Jason Kempin/Getty ImagesFashion faux pas are inevitable, for all of us, celebs included.
But John Mayer wants to make it very clear that his past looks—be it Tibetan robes or Johnny Depp-esque layers—were a result of some pretty heavy drinking. Allow him to explain…
"Sometimes, if you don't see the person you recognize in the mirror, then you're free from your own punishment. It's hard to explain. You're free from your own criticism. If you don't recognize the person you see in the mirror, then you're free from self-persecution," he told GQ magazine.
"It's almost like a witness relocation program for yourself. Women do it, men do it. You have a change in your life, or a change in your philosophy, a change in your lifestyle, you have a loss, or you have heartache, so you go blonde or you grow a beard or you do both. Sometimes in life you just don't want to be recognizable to yourself. A lot of people get f--ked up for that reason. I was drinking—I was drinking a whole hell of a lot. I was heavy, and layers favor the heavy man…Wearing layers is sort of like—just trying to get out of it by way of subterfuge. And then you get healthy again, and you put on your white tee and jeans and you're like bam!"
Katy Perry's on-and-off flame continued to wax poetic about fashion paralleling his personal struggles, saying, "I think I was hiding out from myself. I was hiding out from what I felt like was a whole lot of pigeon-holing. And it's also the way I would do anything….I said this quote one time: 'Don't pack for where you're going, pack for who you want to be when you get there.' So it's like, OK, we'll do this flight in the '40s. We'll dress up… A lot of times I don't want to get on an airplane unless there's something in it for me. And sometimes the only thing is the sort of intellectual or aesthetic adventure, and that's what gets me on the airplane."
Back up, did he just quote himself? Oh John…