Farewell Ari
Sunday, 28 April 2013 Comments Off
Went to Spitalfields Market last Sunday. Been going there for the past couple of weeks looking for a stallholder called Ari.
Found out he was dead. He was 64. He had pancreatic cancer. He never told anyone, not even his family.
For the past ten years he's been my military wear dealer and a real inspiration.
It's hard to imagine someone having to face a terminal illness on their own, but Ari was unbelievably private.
Despite an almost instant feeling of mutual respect we never talked about much beyond clothes - the historic origins of a jacket, the availability of certain desert boots, the beauty of dress shoes.
I was told last Sunday that he had no wife and no kids and was once a journalist and TV correspond in Iran. I knew none of this when he was alive.
What I did know however was that Ari was humble and honest with an
amazingly good heart...and that was enough for me to consider him in many ways a
friend.
NKU: James Brown
Tuesday, 9 April 2013 Comments Off
images: Jean-Marie Périer
Filson In London
Friday, 5 April 2013 Comments Off
Even for one of the most authentic American brands ever, it's important to start off on the right foot...in this case Filson have hit the ground running.
They've just opened the first ever Filson retail store outside the US. It boasts a great selection of classic Filson product, all of which is made in Seattle. This includes an amazing selection of premium quality vintage product.
You can go to the store with your own Filson bag and get it reconditioned by the experts back in the States. You can also go to the store and get them to order anything on offer online.
The whole tone and feel of the store is on-point. It's reassuring that everything about this project seems to have been considered and given serious thought...including the staff.
Ed, previously of the RRL store and Jimmy, previously of the LVC/Cinch store are now both proudly wearing classic Filson waistcoats. Nuff said.
Find Filson's London Store, 9 Newburgh St. London, UK W1 020 7434 3007.
Benedict Radcliffe's Epic Indoor Skatething
Sunday, 24 March 2013 Comments Off
There's an element of quiet audacity about the work of artist Benedict Radcliffe. It was evident in the urban garden he built as a collaboration with Nike for their 1948 project. It was evident when he parked a wire frame sportscar outside Paul Smith's store in Mayfair. And it's evident here too, as you'll see.
(special thanks to PWBC for letting us crash their Xmas Party)
benedict radcliffe
(special thanks to PWBC for letting us crash their Xmas Party)
benedict radcliffe
Pendleton Dave, Ragtop Vintage
Saturday, 9 March 2013 Comments Off
If Pendleton Dave's Ragtop Vintage were an LP it would probably be Steely Dan's Aja; you return to it again and again, constantly discovering something new and inspiring among the already reassuringly familiar, never failing to be amazed by the fact that certain things only get better with age.
Visit Ragtop Vintage each Thursday at Spitalfield's Market.
Check out Ragtop Vintage blog.
Young Man, 1963. An Opinion. By Mr Jimmy Frost Mellor
Monday, 4 March 2013 Comments Off
The are two ways to read a vintage style image - The right way and the wrong way.The wrong way is to look at the image and to interpret it by trying to bring all the cultural baggage of today to bear on then. The right way is just to listen to it and feel what it tells you. The image above is of Julian Bond in 1963. A young, handsome, conservatively inclined young man? Only he isn't. This next picture puts him better into context:
Maybe it was unfair not to show you that picture first. Julian's soft shouldered Needlecord Ivy League jacket, Oxford cloth shirt and Donegal flecked Shetland Crewneck along with his short hair and clean-cut looks weren't remotely Conservative in 1963. They had been before and they would be again, but in 1963 they were still the height of hip fashion. He is wearing the style of fashionable actors and musicians, the style of the young and successful. And the radical, which is who and what he is. He's well worth a Google...
The American 'Ivy League' style of dress fascinates because, although it is a language with rules and a certaingrammar like any language, it is also a language without any fixed meaning. After roughly 110 years of the style's existence just too many people have worn it globally by now and have all given it their own meaning. A fact which can provide you with a great deal of fun - You can wear Ivy and leave Heathrow, London, as hip and creative only to touch down in Logan, Boston USA, to be regarded as an ultra Conservative. Extend your travels to a touch down in Narita, Tokyo, and you can be regarded as being 'young at heart' too (The slogan of Japan's Ivy brand 'Van') !
