Archive for February 2011
The Future In Your Living Room: Odd Future on Jimmy Fallon...!
Thursday, 24 February 2011 Comments Off
Hot House by Diz & Bird - the true meaning of a jazz thing.
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It's rare. Diz and Bird, two of the worlds greatest jazz musicians, performing live on film.
It's the prestigious DownBeat Magazine Awards.
February 24, 1952. The Dumont TV Studios, NYC.
Parker and Gillespie collect their plaques from gossip columnist Earl Wilson of It Happened Last Night fame and the legendary Leonard Feather - jazz writer, pianist & producer.
The song they elect to perform, like so many great bop tunes is a contrafact.
Hot House, originally written by Tadd Dameron.
definition: contrafact - a composition built on an already existing song using the original as the basis for the new one.
You boys got anything else to say?, asks Wilson. Parker and Gillespie are yet to say anything other than Hello and Thank you.
Well, Earl they say music speaks louder than words, so we’d rather voice our opinion that way, if you don't mind, Parker says before they head to the bandstand.
What is that opinion? & why, of all tunes, do they pick Hot House?
definition: hothouse - historically a place within a plantation where slaves would be taken when ill. in the hothouse; the experience of being made sick.
Turns out, Earl, these boys had a lot more to say after all.
NKU: Lester Young
Wednesday, 16 February 2011 Comments Off
A man can only be a stylist if he makes up his mind not to copy anybody. Originality is the thing. You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.
Garmsville Product @ Selectism & Close Up And Private
Monday, 14 February 2011 Comments Off
Last week the guys at Selectism wrote a nice feature on some product I've designed.
Garmsville 3-Double D Belts.
I originally made them for Beams in Japan.
The belts were designed to be worn with either chinos or jeans...or madras.
I also wanted to make a product I'd never seen before.
Now the belts are in 3939 in London as well. It's a great new select store.
Sergei from Close Up and Private has also featured the belts and the bags on his site.
He's teamed the belt with a pair of Thom Browne chinos.
The bags are also shot as part of an amazing assemblage.
We both agree - it's all about the details.
Major thanks to both Sergei and Selectism.
Denim Dreams 2: Don't go near the water
Tuesday, 8 February 2011 Comments Off
The dirty little secret about denim is the sheer amount of water involved in its manufacturer.
We can talk for days about selvedge , triple needle chain stitching, vintage-this, replica-that, low rise, high rise, natural cotton, organic indigo, shuttle looms and on and on and on... But nobody ever mentions the water. It’s as if it’s taboo.
When I spoke to a Levi’s exec last summer he intimated that all this might somehow be changing.
I wanted to get into a discussion about it – that dirty subject - to find out if ecological concerns were affecting the brands' practices. But he cut me off before I’d even warmed up. You mean are we Green?, he said, re-phrasing my question in more direct terms.
Yes, I said.
No. he replied.
Before I could say anything else, he continued. But sustainability is something which we're looking at very closely - it's an incredibly important issue for us, he said. There's something happening within the company, - across the whole company - which is very exciting and is heading closer to the answer you’re looking for. I can’t tell you any more than that for now as it's still in development.
Some six months later, at the tail end of last year, Levi’s announced a new initiative.
Turns out a while back the design team shared with their laundry division a dream they had about being able to create great looking jeans, with fades and different finishes, but without the use of water. It was a big ask, especially when you consider that it can take over 40 litres of water to make one pair of jeans.
This not only impacts on water usage, but is also about the attendant wastage (bleach, dyes, etc) which comes with it.
Fortunately the laundry came through and found solutions which cut down the use of water and still allowed them to create different denim finishes.
... the Water < Less collection reduces the water consumption by an average of 28% and up to 96% for some new products in the line.
Now Levi's have bought the issue of water and washes into the open, maybe other brands will follow their lead.
But the announcment didn’t stop there. Having reduced their own water consumption, Levi's are asking their customers to do the same.
According to the campaign, with a max of one wash every two weeks, together Levi’s and their customers can save over 8.5 million litres of water this Spring.
This part of the campaign of course doesn’t apply to you or I, who hardly ever wash our denim (if at all) preferring to wear our jeans like the cowboys did back in the day – ‘til they fall apart at the seams or ‘til they can walk around on their own. & that's our dirty little secret.
NKU: Billy Childish by Shane Deegan
Tuesday, 1 February 2011 Comments Off
That was a nice day, he's a funny one, wary of outsiders with cameras naturally (it was my idea to photograph him) but when he warms to you, he is excellent company.
For some reason I had a big bag of organic spuds in my car and as I left I decided to give them to him as a gift. We spotted each other on opposite sides of Oxford Street recently and he shouted across the road "Oi where's me spuds, I've ran out!" with a big grin on his face. It was one of them pissy wet west end days, but after that I couldn't stop laughing to myself.
Billy said something about his clothes...cant remember the exact words verbatim but it was like - 'I like to wear clothes made in Britain or Europe by adults, not ones from the far East or India made by children'
Shane Deegan.
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