The Underdressed At The Symphony album cover shows Faye Webster standing in a sea of blue clothing. “That’s really what her closet has been looking like for quite a while,” Luke Webster, her brother and graphic designer, says. Webster wears blue so often that it naturally became the throughline for her Underdressed At The Symphony album campaign and merchandise collection. Luke isn’t sure why his sister gravitates toward what he calls “Faye Blue” but wonders if there’s “a deeper connection” with their dad’s “sports obsession” with Duke basketball during their adolescence. He knows better than to declare it as fact. Faye Webster simply likes what she likes.
“I think what I admire most about products is that passions and interests are what's driving the ideas behind them,” she says. “I feel like Luke and I have put a lot of our own interests or inspirations behind my merch. For example, I've made three signature yo-yos [for the I Know I’m Funny Haha album merch line]. No one knows how to yo-yo. I don't expect this product to sell well, but that's not why we're making it. I'm making it because it's something I love to do, and I hope other people find a love for it, too!”
The merch for Underdressed At The Symphony, her fifth LP, was born just as organically.
Merch Lookbook
Webster impulsively attended the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra without overthinking her outfit — instead, showing up in whatever she felt comfortable wearing. Luke, who has been designing his sister’s album campaigns since 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club, acknowledges that her self-assurance makes his job a little easier: “It’s taking from Faye’s true personality and how she lives her life as opposed to inventing a new concept. Her artistic vision is easy to realize because it’s already there.”
Faye feels the same way: “Working together as siblings definitely has opened doors when it comes to feedback and our creative process. I think the biggest factor is trust! I think because we know each other so well, we are able to just trust each other more. Sometimes, I never tell Luke what to do because I know he understands what I'm looking for and will put his own spin on something. I think another big factor is feedback. As siblings, we are able to be really honest with each other. We tell each other when ideas are bad, and I think that's a really important dynamic to have throughout the creative process.”
Below, Luke delves further into how their best ideas turned into an utterly unique merch collection.
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"Faye's record label, Secret Canadian, rented out Luxe Laundromat in LA for a meet-and-greet. Behind Faye at this table, they had a wall of dryers full of blue clothes that they had running the entire time. It was an amazing visual. We were thinking, 'If Faye opened a laundromat, if it was a Faye-inspired laundromat, what would that look like?' We ended up doing 'Faye Webster Symphony Suds,' this fictitious laundromat.
I love walking around New York and seeing laundromats, specifically where they've just got the craziest signage. I find the signage area of graphic design really interesting. We extrapolated the spinning laundry machines to her most recent stage set. Being light on our feet, when we see a good idea, we run with it and see where it can get us."
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“My brother, sister, and I all played tennis growing up, but we’ve all independently picked it back up over the last three or four years. It’s probably been 10 or 15 years since I’ve been on a tennis court with Faye, but I’ve been going to the US Open over the last few years, and seeing all the commemorative towels that they make, they have a collectibility about them. Faye was really into it.
I love how the tennis pieces came together as a smaller capsule within the entire merch collection. Functional stuff is really the goal and the vision. It's easy to sell T-shirts at concerts, generally speaking, but I think putting the time and effort into making stuff that we're excited about in the hopes that it translates and other people are excited [to use] it is what I’m most proud of.”
Dampener & Towel
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“From the beginning, Faye and I were like, ‘We’ve got to do a magnet sheet.’ We were both thinking about when we were kids, on our refrigerator at home, our parents had these Elvis magnets similar to Faye’s where it was dressing up Elvis in these funny little clothes. We were putting together this part of the album, and I was like, ‘It would be really cool if we did fridge magnets.’ And Faye was like, ‘Yes! Like, dress-up Elvis?’ I was like, ‘Exactly.’ And so, stuff like that naturally fit together from shared experiences we're pulling from.”
“For the ‘Lego Ring’ music video, she worked with an incredible animator who built up that entire 3D world that was just so unique, and the playable game part of it was amazing. The core of it was this Guitar Hero-style rhythm game, which, again, is something she is just truly interested in. They were recreating a crazy, fictional, and beautiful world with Guitar Hero-style characters that are totally reimagined as this rabbit and dog with sunglasses.”
tee & hoodie
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“The Plushie collectible was something that Faye really, really was trying to make happen, especially in the correct way. It’s a really interesting process. We found a great vendor. They would make production samples, send us photos, or sometimes mail one to me or Faye. It was just a great opportunity to have moments of — sub-brand sounds too formal, but capsules of other things in the Faye universe. I saw the finished product and was just like, ‘Wow, that is amazing and out of left field.’”
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“A big part of designing merch for this album was taking this symbol and asking, ‘What can we make it into?’ The first instance of the T-shirt icon was thinking it would be great on the center label of the vinyl disc. I was thinking about fun ideas for the LP packaging, and that was the icon Faye liked. We utilized it as a pattern inside the vinyl sleeve. For a lot of her shows this year, we did this blue lint roller with the T-shirt pattern printed onto the paper.
& vinyl label
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“Going back to what led us to the tennis collection, we were thinking about the vibe of the album’s identity. How can that be extrapolated into physical items? I think coat hangers were on the list. It just really speaks to a lot of what's going on in the album artwork and takes it a step further if you really want to embody the experience in your own life.”
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Written by Megan Armstrong
"Faye's record label, Secretly Canadian, rented out Luxe Laundromat in LA for a meet-and-greet. Behind Faye at this table, they had a wall of dryers full of blue clothes that they had running the entire time. It was an amazing visual. We were thinking, 'If Faye opened a laundromat, if it was a Faye-inspired laundromat, what would that look like?' We ended up doing 'Faye Webster Symphony Suds,' this fictitious laundromat.
I love walking around New York and seeing laundromats, specifically where they've just got the craziest signage. I find the signage area of graphic design really interesting. We extrapolated the spinning laundry machines to her most recent stage set. Being light on our feet, when we see a good idea, we run with it, and see where it can get us."
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“From the beginning, Faye and I were like, ‘We’ve got to do a magnet sheet.’ We were both thinking about how, when we were kids, on our refrigerator at home, our parents had these Elvis magnets similar to Faye’s where we were dressing up Elvis in these funny little clothes. We were putting together this part of the album, and I was like, ‘It would be really cool if we did fridge magnets.’ And Faye was like, ‘Yes! Like, dress-up Elvis?’ I was like, ‘Exactly.’ And so, stuff like that naturally fits together from the shared experiences we're pulling from.”
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“A big part of designing merch for this album was taking this symbol and asking, ‘What can we make it into?’ The first instance of the T-shirt icon was thinking it would be great on the center label of the vinyl disc. I was thinking about fun ideas for the LP packaging, and that was the icon Faye liked. We utilized it as a pattern inside the vinyl sleeve. For a lot of her shows this year, we did this blue lint roller with the T-shirt pattern printed onto the paper.
Faye did a photoshoot in our house, which is where the album cover photo came from. There was some visual metaphor, capturing a moment in time when Faye is standing in front of her closet, and no matter what she chooses to wear, she always feels like she’s underdressed. I think there’s a deeper metaphor in that about showing up in life that maybe speaks to a sense of belonging — feeling like you either fit in or you don’t. The T-shirt on a hanger was a natural fit to encapsulate into one single mark. There’s a power in choosing to show up in a perhaps traditionally uncouth way.”
& vinyl label
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