Zayn Malik inspired by ‘fearless’ Prince

Zayn Malik was inspired to be "fearless" by the late Prince.

The former One Direction star is "really upset" that the ‘Purple Rain’ hitmaker passed away in April at the age of 57 but is hopeful his legacy will continue on.

He said: "It was obviously a surprise, I think for everybody. A lot of starting references for me are technology and Prince. I’m conscious in the back of my head of how he was sort of bold and fearless in the way he decided to dress. He created another world with the clothes he wore, and it gave him an otherworldly feel, which is all part of his legend, I guess. I was really upset with the fact that he passed away. But it’s nice that we can use things now to portray what inspired us about him. That was kind of what I was doing at the Met Ball … being fearless. But I was just having fun."

And the 23-year-old singer couldn’t believe he was asked to design his own outfit for the Met Ball – which he attended with girlfriend Gigi Hadid – and revealed he modelled it on a video game character.

He added to the summer issue of Dazed magazine: "I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I know it’s a big deal in the fashion industry. Anna Wintour obviously runs the whole thing so it was an honour to even get to go. I was asked to design my own costume by Donatella Versace!

"It was cool. I had seen a few people hitting me online, saying negative things about it. But I enjoyed it because they were saying I looked like a dude from Mortal Kombat, and it was actually based on a character called Jax. He had metal arms and the theme was technology so I just took it from him … It’s a bit easy to just dress up in a suit. I like to do things that are a bit outside of that."