And since their romance has coincided with the post-pandemic return of red carpets, that has meant a lot more dressing up than usual.
Growing up obsessed with drumming and skateboarding, Barker didn’t spend much time thinking about polished formalwear. “I think I prided myself in not dressing up well,” he says, “just being a punk kid.” Thinking back on when he first wore a suit, he recalls, “I think it might have been in catechism, like in church or something.” He skipped his prom to go skateboarding, so that was off the tux milestone list, too. Suit wearing, he said, was restricted mostly to “like, funerals or court. So this is so much better.”
So when did dressing up become fun? “Just recently, to be honest,” he admits, his smile revealing canines full of tooth gems. After spending a decade-plus grinding in the studio as a pop-punk svengali, 46-year-old Barker was sure he had his path figured out. “That was my life and I was okay with it,” he says. And then his and Karadashian’s stars aligned. “I met someone I got to share time with and do fun things with,” he says. Their new shared life is very much on display in the close quarters of the Thom Browne fitting room, filled with Travis’s people and Kourtney’s people, with Browne and his staffers buzzing around in variations of the designer’s signature gray flannel. Circling it all is a reality television crew: the footage captured here may just air on a future episode of the Kardashians’ new Hulu series.