So what does it all mean? Does this style of dress actually have so many meanings as to make it ultimately meaningless?
- Or, even more interesting to me, is the notion that, like our jet-setter mentioned above, the style allows you to have whatever meaning(s) you fancy depending on your context and deportment.. It was the style which kick started 'Skinhead' in London and was also worn by US Presidents after all...
Rewinding this to Julian Bond, it was the perfect style for him and his times - And for me it still is. Clothes which really say something, but which speak in tongues !
Mr Jimmy Frost Mellor:
Samuel Purdey - Musically Adrift 2013
Tuesday, 26 February 2013 Comments Off
Audiophiles are a rare breed, understandably. To call them perfectionists would be an understatement. Perfectly balanced turntables, handcrafted speaker-boxes, super-sensitive styluses...all to create the most true and perfect sound possible. I can only imagine that's why classic 70's label RAK elected to make Samuel Purdey's 1999 LP, Musically Adrift a high-fidelity, audiophile vinyl release.
Like Donald Fagen's Nightfly, it's one of those LP's so sonically brilliant that it's worth listening to just for the production quality alone. In fact Fagen's debut solo effort was one of the benchmarks Barney Hurley and Gavin Dodds targeted when they formed the band back in the early 90's.
They decided that like all great FM bands Samuel Purdey songs had to have memorable lyrics, rich melodies and work well on the radio. But like the greatest FM band of all, Steely Dan, they agreed that Musically Adrift had to be mixed to perfection too - which is why they somehow managed to convince legendary, seven-time Grammy Award winner Elliot Scheiner to abandon the comfort of his luxury Malibu beach house (or some such place) and add that all important finish for them.
Scheiner's discography (in no chronological order) includes Aja and Gaucho by Steely Dan and Fagen's The Nightfly; so they figured if anyone could get the perfect sound, he could. As a result, the LP has a depth and warmth almost impossible to replicate in front of a live audience - which goes some way to explain why, despite repeated requests, they've not performed the LP on stage since its initial release.
Each song is this perfectly crafted piece, held together by a polished but intimate studio sound. The complete antithesis of the recording techniques dominant when the LP was being made, Dodds and Hurley - who produced the album themselves - concentrated on filling their studio with an analogue clarity.
Maybe the LP should have been called Against The Tide instead; since beyond those studio walls, music was all about dance edits, BPMs, bedroom producers and the remix of the remix of the remix. In complete opposition to the times, Samuel Purdey were determined to create something pure and definitive - and almost fifteen years after its original release, it still is.
Musically Adrift the vinyl version is out now on RAK. Don't sleep.
Palace present Shawn Powers
Monday, 25 February 2013 Comments Off
There are parts of this film that defy belief - and the skateboarding ain't bad neither.
POWERS SURGE from PALACE on Vimeo.
POWERS SURGE from PALACE on Vimeo.
CUAP. The Yellow Issue. No Compromise
Sunday, 10 February 2013 Comments Off
These days we read pictures and deconstruct text. We take the messages from an image and interpret they're meaning while at the same time we find ourselves viewing words as visuals - a logo, a brand ident, the choice of font, the kerning, the weight, the space they occupy within a layout...
Sergei Sviatchenko has been exploring these visual languages for years through his dense abstract paintings, his enormous architectural friezes and his delicate collages. The way we read and respond to our visual environment has forever been his fascination.
And with Close Up And Private he has developed what can be best described as a new language. With CUAP he has recognised that clothes have a their own potential for symbology, that they too can speak volumes, inspiring, affirming, challenging, conflicting...
The Yellow Issue is a unique study in this new language. An antidote to today’s fashion mags it allows us to ponder and play and respond to the printed page without having to navigate our way around ads, prices, trends and no-name celebrities...It's what you take away, not what you leave, indeed.
From the colour-coded title, to the dye-cut letters on the cover, The Yellow Issue demands that the viewer shares this new style literacy.
