Actor? Yes. Rapper? Yes. Environmentalist? Okay, so maybe a slightly lesser known fact about Jaden Smith, but not for much longer. In fact, the 20-year-old tastemaker has been making waves championing sustainability for a while now (check Just Water, the water bottle company he co-founded with dad Will Smith) – and now, his latest buzzy move has seen him team up with G-Star RAW for a sustainable collection: Forces of Nature.

Inspired by the beauty and power of nature, the collection is available in three different colourways: water (blue), earth (ecru) and eclipse (black). Think hoodies, tees, patchwork denim, caps, and festival-friendly pouches. Using design innovations and created with sustainable materials, it also features the first ever Cradle to Cradle Gold Level Certified™ denim fabric. 100% organic. Less water. Less chemicals. Less energy. Just all-round better stuff.

And to celebrate the launch, Smith took to G-Star RAW’s Oxford Street branch to perform his most-celebrated tracks to fans. We grabbed a chat with the artist before the gig…

You’ve got a massive crowd outside, very exciting…
I’m super excited!

Tell me what drew you to the collaboration and how it all started?
I was introduced to G-Star when I was really young and was always obsessed with it. It got to the point where I started designing my own clothes and I started my own company MSFTSrep. I wanted to do a collaboration and G-Star made sense. The work I do with Just Water is for the environment, and I wanted to make this collection with G-Star because of the sustainable technologies that they have, and also because I know it’s a platform that could really get the message out.

So does the sustainability aspect align with your own beliefs?
I’ve learnt what happens when the temperature of the earth rises; what happens when the sea water rises. The effect that it has on humans is something people don’t talk about a lot, but it’s very detrimental. It’s what you’re seeing with these tornados and hurricanes, and flooding that happens in random places. I started learning about that at a young age, and that’s what drew me to sustainability.

So can you talk me through the design process?
We didn’t know that’s what we were going to do at first, but I knew that I wanted to do a patchwork collection.

And then what happened?
So we decided we wanted to make a patchwork collection but make it sustainable, and it made sense to make the theme nature.

Where did you get your inspiration from?
We got our inspirations from old hunting photos and paintings, paintings that they would put on camouflage for hunters. Then we switched that up to make it more “environmental activistwear”, instead of hunting wear. An activist is somebody who is actively making conscious decisions to better the world, the first being the purchase of something like this rather than the purchase of something else.

And what elements of the collection are sustainable?
It’s about the work that we do with the denims, the work that we do with the dyes, the work that we do with the water filtration, the work that we do with the life cycle of the denim. Even the bags that we ship the collection in are made from recycled denim dust, which makes the packaging recyclable, durable, but also not something that’s going to last forever like a plastic bag. So those are the conscious decisions that we’re making everyday with this collection. By being a part of this collection, you’re also being a part of the future of the world.

What was the best part of the process?
The best part of the process was really getting behind the sewing machine and making the exact pants that I wanted to make.

So you were very involved then?
Yeah, the pants that I designed for the collection, they were really crazy, they were halfway falling apart and I wore them in the “Ghost” video, a video that I shot in the G-Star store in Japan.

Long-term what do you hope this collaboration will achieve?
I just want it to inspire people.

The Forces of Nature collection is now available in G-Star stores and on g-star.com