’t quite know what to expect from his first Met Gala red carpet, but maybe that’s a good thing. Lately, making the unexpected choice worked out for the former Blink-182 drummer: 18 months or so ago, he fell in love with his longtime friend and neighbor Kourtney Kardashian, kicking off a whirlwind courtship of coordinated goth-lite vacation outfits, countless public smooches, a beachfront proposal amidst a sea of roses, an Elvis-officiated “practice” wedding in Vegas, and new plans to grow their blended family.

As for the Met? “I like being places maybe I’m not supposed to be,” he says, with a laugh. “That’s the best.”

This year, Travis and Kourtney are both attending the event for the first time. They’re doing so as guests of the rollicking American designer Thom Browne—which, despite the designer’s having outfitted a walloping 21 attendees at the last Met in September, will mark the first time he’s dressed a couple for the event. On the Saturday evening before the first Monday in May, Barker and Kardashian arrive for their final fitting at Browne’s Garment District studio. They were fresh off the plane from Lake Como, Italy. “My fifteenth flight,” Barker shares. After surviving a tragic airplane crash in 2008, Barker never thought he would fly again—that is, until Kourtney. After nearly 13 years, the couple flew to Mexico last summer (“With you anything is possible,” he wrote afterwards on Instagram) and have been jet-setting together ever since.

And since their romance has coincided with the post-pandemic return of red carpets, that has meant a lot more dressing up than usual.

Growing up obsessed with drumming and skateboarding, Barker didn’t spend much time thinking about polished formalwear. “I think I prided myself in not dressing up well,” he says, “just being a punk kid.” Thinking back on when he first wore a suit, he recalls, “I think it might have been in catechism, like in church or something.” He skipped his prom to go skateboarding, so that was off the tux milestone list, too. Suit wearing, he said, was restricted mostly to “like, funerals or court. So this is so much better.”

So when did dressing up become fun? “Just recently, to be honest,” he admits, his smile revealing canines full of tooth gems. After spending a decade-plus grinding in the studio as a pop-punk svengali, 46-year-old Barker was sure he had his path figured out. “That was my life and I was okay with it,” he says. And then his and Karadashian’s stars aligned. “I met someone I got to share time with and do fun things with,” he says. Their new shared life is very much on display in the close quarters of the Thom Browne fitting room, filled with Travis’s people and Kourtney’s people, with Browne and his staffers buzzing around in variations of the designer’s signature gray flannel. Circling it all is a reality television crew: the footage captured here may just air on a future episode of the Kardashians’ new Hulu series.

In accordance with this year’s Met Gala theme‚ Gilded Glamor, Barker’s look is classic Gilded Age white tie. That means the standard bits (tailcoat, piqué wing collar shirt, silk cummerbund and matching bowtie) along with a few Browne-ian punk touches, including thumbholes in the shirt’s cuffs, a requisite pair of slick black cat-eye sunglasses, and a pleated skirt layered over low-rise skinny trousers. It’s the latest bit of evidence that the Thom Browne pleated skirt has become a full-fledged menswear grail: Barker will join Russell Westbrook, David Harbour, and Lil Uzi Vert as notabled wearers. (Pete Davison, who is currently dating Kourney’s sister Kim, wore a Thom Browne dress to the Gala last fall.) For her part, Kourt is wearing a deconstructed version of the same outfit: On her, his silk cummerbund becomes a raw muslin corset, while his trousers and tails become a skirt with exposed seams.

“When I first saw my look, I was like, ‘Maybe I should be a little distressed or messed up.’ Then I saw hers, and I was like, ‘Oh, it makes sense,’” Barker says, sipping a Shrek-green almond milk matcha latte. “I’m the one that [typically] looks kind of distressed…compared to her, and then she’s more in the distressed look that’s deconstructed. I love that.” Their matching looks might even be seen as a cheeky nod at the perception that Kardashian’s style has changed since she started dating a tattooed drummer.

“Everyone says she dresses different because she’s with me,” Barker says. “I’ve seen that, but it’s not really real. Because I remember I used to pick her up at home when we were friends, and we’d do stuff and she’d be in all black, or, I don’t know, something cute… We actually have a lot of the same style, we love a lot of the same things. She lives in a lot of my vintage shirts. We love wearing sweats 24/7, when we can get away with it. She can fit in all my clothes, vice versa. It’s crazy.”

“She has one of my all-time favorite Slayer T-shirts that’s super oversized that she always wears. Every time I see her in it, I'm like, ‘I gotta get that back.’”

Dressing up at a Kardashian-paced clip might still be new, but Barker fits in with the Thom Browne ethos. “He’s so true to himself, he’s good at what he does,” says Browne, who tends towards celebrity brand ambassadors who happen to be the absolute best at marching to the beat of their own drum within their respective fields. “He takes chances, and that’s what’s inspiring to me.” They’re not the strange bedfellows they may seem, either: as representatives of SoCal streetwear and the updated suit, Barker and Browne represent two key wings of American menswear. And for Travis—who grew up in Fontana, California, an hour or so east of Los Angeles—his sense of style always goes back to skateboarding as a kid.

“Skateboarding taught me how to dress, it introduced me to my favorite bands, and I’ve never outgrown any of it… That’s what American culture is to me,” he says. Skate style and streetwear have always been two sides of the same coin, paving an elite lane in which a pair of pants and a shirt can truly exceed the sum of their parts. “It’s so funny: even in Blink, we used to wear really big Dickies shorts and T-shirts, or no T-shirts, with Converse or Vans—just to see how that [look] transcended all around the world,” he says. “I've always been inspired by that.”

Barker trails off just as Kardashian slinks by, wearing her own almost-finished Thom Browne look. “What are you smirking at?” he teases, wrapping her in for a kiss. Whether here or on the red carpet, they’re always alone in a crowded room.