PROTO TECH

Internet died to cap off a glumday night, but I won’t be deterred, so I’m working from the iPhone. Autocorrect is going to make this blog entry even more unintelligible than they normally are. Adding to my annoyance, I wanted to blog about Dapper Dan’s appearance on episode 2 of MTV’s ‘House of Style’ in 1989, but technical issues prevented that. And MTV doesn’t seem to have obtained clearance for that clip either. Tragically, we Brits can’t see our very own Sir Paul Smith give Dee Dee Ramone a makeover either, because you have to be Stateside to watch it online. I will pay half-decent money for DVD copies of every season. Jason Dill’s Fucking Awesome Radio on KCHUNG is worth your energy and is one of the few things keeping me sane right now: the Earl Sweatshirt guesting episode is available here to download. Dill has good musical taste and a good voice for radio. All I can do this evening is deliver some recycled nerdery from my Instagram that harks back to the Nike Olympic ‘100 Innovations From the Battle Against Drag’ exhibit that was set up in Beijing for summer 2008. Now everyone’s desperate to pull off a tech shoe and quasi-formality blend (the new US uniform according to We Are The Market), it’s worth looking back at some old experiments in technology that brought us some classics. I’ve been privileged enough to see the Nike archive a couple of times but I can’t say too much about it. It’s a good place to be if you’ve got a shoe problem though. Some of the most interesting designs manifest manifest themselves during the experimental phase and the lightweight mission that Coach Bowerman instigated has led to some one-offs that look good enough for wear. I wish some of the designs would drop as “work in progress” Tier Zero drops in appropriately sketchy packaging. The Tyvek shoe above is known as the FedEx Sample and dates back to 2001. Created as part of the MayFly project’s development prior to that shoe’s 2003 release, it’s made of mailer envelope material, using Dupont’s high density polyethylene fibres. Those perforations seem to have been added because Tyvek doesn’t breathe (it was also used in this Agassi experiment from 1999) and an ultralight ripstop fabric was the more intelligent choice. Below, the unnamed neoprene model from 1984 is something that Bruce Kilgore (head designer on the Air Current and Air Flow) developed, applying wetsuit fabric to a conventional running design. The stubby marker pen swoosh and NIKE on the heel are part of this shoe’s charm, but this helped birth the aforementioned Kilgore cult classics, the Huarache and the Presto. I really, really need to see the Bowerman neoprene prototypes that were created even earlier. Just as the Shox concept had been drifting around since the very early 1980s before it was revived pre-Millenium, don’t assume that the technology you’re losing your mind over hasn’t been in gestation for just as long. On/off topic, people weeping about shoe RRPs should stop letting their Tweets cry and go buy cheaper models and opt for something a little more offbeat. That’s what makes amassing shoes fun, but po-faced people #who #love #to #tag #stuff seem to have forgotten that. Standing with 5 friends and waiting to buy exactly the same thing immediately breaks he cardinal rule that thou shalt not wear the same shoes as the next man. Any measure that slaps you out that mindset can only be a good thing.

Sent from my iPhone

CLOTHES

Another MacBook is unleashing the spinning wheel, so I’m using an Acer that doesn’t have PhotoShop and doesn’t seem to want to accept the card from my camera. So you can make do with over stylised, untrustworthy Instagram shots with the filters that make terrible things look acceptable. I’m grateful that as yet, no magic haze has made writing look much better, though we hobbyist copywriters were hit by nobody actually reading anything over two sentences any more and people trying to tell us to write with Google in mind, so I think we’re all equally screwed by social media in 2012. I visited Jacket Required on Friday and got to wander around a tradeshow devoid of men who look like Zucchero and the guy from Nightcrawlers wielding multiple Wrangler and Superdry goodie bags. There were plenty of beige and camo things on display, plus lots of people seemed to be doing animal printed Y’OH-alikes without Kara’s reference points, but highlights came from Wood Wood’s technical-looking, sporty stuff, Our Legacy’s athletic pieces and Soulland’s Versace faux house of Soulland style sweats.

Lots of colour, lots of embroidery and a look of diffusion line that should set of something in the head of multiple generations who grew up desperate to amass labels. Soulland make beautiful, brilliant clothes and Silas Adler just gets it – I would have thought this brand was amazing for collaborating with Jacob Holdt a few years back, but for continually evolving, surely it’s due to blow up imminently? The orange sweat in particular had me bugging out the most. The blogs are about to go wild for technical apparel (which only a handful of factories in the world can execute properly) and food, but these sweats hit the sweet spot between older brother wear nostalgia and simply being bold and brilliant and confident in those tonal embroideries. US men’s magazines are all over Scandinavia at the moment, but they make it sound like little more than blonde women, slicked back hair, beards and rolled up pants, which I suppose it is, but additionally the clothing coming out of there leaves your heritage brand sprawling by evolving into the perfect mix of basics, avant-garde and detail.

What also had me hyped (though it wasn’t necessarily on display) was the UK-made Palace gear. Being a non-skater doofus who still wears the shirts, I was accosted with regards to the source of my Palace shirt during my recent NYC holiday and the brand seems to have gathered hype at an alarming rate. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch either. See those eBay prices for the Chanel tribute sweats? The way the Trail Blazers snapback is everywhere and how the afterthought New York Giants tee became a bestseller? Crazy. Now the brand has been bootlegged multiple times, people seem to think the comedy surf line is a fake too, but they’re mistaken. British made shirts (are we allowed to use that term “cut and sew” with its visions of gun print tee brands switching to preppy chambrays and chinos really badly?), jackets, plus trousers and other stuff is a nice expansion of the Palace brand and a nice Tango slap to anyone who thought it was just about bolshy screenprints. That’s’s something to look forward to over the next month.