Here, without compromise, the primacy of the image, the symbolic nature of the object and our ability to construct meaning out of both is taken as...read.
the nod: rue vieille du temple, paris
Wednesday, 23 January 2013 Comments Off
Thom Browne: A New Religion
Monday, 21 January 2013 Comments Off
What's great about this show is that the clothes are as challenging as the ideas that seem to inform them. For many of today’s menswear designers Americana is a destination but for Thom Browne’s latest collection it's a point of departure.
The wooden frame of a building provides the setting and shapes the models' smoothly choreographed route; the gently meandering music evokes a peaceful pastoral mood. Both bring to mind the Old West and the days when the Pilgrims termed it the New World - The Little House On The Prairie meets Grant Wood's American Gothic meets Witness.
The buildings' skeletal frame is like a signifier for the whole collection. On an obvious level it's the squareness of the clothing - hats, shoes, jacket, trousers – a riot of right-angles. On a less obvious level it points us to Browne's reductionist narrative - a revisioning of religious clothing and iconography, boxed and framed and flattened, leaving a clear visual language upon which he builds his particular orthodoxy.
The rectangular Mormon, Amish and Hassidic inspired hats, the flipped cross on the door, recurring eight point star motive on the trousers and jackets, the cleric cut of jackets and coats - and of course the businessman's attache case - all reference the ethics and belief systems which in many ways inform Americas’ sense of self.
But Browne has come neither to praise the things others hold dear and true nor to subvert them. As with Ivy style and preppy, it's as if he has cast a refined, personal gaze over a cultural vista one which others view as fundamentally fixed and sacred. Like the clothing, his is a a complex perspective but perhaps on some level Browne is inviting us to bear witness to a new religion.
model images from GQ online.
From Paris with Love: Ala Champfest
Thursday, 17 January 2013 Comments Off
I'm in Paris. I'm staying in a rented apartment. My first evening coincided with the launch of Ala Champfest Issue six, in a cool bookshop near the Bastille. The instructions were easy - turn left out of the apartment, take the first left and walk straight down the road 'til you hit the shop. Getting lost, of course, was even easier. No surprises there, a?
What was a nice surprise was that the interview I'd written for the magazine was on one of its two covers. Ala Champfest is a great publication, it celebrates creative culture and, despite being totally independent, regularly secures interviews with absolute heavyweights: case in point, The Parla brothers, Jose and Rey.
My uncharted tour of the Parisian backstreets reminded me of those great Godard movies - all wintry and chic and rather unpredictable, only in this instance there were no subtitles - which would have come in handy. What is the French word for lost, anyway?
alachampfest.com
alachampfest.com
Converse Are Boring
Monday, 7 January 2013 Comments Off
It was a crazy scheme
but I was determined to break out my old Chuck Taylor hi-tops this winter - come
rain, sleet or snow. Call it an act of resistance, call it an act of pure folly
- but it was a folly I simply couldn't resist.
For the record it had nothing to do with that Shoes Are Boring, Wear Sneakers campaign. It's a huge success apparently; the brand rolled out billboards and experiential events to go along with they're usual parade of sponsorship activity. All good, all good. Making Converse an all-season option is one of the few growth areas left for these footwear giants. 
I did have a problem however with the strap line. It's
a negative proposition - Shoes Are Boring - and as such seemed weak and clumsy. Imagine how
inspiring the brand would have been if instead of Just Do It, Nike opted for
the strap line, Stop Doing Everything Else. Also it's the sort of thing a
moaning child says when out shopping with mum for that dreaded school uniform.
But we digress. I love Converse despite their popularity. I see the natural canvas Chucks as part of my own uniform. In fact, they're great primarily because they're boring!
They're understated, unassuming and almost unbeatable when it comes to a kind of design purity. Even when they're fucked, I mean when they're worn in and dirty, they still look great. But in the depth of a cold winter, the classic All Stars are about as useful as a pair of sunglasses in a blackout.
'Got these for you', said Dr Mandi Martin and as if by magic (as is often her way) she handed me the perfect solution to my winter Converse hi top challenge; thermal insoles. See, maybe I'm not so crazy after all. (Comments closed).
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