The collection threads together the electronic dance music movement and consists of high-end tees with electrifying graphic prints that cater to club culture. We caught up with the electronic dance mixologist to find out what makes his fashion pulse race, and he revealed he’s already working on new designs (as well as a new album) for 2012.

Billboard: What is it about electronic dance music that inspired you to create fashion?

Tiësto: Really just about every element, from the music to the clubs themselves and the people who are in them.

Club kids are known for having such a distinctive, colorful style. How much did the fashion sense of your fans influence the tees collection.
The way my audience dress is a major part of how they express themselves at my shows. The colorfulness is definitely a big part of this, particularly amongst the fans I played to on my recent College Invasion tour. There are a couple of shirts in the collection that are inspired by this, taking these colors and putting a stylish spin on them.

Do you plan on expanding the line beyond just t-shirts in the future?
Yes, without a doubt I’d love to do that. We’re working on a few ideas at the moment, so watch this space!

What’s next for you, both fashion and music-wise?
In terms of the fashion line, I’ll be starting work on new designs to launch at some point next year very soon. With my music, I’m currently working on my next artist album, which I’m hoping to release in 2012.

You’ve played for crowds all around the world. Which city blew you away the most in terms of its fashion.
That’s a very tough question, I don’t think there’s one that stands out above all others, I’ve been lucky enough to play in incredible cities like Paris, Rome, Miami, Montreal and Rio who’s crowds each have their great individual styles. I’ve taken inspiration from these places and so many more.

Who are your favorite fashion designers, and are there any in particular you looked to for direction?
Chanel and Lagerfeld are pretty special to me. In terms of what I wear at the moment, I’d say Gucci, Tiger of Sweden, Acne.

Whose style in the music biz are you admiring at the moment?
Kanye has a great fashion sense, I love seeing what he’s up to in this space.

Finally, what was the last song you downloaded?
The last thing I downloaded was the Bon Iver album. It was perfect to relax to during some recent time off.

If celebrities like clothes, and if they know someone who can help them make clothes with their own personal vision, they will go forth into this great and challenging retail landscape and put out a line. This right, ye celebrities will agree, may as well be of the divine nature, God-given to those who are very gifted in other ways. D.J. Tiësto, whose chief gifts are musical, says that his Clvb Life clothing line, which launches today at Kitson Los Angeles and Atrium in New York and Miami, was inevitable, considering his love of fashion. Created with the help of his partners, who include Sean John’s Jeff Tweedy, Tiësto’s line consists only of T-shirts for now (men’s are $68, women’s are $56), but he plans to grow the business until he has enough for a runway show of his very own. These days, can the importance of slow growth really be overstated? We called Tiësto in his Montreal hotel room the other day to talk about the line, nightclub and rave style, and his dream T-shirt models. 

So why are you doing this?
There’s three things I really like in my life: music, sports, and fashion. So when you’re always clubbing and you always go out, you see a lot of people wearing stuff and I just love it. And I love the magazines, to read about fashion. I like when people dress nice — and also, for guys, I like nice shirts and stuff, so that’s the main reason I got into it.

You read fashion magazines?
Even Vogue magazine because I like to watch girls dress up as well. I like Elle magazine. I love things online, like when all the big brands have a fashion show, I like to see the new collections.

Vogue is going to do a Dutch edition soon.
Oh, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, you should try to get your clothing line in it.
That would be nice.

What’s left of the shy boy that learned to be independent pretty soon in his life? The boy that deliverd pizza’s and cleaned toilets. The boy that wasn’t the best in anything, but keeped on going until he got what he wanted. At 7 years old he drove to school in de bus alone, at his 28th he made it as an artist.

His colleagues describe him as a hard worker, someone who makes music with lots of passion as a pioneer, an example who exactly knows what his audiance wants.

Tiesto, from an average boy from a working class area till a worldwide superstar. KRO’s “Profiel” went in search about the true face behind the superstar!

Download the Tiesto documentary here!

Or watch the Tiesto documentary below:

An internationally known DJ such as Tiësto has to show up with much more than just his records. Tiësto’s thumping mixes of trance and electro-house are indeed the draw. But a crew of 35 helps Tiësto transport the audience with an elaborate set and lights galore.

