Shotcaller: David LaChapelle

David LaChapelle's New York studio is unexpectedly muted given that he's a famed fashion photographer whose vibrant, hallucinatory style regularly goads the establishment. The few exceptions are a five-foot purple cobra prop hanging on the wall and the scenery in the backroom, four different and entirely outlandish set-ups that he's shooting for Ecko Unltd.'s fall ad campaign (full disclosure: Ecko is Complex's parent company). Otherwise, it's an understated loft with lived-in furniture, framed covers of LaChapelle's two books, and one hyperkinetic boss who has photographed more stars and supermodels than perhaps anyone else in the world. Surrounded by an intensely loyal staff, the only sign of his wealth a bracelet with the American flag set in diamonds, LaChapelle variously jumps up to crank an old blues tune on the stereo, talks excitedly about hip-hop fashion, and scurries away to screen the video he's just wrapped for Christina Aguilera's "Can't Hold Us Down."

COMPLEX: What style interests you most right now?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: The real revolution in fashion right now is people like Ecko and Phat Farm. The really big news is that you've had this elitist stuff like Gucci and it was all very label-orientate, and suddenly everything has shifted toward affordable clothes that make you look great.

COMPLEX: What brought you around to this way of thinking?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: I wasn't brought around to it. As a photographer, you're shooting what's out there in the world, and these options are so much cooler.

COMPLEX: What about guys like P. Diddy who aren't exactly dressing in baggy jeans?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: I like the clothes he makes and the clothes he wears. When you go to an event, you'll see Sean and he'll look better than any guy in the room. He'll have the best suit. If you're gonna wear a suit, wear the best suit – or wear a tracksuit. I went to the AIDS benefit at the Cannes Film Festival – every year Elton [John] brings me – and I don't want to wear a fucking tuxedo. I don't know a good tuxedo from a bad tuxedo – they all look like shit as far as I'm concerned. So I wore Ecko – a white-on-white University of Florida Gators tracksuit – and nobody even blinked. I hate suits. They make me feel like my dad. A sweatsuit is a suit.

COMPLEX: How do you avoid being pigeonholed as "the photographer with the wacky concepts and crazy colors"?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: I'm not the class clown. I don't want to be a paid performer and trail out the same old shit. I might want to do black-and-white. I don't want to be stopped from that. If I feel like doing something that doesn't look like [what everybody thinks of as] David LaChapelle, that's exactly what I'm going to do, and I have been doing that.

COMPLEX: Like with your music videos?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: Right. People are like, "Your videos don't look like your still photographs," and I'm like, "You don't know my still photographs – you don't know where they come from." They don't come from a style. Style is superficial. They come from an idea. It's important not to let people do things as expected. I might as well have a job at a bank if I'm going to do that shit.

COMPLEX: In interviews, you're always talking about collaborating, as if you're not just shooting Drew Barrymore or Eminem, but you're working with them. What do you like about collaboration?
DAVID LACHAPELLE: Creative people get creative people. I don't have to front with anybody. I shot Tupac six or seven years ago. He came to our hotel early, and I was in bed with my boyfriend. He opened the door and walked in and I'm naked in bed with my boyfriend and he was so cool about it. He didn't give a fuck. I didn't have to pretend like, "Yo, what's up? How you don' homie?" He would not have respected me if I had. He's introducing himself to me and my boyfriend, he sits down and starts chatting. He got there two hours early because he'd been up all night in the studio and he smoked out and he's like, "I've got a shoot." And he was amazing. He's an artist. Artist to artist. Artists don't care about the categories that other people are so caught up in. They see right through it. I don't need to pretend I'm somebody I'm not.