And Ocean's style has also followed in that path. While he can clean up nicely in a tuxedo, the artist seems to favor shirts printed with some Tumblr-esque text written across them. His text-heavy Panorama festival performance tee (more on that in a minute) was just the latest example of Ocean's sartorial Tumblr moments of late.

Still from "Nikes" music video

Just under a year ago, the "Pyramids" singer released the video for "Nikes," his first single after a four-year hiatus from dropping a musical project. The clip is a kaleidoscopic montage of scenes cutting from one to the next, but amongst them, Ocean appears standing on stage wearing a tee printed with the Jenny Holzer's text-based work Truisms. While that garment is one of a only a handful made by a gallery that exhibited Holzer's work, West Coast-based brand Rust issued a riff on the T-shirt that has stayed in high demand, consistently selling out since the "Nikes" video. Unsurprisingly, Rust's founder Sean Stanton attributes that Frank Ocean.

In another, shorter scene in "Nikes," the "Good Guy" crooner wore a blue Bianca Chandon hoodie with the word "LOVER" written on it in bold white letters while singing in remembrance of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black teen shot by George Zimmerman. "RIP Trayvon," he sang, "That n**** looked just like me." By the time the video was released, the T-shirt has already been sold out, but the attention Ocean brought to it drove the tee's resale value up. They now go for easily over $100 on sites like Grailed.

But it's not only videos that the 29-year-old uses to turn streetwear pieces into grails. Paparazzi caught Ocean walking through Soho in New York with Luka Sabbat and Kendall Jenner this summer, pink-haired and wearing a striped "Maintain the Mystery" tee from the West Coast streetwear brand The Hundreds. For many, it was a cryptic answer to why he had cancelled a recent performance in Barcelona, which he should have been at that weekend. For others it was a reason to drop $39 and sell out the design.

Backgrid Alex Reside

At the FYF Festival last month, while most were talking about the way he serenaded Brad Pitt, the sartorially minded had an eye on his "Instant Karma" tee. Many have cited that shirt as a product of a 1992 project which saw Nike licensing the use of a John Lennon song of the same name. And though imagery of a shirt from that project is available, the design differs from Ocean's version. Nike does confirm that it did produce a similar shirt in the '90s, making Ocean's an authentic original.

But most recently, the idea of Tumblr post as Frank tee was on view at Panorama. There, his anti-discrimination tee made countless headlines, racketing up both an incredible amount of sales (over 5,500 according to the company who designed it, Greenbox) as well as a brewing controversy. In fact, it was recently revealed that the design initially was a tweet, essentially reblogged onto a shirt, reblogged onto the Blonde singer's grand stage. Seems like the attention the Frank effect brings can also have a downside.

In a world of embroidered trousers and overly-designed, heavily graphic-ed blazers (if you're into it, no shame) Ocean's pared back approach to dressing and it's added benefit of speaking without speaking, is refreshing, thoughtful even. But would we expect anything less from a guy who released an album one day to fulfill his label contract and launched himself as an independent artist the very next day with another?

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