LOS ANGELES, USA // For over twenty years Willo Perron has been pushing culture forward, lending his creative touch to the most innovative brands and artists, including Kanye West, Drake, Rihanna, and American Apparel, among others. Perron is a “total” designer, an interdisciplinary storyteller taking as much inspiration from the street as from the museum. He designs a subculture for each client by listening, observing, and synthesizing a unique visual language that encompasses every experience from concert tours, costuming to typography.

Perron’s design has always been colored by his love of music. As a teenager in Montreal, Perron bounced from punk clubs to house clubs to hip hop shows seeing firsthand how music, fashion and design were profoundly intertwined. He began working as a club promoter—booking DJs, designing flyers, styling the venue—cementing his holistic approach at an early age. After frequent buying trips to New York for records and clothes, Perron launched a popular treet wear line, later opening a series of concept-driven retail stores dedicated to vinyl, apparel, and footwear. His inventive store designs led to an opportunity designing clothes and providing creative direction for skateboarding and snowboarding brands. This forward-thinking work prompted a succession of interior design projects and a noted tenure as Creative Director for the legendary hip-hop label Rawkus Records.

In the early 2000s, Perron was commissioned to lead the design of American Apparel’s retail experience. For the stores he drew from postmodern Italian architecture to adorn readymade materials in pop colors. After successfully managing the fastest retail expansion in history, Perron was recruited by Apple to work on an early prototype of the Apple Store. Never a fan of corporate life, he quickly decamped and met Kanye West while traveling abroad. Initially enlisted for a potential retail venture, Perron's role quickly evolved to building and designing all of West's creative output from album packaging to videos to tours. Simultaneously, Perron worked with Lady Gaga merging the theatricality of queer nightlife with high fashion to create a universe that propelled Gaga to the top. Since these high-profile victories, Perron has continued to design and direct for the most pioneering music acts such as Jay-Z, Florence and The Machine, The XX, and many others.  

In 2010, Perron established his design office Willo Perron & Associates in Los Angeles. His insider-outsider perspective is a valuable asset for clients interested in bringing a completely original experience to their fans. Perron is driven by an insatiable curiosity about culture. His unconventional focus on the spirit of the times contributes new ideas to a field overflowing with gear heads. In an age of managers, Perron is a maker, a true creative director committed to ideas and artists.