“With my show, the club comes to you,” said the Dutch DJ. “In a club, it’s like entering somebody’s house. A stadium is your own house, a real performance. At a club, people are going there anyway. So in an arena you have to work to really make it special, take the audience away.”

The DJ and record producer born Tijs Michiel Verwest brings “Tiësto Club Life College Invasion Tour” to Scope in Norfolk on Wednesday.

“My audience includes everybody,” said Tiësto, calling from his home in Spain. “But I like to expose younger people to my music.”

The 42-year-old garnered international attention in 2004, when he became the first DJ to play live at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics. “Parade of the Athletes,” a compilation of tracks he made especially for the games, was released later that year and boosted his profile in the dance community. Tiësto’s third album, 2008’s “Elements of Life,” topped Billboard’s electronic album chart and received a Grammy nomination.

The success came after years of DJing in the Netherlands, where he was born and grew up. While still in high school, Tiësto started spinning records in clubs, eventually developing his vibrant style at The Spock, a joint in his native city of Breda.

“I’ve always had a love for music, you know, all kinds,” Tiësto said. “It just made sense to be a DJ because I loved playing it so much.”

In the mid-’90s, he started releasing compilations of his mixes. By the dawn of the 2000s, Tiësto had become a hot name in the United States. He toured with Moby and collaborated with David Bowie and Busta Rhymes.

“My style is completely different than it was years ago,” Tiësto said. “I was playing longer tracks, seven to eight minutes, with a lot of buildup. Now, it’s developing into this mix of electro-house and vocal house. It’s smoother.”

The throbbing pulse of electronica drives much of pop these days, particularly the ubiquitous hits of Lady Gaga.

“Dance music, it’s everywhere, more popular than before,” Tiësto said. “It’s the energy. When a DJ plays, you never know what to expect. It’s the variety. People always want to dance.”

While at the Big Chill music festival in August, the Louis Vuitton Don announced that he would be releasing “Lost in the World” as the next single from 2010′s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album. Though two months have already passed, Tiësto — who remixed the song earlier this year — is providing renewed hope.

“I spoke to Kanye a couple of weeks ago, and he told me it’s going to be his new single,” he told MTV News over the weekend at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, where he had just set the world record for largest DJ event, performing for 26,000 concertgoers.

In March, the Dutch DJ/producer debuted his “Lost in the World” remix at the Ultra Music Festival in Miami and has been spinning it ever since.

“The remix is going to come out a lot later than expected, which is cool for me, because I’ve been playing the track exclusively for the last five, six months, and it’s gone well in my set,” he said of his globetrotting gigs. “Especially in America, they really love that song. It’s like a journey anthem.”

With Kanye getting ready to embark on his Watch the Throne Tour alongside Jay-Z at the end of the month, there is no telling when West will have time to promote a “Lost in the World” single, but when it comes to ‘Ye, there is no telling.

Tiesto playing lost in the world at different gigs:

You keep good company, working alongside fellow DJs such as John Digweed, Paul van Dyk and Dieselboy. You tour with people such as David Bowie and Busta Rhymes. You’re working on a re-mix for Coldplay, you’ve partnered in the past with Suzanne Palmer, Sarah McLachlan, and Tegan and Sara, and you regularly rub elbows with those other one-name guys: Moby and Kanye.

Then let’s say you want to spread your popularity even more and capture the ring in a relatively new music scene. What do you do? How about starting a tour marketed to the always-ready-to-party college crowd?

That’s exactly what Tiësto has done. As part of his College Invasion Tour, Tiësto will be performing tonight at 8 p.m. at the Joel Coliseum Annex.

Music has been a part of Tiësto’s life from an early age.

“We always played music in the house,” he said. “My dad was a jazz-piano player, but I didn’t play any instruments. I was more of an active listener than a player. But I listened to radio, got a lot of free records and developed my own style at a club called The Spock in Breda.”

Tiësto, born Tijs Michiel Verwest in Breda, The Netherlands, has racked up tons of international accolades, sold millions of CDs, started his own record label, played at the opening ceremony for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, was voted the Number One DJ in the world by DJ Magazine from 2002-04, and has helped make the trance/house/electronica music genre a worldwide force.

And yet, the Tiësto brand isn’t a household name in the U.S. Always a bit behind the musical times when it comes to dance music — especially compared to the envelope-pushing crowds in Europe — this tour may change that.

Speaking from a hotel in Montreal, Tiësto sounds excited to play to new crowds that are a bit outside of his usual fan base.

“I don’t get to play very often for the younger crowds, so I think this is a unique thing. I thought it was time to connect,” he said. “I play Ibiza (a Spanish island in the Mediterranean Sea) and that area in winter, and the rest of the world for the rest of the year, and that’s an older, more touristy crowd. It’s great to get exposure with a different crowd, and give them a good show — and we’ve kept tickets cheap for the college students.”

Touring and playing shows is obviously a high priority for Tiësto. By his own admission, he’s on the road all the time, and he enjoys playing to different groups of people. That road work has built a live show that is legendary in the dance-music world, with some shows lasting up to six hours.

And those legendary shows have taken him all around the world playing shows on every continent except for Antarctica — and I wouldn’t count him out there just yet. So what’s on the agenda when he wraps up the college tour?

“I have lots of stuff coming up. I’m touring Latin America for two months, then will work on more new music for a bit,” he said. “I don’t really have a favorite place to play. If the crowd absorbs all the music you play, that’s what matters.”

Tiësto is on a collision course with the history books next month when he closes out his current Club Life College Invasion Tour on October 8 at the Home Depot CEnter in Los Angeles. With a jaw dropping capacity of 26,000, this is the largest single headline DJ show in US history. Tiësto is making electronic music history; he’s that damn good.

ARTISTdirect.com News Editor Amy Sciarretto nabbed sometime with Tiësto while on the Club Life College Invasion tour, as he was preparing for the soon-to-be-legendary LA show. Tiësto spoke about his relationship with a college-aged fanbase; his thoughts and feelings on the upcoming historic gig; his perspective on electronic music’s popularity in 2011; his views on Twitter as a promotional tool; his favorite US clubs at which to DJ; his love of Iron Maiden; and his passion for the Chicago Bears.

How does it feel to be playing the biggest North American headline gig by a DJ at The Home Depot Center in Los Angeles? What is your headspace? Are you blown away? Are you looking at it like just another gig? Are you like, “Wow! Holy shit!”?
It is amazing. How can I describe it? It is a challenge for me to be a part of history. It is really cool. The show will be really spectacular. I am going to put extra stuff into the show, since it is the first gig of its kind there. I will find extra special effects that night.

The show is not until October 8, so you have some extra time to figure out what you want to do, effects wise.
I do have some time, production-wise, I know. But music-wise, it changes every week. You never know what I am going to do.

You’re focusing on colleges with this tour run. In your experience, is it college kids that are usually the biggest dance music fans? Or is the audience opening up?
They are spontaneous and they are open-minded and they give me so much energy. They go nuts and they jump up and down all the time. It is a wild party and I really like that about it.

Why is electronic music so big now in your opinion? Dubstep is huge. Deadmau5′s name pops up everywhere, as does your own?
We don’t have the media control anymore. Thanks to the Internet, people are getting so much more access to music in general. No one listens to the radio anymore or even watches television. What you find on Internet, through your Facebook friends posting something for all their friends see it, that is the best PR you can have as an artist. It is fresh and that is how people find new music to put on their iPods.

Twitter has replaced the celebrity publicist, since it gives an artist a direct connection to fans and there is no buffer layer. Do you like that? Or do you think it is essential to have a PR flack facilitating that interaction?
I think that depends on what type of artist you are. Some artists need that magical element and others need that buffer, where they are not quite so connected. I like to be very connected to my fans…It’s more about the people who follow me and sharing music. I can post a track to my fans to see if they like it. They don’t have to wait for it three days later. It’s amazing about Twitter and it’s flattering for me when fans reply directly about the music when I post it. You get so many complements.

Do your read your own press?
No! I don’t even know where to look. There is so much media out there.

How did you assemble and choose the tracks for Club Life Vol 1. Las Vegas? Do you have a specific curation policy?
I go into it wanting to make a CD that gives you the “club feeling” and fits well in the club. I like lots of vocals and a nice groove and journey. I selected the tracks to be classy, something you want to hear in a nice, beautiful club.

What is your favorite US club?
Liv in Miami. I love its layout. It’s big, and caters to 1500 people but it’s also glamorous. There is a super high deck interior, with beautiful people. The DJ booth is comfortable; you can bring friends. You can have up to 20 friends behind you. It’s like you are playing a house party, but in a club. It’s nicely set up. [Editor’s Note: “Liv” sounds like the verb “Live,” as in “to live.”

What’s the story behind ‘C’mon,’ your collaboration with Diplo?
I decided to ask him to do a track with me, since he is a different producer, from a different scene. He sent beats and I put the melody on top and it worked out well. Everyone loved it. It was quite a shocking collaboration since we are so different.

If someone was interested in checking out electronic music and wanted to check out your music, can you succinctly describe it?
It’s electro house, electro dance. With lots of melodies. Lots of vocals. It’s energetic. There is lots of energy.

You’ve mentioned being a heavy metal fan. When did you first discover metal behemoths like Iron Maiden or Metallica? Are you into Slayer?
I grew up on heavy metal, but I have not listened to it in a while. When I was 16, I got into it. I was a huge Iron Maiden fan. I had all of their albums. I am not too much into Slayer, but Iron Maiden, Ronnie James Dio, Whitesnake. That’s what I am into.

How did you get into Iron Maiden?
My brother took me to the Monsters of Rock concert, which they headlined. Then I was sold.

Can’t say I blame you. Maiden puts on one helluva show and Bruce Dickinson is quite the consummate frontman. Moving back to electronic music and DJing, what’s your favorite club to play in Vegas?
Well, I like Marquee and Tao. Marquee is nice and almost like a concert. But it’s intimate, so it’s very nice, intimate venue. Tao is classy club, since it’s part of the Tao restaurant, which they also have in New York. The club is classy.

Tell us what’s next for you.
I did a remix for Coldplay, the ‘Paradise’ remix and my other single, ‘Maximal Crazy,’ came out. It’s instrumental and maybe I’ll get a vocal on it later. I have a Latin American tour coming. Then a break!

Do you have any non-music hobbies?
I don’t have much time for hobbies. But I love to play tennis. And I am a crazy fan of the NFL. I love American football.

Oh really? What is your favorite NFL team?
I love the Chicago Bears.

Why the Bears? Or “Da Bears?” Since you are not American, you have no allegiance to any particular city!
I discovered them a few years ago. One of my best friends is from Chicago, so there was no other reason for allegiance. Chicago is such a beautiful city and I became a Bears fan. Then I heard Kanye West is a Bears fan, too!

Why do you think your music is successful with students?
Electronic music has grown over the past few years—you only need to listen to mainstream radio to hear that. These college students have been exposed to this and now they’re aware of how fun it can be. This young generation is looking to have a good time, all the time.

You’ve collaborated with a range of artists from Diplo to Tegan & Sara. What qualities do you look for in a collaborator?
I look for someone that I know can produce something great with me. They don’t have to be the most popular artist at that time, but they do have to have some sort of amazing quality to their music that I think will work well with what I do.

You hosted a contest offering fans the opportunity to remix your new track, “Work Hard, Play Hard” and to have the track released on your Musical Freedom label. What makes a remix a full-blown hit?
It has to really show the passion of the person who is remixing the track. A remix is that artist’s interpretation of someone else’s music, so as long as they can express themselves in their interpretation then the remix has a chance to be a hit.

Among the most popular DJs in the world, the Dutch superstar is one of a handful of DJs who pulls down a rock-star-sized salary jetting across the globe to cash in on electronic dance music’s rocket ride from underground movement to red-hot mainstream commodity. Tiesto spends more than 200 days a year on tour, flying from London to Bangkok to Los Angeles — typically somewhere new every day.

The U.K.-based dance music magazine Mixmag in February voted him the greatest DJ of all time. His Kaleidoscope World Tour last year, with 175 dates on six continents, raked in more than $28 million, ranking it among the top 25 highest-grossing tours of 2010, according to Billboard magazine.

Photos: A night with DJ Tiesto

Saturday night, Tiesto, whose real name is Tijs Michiel Verwest, concludes his Club Life College Invasion tour at Carson’s 26,000-seat Home Depot Center — a concert billed as the largest DJ event in U.S. history.

The migration of electronic dance music’s popularity from Europe to the U.S. in the last three years has fueled the trend in superstar DJs. Today, DJs such as Tiesto, David Guetta, Deadmau5 and Armin Van Buuren play stages and stadiums as big as any occupied by Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire or Britney Spears. Just last week, in a milestone for the rise of electronic music, Swedish House Mafia sold out Madison Square Garden in nine minutes, and that was just a presale geared mostly to its Facebook fans. It will be the first dance music act to headline the historic venue when it takes the stage in December.

