John Mayer appears in the GQ most stylish men issue (the one with Ryan Gosling on the cover). He discusses his style obsessions, which include a copious amount of Tibetan robes (as pictured on his Paradise Valley cover). The thing about John is that he can’t simply own a few of something he likes. He’s a collector. So he has countless Tibetan robes and a closet full of old sneakers. These aren’t used sneakers either. John collected shoes during the “Golden Age” of Nike, and they were all limited edition. Then he tried to sell them for a profit, and no one cared. So he’s still got the sneakers even though his obsession turned to robes. Seriously, he wasted GQ copy space for these topics.

John admits he’s “into the idea of the pursuit of physical product.” He goes into collecting Drake records, hats, “flair points,” and these crazy robes. He goes on forever, and it’s easy to fall down the Mayer rabbit hole. Some highlights:

His beloved robes: “I have a lot of old robes. A lot of Tibetan robes, and it’ll end up in People magazine that I was wearing a bathrobe. And it’s like, ‘Well, actually it’s a totally hand-painted, natural dye … It’s made with real indigo and crushed up ladybugs!’ So yeah, sometimes you’ll buy something because there’s something that strikes you about it, and you’ll hang it up and you’ll go, ‘I don’t know how yet, but someday…’ And either times change or you see — this is very important, and I’m not afraid to admit this — you see someone else you look up to contextualize it in a way that allows you to find your way into wearing it. All of fashion is completely, one-thousand-percent context-based.”

Flair points: “Like, I’ve got a rule: You only get a certain amount of flair points, and you can’t spend too many points on one outfit. So if you’re gonna wear a hat—which you absolutely can–that’s most of your flair points. Big part of your budget on your hat. Or if you’re just gonna wear jeans and a T-shirt, you can go nuts with the boots. And if you want to wear a white T-shirt and blue jeans, you can wear whatever you want over it–you can wear the weirdest Tibetan robe over it. That’s your show-off moment.”

More about the robes: “The thing about wearing a Tibetan robe on an airplane is that you can use it for like six different things. You can use it as a background to take pictures of things for Instagram. You can use it as a blanket. You can use it as a tent. I’ve watched movies under it on the airplane — it’s breathable! You can use it as a paparazzi shield. Maybe you get made fun of in People, but who knows who Hiroki Nakamura is that reads People magazine? Then there’s one or two people who jump into the comments and go, ‘That’s really hard to come by. That represents a lot of hard work by artisans in Japan.'”

On worst-dressed lists: “That’s right. And this is some sh*t: Something you learn when you grow up is that everybody who is the “worst dressed” is actually not the worst dressed. They’re just trying to accelerate a little bit. People aren’t idiots. They’re not like, ‘I think I want to wear this dumb thing to the Oscars.’ They’re worst dressed because they’re outside of the norm. Then you get to be 27-years-old or something and you go, ‘Oh, worst dressed just means ambitious.'”

[From GQ]

Mayer thinks much too hard about fashion for a guy who looks like he just rolled out of bed. He spends so much money trying to look “authentic” (he drops that word a lot), that he loses his authenticity. He also rails against people who bash hipster fashion.

Mayer also has a huge obsession with watches. He doesn’t cover them with GQ, but Mayer recently detailed his watch obsession with the NYT. Mayer admits that his first watch “was my friend.” Most of his girlfriends see his watch fixation as “a syndrome.” All of his Rolexes and make him feel centered, not so lost in the world: “I remember thinking — and this is a very important feeling — that I could go anywhere with this watch, because I couldn’t be lost.” These watches don’t even have GPS, but they help Mayer find his way. How? “It would take a lot of poetry to explain it.” Dude is exhausting.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN