Navarro first met Tyler at an Earl Sweatshirt show in 2016 after the rapper spotted the feather-haired young skater from the stage. “He pointed me out in the crowd, so I went over to talk to him, and he asked who I was, got my Instagram, and asked me to model for his brand, Golf Wang,” says Navarro. The two became fast friends.

For Navarro, drawing has always been an almost compulsive pastime. He would mindlessly doodle on the margins of his notebooks when he was still in school, like most kids do, but has kept up the practice over the years, filling up countless notebooks with his irreverent renderings. “There was never really any thought going into my drawings,” he says. “It was always just what came straight to mind.” In spite of the spontaneous nature of his work, he does come back to certain motifs, like the crudely drawn faces that pepper his Instagram feed.

This free-form approach is captured in his playful designs for Converse. Navarro says that he works best under pressure and drew everything spontaneously—carrots, chains, a mushroom, and his signature alien-like faces—on the spot in the brand’s Boston offices in just about five hours. The little sketches are fairly representative of his everyday work, save for the mood-brightening palette. “I usually just outline in black, but one time Tyler told me maybe I should add color, ” he explains.

Photo: Courtesy of Wyatt Navarro/ @wyyacht

Navarro’s drawings might be off-the-cuff, but his personal sense of style is more considered. “Sometimes I’ll want my closet to look like a cartoon character’s, just two pairs of jeans and super-plain white T-shirts,” he says. His distinctly laid-back, West Coast approach to dressing is, incidentally, right in line with Tyler’s pastel-hued vision: Indeed his wardrobe is comprised of colorful pieces from Golf Wang. At the moment, he’s been sporting tight-fitting collared shirts in faded greens (he says he’s been watching lots of That ’70s Show) and high-water pants, which he’ll finish off with a pair of soft leather loafers. He even dyed his hair the same soft shade of lime green that appeared in Tyler’s One Star collection for Converse.

The young artist has aspirations to design clothes himself one day, too. “I always try to sketch stuff up, what I think would look cool,” he says. “I’m just waiting for the right moment to settle in and figure out what would really stand out.” With his winsome, Tyler-approved new sneakers, he’s already one step ahead of the rest.