If you know central London, you know that Camissa & Son does the best sandwich in the area at a good price. My friends at Slam City know that and they’ve contributed that recommendation to Vans’ Syndicate newspaper, ‘These Days’. I’m on Syndicate’s dick because it always gets things right. That LXVI stuff? I’m not convinced yet, but Syndicate’s packaging, risky choice of collaborators and hard-core approach to distribution is always appreciated. Their paper (supplied to me by Mr Charles Morgan) reminds me of Berlin’s fine ‘Aspekt Ratio’ in its broadsheet execution, but the lengthy Jason Dill and Anthony Van Engelen interview, guide to making your own tattoo machine, W(Taps’ TET on his first Vans (a pair of Sk8 His), an Ice-T interview (bringing the whole $YNDICATE thing full circle), chat with skate ‘zine legend Gary Scott Davis and a Mike Hill Alien Workshop design retrospective are all tremendous. I know creating a tangible piece of print media is this year’s equivalent of the dull video lookbook and teaser, but this is absorbing, passionate content that should resonate with multiple generations.

Lots of people hate Byron Crawford, but you can’t deny that his musings are the perfect antidote to a world where everybody’s toadying with hip-hop so they don’t get locked out the listening party. He’s just put out a Kindle book, ‘Mindset of a Champion: Your Favorite Rapper’s Least Favorite Book’ charting his rise from proto-blogger to-day jobber and internet, sorry, internets, star. It reads like one vast, sprawling, semi-proofed blog entry, but it’s a fun read. Crawford has a knack for capturing mundanity that matches his appetite for controversy (“KRS-One himself has never been on crack, as far as I know. he’s just crack-ish. he used to be homeless. He’s know for making off the wall statements.”) and there’s tales of rap board wars, talkbacks and hip-hop journalism that justify the £2 outlay within just a couple of chapters.

This interview with Brent Rollins is excellent. Like me, he wishes he came up with the UNDFTD logo, but unlike me, he’s a design genius and it’s revealed that he’s the Jordan IV and orange sock dude on the ‘Do the Right Thing’ poster. On a Complex-related note, this rant from the perspective of some chisel toe shoes is also worth your time.

The Kate Uptons of this world will come and go, but people will still get excited about Kate Moss. Yayo footage couldn’t stop her and neither can any number of sket upstarts. There’s a whole book about her called ‘Kate: the Kate Moss Book’ dropping in November via Rizzoli delivering a full retrospective of her career thus far. Jefferson Hack and Jess Hallett editing, plus an $85 pricetag and 368 pages indicates that it might be pretttttttty good.

THE FUCKING GLOWING SCREEN OF NONSENSE

KENNETH CAPPELLO: What do you think of blog culture?

JASON DILL: That ain’t for me. To each his own. I still don’t like the fucking glowing screen of nonsense.
(From ‘SNEEZE’ #11)

Very little’s been impressive this week. From a personal point-of-view, videos of dogs doing the conga (led by a hound on a bike), Perec’s ‘Species of Spaces,’ whoever left the comment, “The Passion of the Davro” on YouTube in relation to the Bobby Davro faceplant, English Frank on SBTV, livestock auction chants, the prospect of a Caligula comic book, Grace and WAH! raising some substantial charity cash, the relative ease which which one could obtain an iPad2 online, the impending London Supreme store, Chris Law and Lisa having a a son, Andy Milonakis’s “Swag”: tattoo, Randy Shilts’s ‘And the Band Played On’ and Juicy J’s works have been the only things to liven up the last 168 hours. Oh, and that Jason Dill quote, because Jason is still the man.

Missing the Herzog talk in London was a personal failure though.

I’m sure I saw a picture of some dude with shorts, a side-parting and a toggled jacket staring wistfully at a lake as part of a new lookbook from somebody. It epitomized the mediocrity I’ve exposed myself to this week — everything seemed to lack crystal clarity and retread the same old shit. I hope the next generation doesn’t look to older generations for answers — I speak to younger, creative characters and feel significantly more motivated than I do ambling back from a grim, meandering “everything’s shit” session over a flat white. Age is no automatic conferrer of greater knowledge. You can be old as fuck and still be a toy. I hope young ‘uns ignore us burn-outs who get possessive because new generations haven’t studied some imaginary curriculum of sacred cows that suffered a bovine dementia outbreak years ago and ceased to be relevant.

But then there’s the Werner Herzogs (at 68 years old) and Yohji Yamamotos (at 67 years old) who are Teflon Dons in their respective fields through sheer creativity that defies solitary sentence definition.

As well as the Yohji exhibition at the V & A, the designer’s precision and thought process look like they’re being explored in the forthcoming documentary, ‘This Is My Dream.’ I like Yamamoto’s lack of pretense in Wim Wenders’s ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’ where there’s much discussion surrounding notions of individuality in a world laden with postmodernism – he simply creates. I liked the hookups with Wenders, Michael Nyman and Takeshi Kitano — while I never took note of his work in the underrated ‘Brother’ or ‘Zatoichi,’ he helps make ‘Dolls’ even more visually appealing. I didn’t care too much for the slimline adidas stuff or the Jean-Michel Jarre 1989 suits. Clothing to accompany bendy keyboards and laser harps was too much like Poindexter on the electric violin in the leopard waistcoat, but everyone could learn a lot from those the 1980s Yamamoto catalogues with the Nick Knight and Peter Lindbergh photoshoots. They’re still works of art and fortunately, they weren’t laden with images of wankers by water.

The Nick Knight/Peter Saville/Marc Ascoli chat that went online last week is worth your energy, but the stern, stark feel of it made me feel a little fidgity. Still, some excellent points are made regarding photography and art direction. I really liked the anecdote than ends with, “We source black staples.” I guess that’s the attitude that pushes you into bankruptcy — but what a beautiful attitude it is.