CATCH THE PHADE

I’m looking forward to seeing CNN and Mass Appeal’s Fresh Dressed when it hits Vimeo at the end of the month (and I go through the inevitable exasperating process of finding a proxy that isn’t part of some baby-eating botnet in order to rent it). The clip below has some good Dapper Dan and Shirt Kings talk with Phade and Nas, and I’ll admit to being oblivious that there really is a man called Willie Esco (who the gentleman behind the Coogi reboot) — I thought that the was named after some Nas alter-ego from when he put out two albums in one year and I wasn’t paying attention properly. Is Sir Benni Miles a real guy too? I would merrily Kickstarter the hell out of a 30 For 30 series of two-hour explorations of late 1990s rap gear. The Damani Dada episode could feature Latrell Sprewell and Chris Webber (in fact, Webber talking his way through how he managed to go from Nike Air CWs to chromed-out Dada shoes in seven years would be a fascinating standalone). Phade seems to have a documentary called Never Phaded coming soon too that was put together after the recent Supreme and Stüssy collaborations.





With it being the 20th anniversary of Kids, Larry Clark’s classic butterscotch-smelling, heavy-flowing morality tale, the internet has been heavy with the trivia we already knew. I hadn’t spotted this brief Javier Nunez interview that was filmed in Tokyo and upped a year or so ago, or — if you can deal with the hosts cackling like they did Whip-Its, this Cutting Room Movie Podcast chat with Leo Fitzpatrick. Nunez being genuinely out for the count for Kids’ ending, and the story of how Fitzpatrick nearly lost a limb are just a couple of the jewels that emerge from these conversations.

GUCCI SNOOPY

Sometimes an image is so good that it renders any text obsolete. Snoopy in the legendary Gucci Tennis from the book to coincide with 1984’s Japanese Snoopy in Fashion exhibition is a perfect case study. Idea Books Instagrammed it this morning and made my day. Even better than Donald Duck in Timbs. Speaking of wheat workboots, a couple of good promo print projects arrived in the post this week — Oi Polloi’s always excellent Pica~Post is back with some extra metal, an interview with Patagonia Alpine Outerwear Christian Regester and Mr. Gary Aspden (it’s heartening to see the low-key looks of the SPEZIAL Ardwick become an object of desire in a world where the same old Technicolor yawns get eBay bids) who really, really went on the campaign trail for his labour of love after years of not doing too many Q&As — Next’s role in casual culture, a picture of Gary with a spaniel and a Preston b-boy crew called Mystic Force makes this amazing. The increasingly prolific David Hellqvist (aka. the Baron) has done a good job with the Document project on the Timberland topic — there’s fashion talk in there, design talk and a really good conversation between my friends Nick Schonberger and Ronnie Fieg on the topic of the brand and its connection to NYC that I loved (sample quote: “Chris Webber used to buy 15 pairs of Timberland at a time”). That’s the kind of insight I want to read when we’re talking about brands that I’m smitten with.