It’s been a while since André 3000 played the role of tailor as the proprietor of aughts menswear label Benjamin Bixby, which crossed the OutKast MC’s obsession with Ralph Lauren and The Official Preppy Handbook with his own righteously funky sensibility. This past Friday, it appeared he hadn’t lost a step. In a New York fitting studio, André was pinching centimeters of fabric here and there on the back of a customer’s tuxedo jacket. When he stepped back to appraise his work, it was with a precise and focused gaze, his hands clasped and his lips pursed, like if Reynolds Woodcock hailed from Stankonia. “Man, the shoulders look awesome,” André said. Yes: André 3000 is back in the atelier, in a sense, of his trailblazing, long-dormant menswear brand. This time around, it’s called Benji Bixby. And the soft launch is taking place at the 2025 Met Gala, where André is dressing none other than GQ global editorial director Will Welch in a custom Benji Bixby hickory stripe denim tuxedo. On Friday, Welch and 3 Stacks met at the GQ offices for the final fitting before the big night. “How’s it feel?” André asked as Welch emerged from the dressing room. “Incredible,” Welch confirmed. “Obviously the Met Gala this year is a celebration of Black dandyism, and luckily I happen to know probably the flyest dandy of the last three decades,” said Welch. “André is a personal hero of mine, and also happens to be a talented fashion designer, even though I thought he’d set all that aside. So anyway I just called him and asked him if he would revive Bixby for one night only and dress me for the gala. At the time, I had no idea that he was already in the process of making clothes again.” (“I had just bought some vintage madras Bixby shorts on eBay a couple months ago,” Welch added.) With pagoda-like shoulders, intricately patterned pleated trousers, and a sturdy Japanese workwear fabric, this first look hints at the different direction André might take Bixby this time around. “I call ’em devil shoulders,” he said of the exaggerated silhouette, which like all of his designs began sketched by hand. Like any good tuxedo, this one comes with a cummerbund, which André designed to look more like a formal Indian sash than an English pleated design. “With the relaunch of Bixby, I wanted to try out more ideas,” André explained on a phone call earlier in the week, his drawl as smooth as when the world met him and Big Boi on Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. “I've been drawing and painting since I was a kid, so I draw out ideas all the time. And to be able to actually make them and to share them and see people wearing them, that's the joy in it. That's it. And so that's why I'm back at it again, you know. I have new things to say.” One of those new things is a workwear component to Benji Bixby, a sub-brand of sorts that André dubbed “From Now On, They Will Have No Choice But To Call Us Ants.” Technically speaking, André explained, Welch’s tuxedo hails from Ants by Benji Bixby, and the back is embroidered with the label’s rune-like logo. As for the name? “I spend all day watching YouTubes of ants working,” André said. “And who are better workers than ants? And so that's the workwear initiative, honoring ants and thinking about how humans can learn a lot from ants. They've been a big inspiration for me.” André 3000’s post-OutKast creative journey has yielded many moments of unexpected brilliance. His workwear impresario era is in step with his recent exploration of the heady world of woodwind instruments, which culminated in the 2023 release of Grammy-nominated New Age flute album New Blue Sun. During that project, he took to a uniform of understated overalls, which he’s now tinkering with under the Ants label. “There's still people like myself that stretch out on the floor and are doing drawings, and they need clothes,” he said, adding that his mood board is covered in images of midcentury abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthather sitting on the ground in her studio. (Another only-by-André surprise? The piano EP he dropped out of the blue on his way to the red carpet Monday night.) André last wore a bowtie in 2011, but at the fitting he appeared to be reacquainting himself with his sartorial roots, having shed the overalls for his own Ants by Benji Bixby suit, which fit impeccably over his vintage football jersey, the cropped trousers skimming the tops of his Nike Air Trainer 1s. Like the tuxedo, André’s crisp navy jacket had gussets on the back, a detail borrowed from hunting jackets. “It’s almost like when you’re making music, you’re in a certain zone or a certain vibe, and you kind of follow that vibe,” he said. Looking at André’s ensemble, I was reminded of OG Benjamin Bixby, but with age his bawdy, clubby menswear vision has taken on a new worldliness—deepened by travel, a