André 3000 and longtime girlfriend Dominique Maldonado were spotted heading to lunch in Beverly Hills on Monday. The couple attended ComplexCon in Long Beach, Calif., where DJ Khaled, Migos and Pharrell performed this past weekend.
Dominique dressed comfy in a black midi skirt and a limited edition Carrots X 424 Chanel sweatshirt, while André wore a black windbreaker jacket customized with a graphic of his face on the back and his name on the sleeve.
André, 42, discussed his short-lived career as a clothing designer at ComplexCon. His preppy ready-to-wear line Benjamin Bixby fell short of expectations in 2008.
“I knew the next time I got into fashion or design [after OutKast’s clothing line] it’d be something I really love,” he told the audience. “The reason I took that route was because hip-hop had his image of ‘we don’t wear these types of things’ and I? knew we wore different clothes. So Benjamin Bixby was my personal way of trying to say, ‘This is how we do it.'”
André said he could relate to music producer Kanye West who financed his own clothing line out of his pocket after cutting ties with Nike.
“The clothes I was trying to make were all my sketches and designs. I was like, ‘Let me take this. Let me not get an investor,'” André recalled. “So all of it was me. My own money. Unfortunately, I? lost millions, to be honest. It was an expensive lesson.”
Photos by Yellow Mamba / BACKGRID