“Dance music has hit the spot in America and that’s amazing news,” says Steve Angello, one of three DJs in Swedish House Mafia. “It came out to the masses maybe three years ago. Pop artists and R&B artists started to look into dance music. A lot of people say it’s gone commercial now, but the fact is that it’s good for the scene.”

Though the salaries of these globe-trotting DJs are tightly guarded secrets, they are estimated in the tens of millions of dollars a year. Tiesto, for one, owns his own jet, and houses in Sweden and Ibiza, although at the moment he calls Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont home. The average price of a ticket to a Tiesto show is $58.10, compared with $50.21 for Bob Dylan and $37.04 to see Snoop Dogg, according to Pollstar, a trade publication for the concert industry.

“It’s an insane life,” Tiesto says with a thick accent. “How did this happen? I was a small DJ playing to 100 people at a club in Holland. Ten years later, I’m playing in stadiums and arenas.”

Over the last several years the global electronic music touring market has grown into a billion-dollar industry, based on the sale of tickets to clubs, concerts and private events for both rock star DJs and smaller “bedroom DJs,” according to Joel Zimmerman, head of the electronic music division at William Morris Endeavor agency.

The explosive growth is directly related to the rise of social media and the Internet, according to dance music lovers and the DJs themselves. These digital tools have taken the tastemaking power away from major labels and mass media and placed it squarely in the hands — and laptops and phones — of music fans. Their power was on display this July, when DJ Kaskade tweeted to his 40,000 U.S. followers that he would play a free set on Hollywood Boulevard before the premiere of a rave film. The concert was canceled when thousands of fans swarmed the street, inciting a near riot and a police response. The following month Kaskade’s new album, “Dynasty,” opened at No. 5 on iTunes Album Chart, which includes all categories of music.

At the same time, personal computers have democratized the process for creating electronic music. Ten years ago, you needed a big budget and a major studio to make chart-topping hits. Today you need a basic computer and a $200 download of FL Studio, a popular digital audio workstation.

Coldplay, Rihanna and Usher are on a growing list of big-name musicians who have collaborated with DJs on songs and remixes recently.

Dance music has long enjoyed widespread adulation in Europe. The Spanish island of Ibiza is considered the dance music capital of the world since the genre experienced its first burst of popularity in the late 1980s. But it was only a few years ago that North and South America became huge emerging markets. On his current tour Tiesto played for 35,000 fans in Mexico City and says Mexico is probably the hottest place in the world for dance music right now.

At the core of the movement are the young fans, particularly between the ages of 16 and 21, who have grown up on dance music thanks to the doors opened and barriers broken by DJ-producers like Tiesto, who at 42, has been DJing for more than half his life.

“Nobody can compete with Tiesto. He’s done more things in the DJ world than anybody else,” says Swedish House Mafia’s Angello, 28. “He was the first DJ to do the arena shows, I mean he played the opening ceremony of the Olympics.”

That was in the summer of 2004 in Athens; Tiesto is in talks to DJ the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

“That would be huge, even bigger than the Olympics,” says Tiesto, sitting with his road manager Kelly Cobb and a few friends over a lunch of sushi and sashimi at Ra in San Diego before Sunday’s show, which started at 11 p.m. and lasted more than two frenetic hours.

Tall and handsome, with tanned skin, short-cropped brownish-blond hair and a broad smile, Tiesto

is wearing teal track pants, a white T-shirt, flip-flops and a Texas Longhorns cap. The hat is a testament to his recent obsession with football. He is in a fantasy football league, although he doesn’t have much time to manage his team and it loses most of the time.

That doesn’t bother Tiesto, who at the moment is focused on the Sunday show. After lunch, he goes back to his room at the Hard Rock Hotel, takes a power nap and works on music for an hour or two. That’s usually his routine on the road.

If he ever gets a long enough break from his relentless touring schedule, Tiesto says he would like a buy a proper home in a single city and outfit it with his 18,000 records, laptop and DJ booth.

“I’m going to make one room that’s just the Tiesto room,” he says, laughing. “That’s my dream to have my own club in my own house.”