recommitment to art and painting, and the wisdom of having been here before, back when it was near scandalous for a rapper to declare themselves a fashion designer. When I complimented him on his suit, he smiled. “Kap kun kap,” he replied. The original idea for Welch’s tuxedo was for André to refurbish a madras dinner jacket he made when the brand debuted in 2008. He fished a few of them out of storage boxes in his basement in Atlanta, but, alas, they had been down there too long. “They smelled like mildew,” André rued. “Once we decided André was going to make a look from scratch, I just said I want to wear your vision—whatever it is,” Welch said. “I was like, I’m happy to give my opinion if you ask for it, but at the end of the day, I’ll do whatever you want.” Back in those early days, André was already as prominent a modern dandy as there was, “known for his leadership of the African American Gentleman’s Movement,” according to Barnard professor Monica L. Miller, whose scholarship guided this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute exhibition “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” At a time when Americana was associated with WASPy lawyers and hipsters, the OutKast superstar freaked the preppy canon, performing in varsity sweaters and ’80s aerobic instructor-hairdos, and mixing boater hats and striped rugby shirts with bug-eye sunglasses. Benjamin Bixby brought André’s rule-breaking style to Barneys. With OutKast on the backburner, André poured himself into the brand, channeling 1930s Ivy League uniforms and his own upbringing as a Polo-obsessed Atlanta schoolboy into colorful cricket sweaters, wide raw denim, and bold madras shirting. To this day, André recalls those days as “some of the best times of my life.” André was on the vanguard of famous rappers diving head-first into fashion, and there was little precedent for the level of creative expertise he craved. So he figured out how to do it himself. “I totally knew nothing about the fashion business,” he said. “Especially from my side of the world as far as entertainers and music, we were all new to it.” Once in the late 2000s, Pharrell and Kanye were touring in Hong Kong when André happened to be in town visiting knitwear factories. “I went to the concert to go meet 'em backstage,” he recalls. “They were like, Dude, what are you doing out here in Hong Kong? I'm like, Man, I'm out here trying to make clothes. I'm out here trying to make things work.” Instead of going to Paris Fashion Week, he was dropping in on the city’s fabric trade shows. He particularly loved making suits, recalling fondly his experiences flying to Italy to meet with the old-world tailoring ateliers that made Bixby’s blazers. “I’m getting in the car and driving an hour and a half outside of Florence, and going to these little artisan shops run by families that have been doing it for generations!” he recalled. I look at the left and I'm seeing Tom Ford jackets, and I look to the right and I'm seeing Ralph Lauren jackets. I'm like, Oh, so this is where it really goes down.” Despite critical acclaim (in 2009, GQ named André a “best new menswear designer in America”) the first iteration of Bixby was self-funded, ahead of its time, and ultimately short lived. The world wasn’t ready for a preppy revolution during a global financial meltdown, even one led by everyone’s favorite rapper. “And now we have the worst time in history to launch anything again!” André said with a chuckle. I asked him what lesson he learned from the first go-round. “Focus,” he replied. “This time it’ll be way more focused, more streamlined.” Though there’s no timeline for the official launch, André is once again putting in the miles to make it work, traveling frequently to Amsterdam, where he’s building the line with a couple former G-Star designers. “I like spending a lot of time there, because something about being away from home or being in a distant place, your brain is freer for some reason,” he said. André will be attending the Met Gala for the first time since 2008, when he wore a white dinner jacket, black trousers, and a boater hat propped casually on his head. That was all Bixby, too. Given that dressing Welch this year represents a major full-circle moment, no detail at the fitting escaped his eye. “I'm thinking something flashy, like a burnt orange, or the red?” he mused in front of a buffet of formal socks. As he directed a tailor through a few more minute fiddles, the look came together: sleek John Lobb loafers, round Moscot frames, an FP Journe Chronometre Bleu watch—plus Welch’s own bespoke Charvet tux shirt and Chrome Hearts wallet chain. Finally, after a brief confab about haircuts, Welch stood in front of the mirror so the designer could give the next chapter of Benji Bixby a once-over. “Ain't going to even lie, man,” André said. “It looks great.”