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.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Haven’t got too much to say right now, but you should definitely check out the DAZED piece on Jungle style to preempt the 4OD documentary in a couple of hours — that there was 22 minutes of a major TV channel dedicated to Britain’s hardcore scene last week was a minor miracle and my expectations are sky-high for this instalment. This YouTube video of a very interesting conversation with the mighty “Rock ‘n Roll anthropologist,” Penelope Spheeris (director of Wayne’s World) from the other week might be relevant to a handful of visitors here who agree with me that Suburbia and The Boys Next Door are classics and that these are two of the best parts of any documentaries ever. Her life story is remarkable.



I wrote a little piece for Stüssy Biannual #3 on the mighty PHADE of the Shirt Kings. I know that it’s the done thing to misuse the term ‘humbling’ in these situations (it wasn’t), but it was a real honour to be involved because I grew up staring at album covers with PHADE and co’s work on the sleeves in one way or another (word to Kid Capri) and wishing that I could own a Stüssy t-shirt. The thirteen year old me would probably spontaneously combust at the prospect of being able to merge the two things and it’s important to keep that in mind. T-shirts that reference sport footwear are mostly terrible, giving wearers over the age of 20 that Robin Williams Jack manchild steez (watch for those black/red Air Jordan Is though), but Frank the Butcher put me onto Chicago brand KSSK‘s Heaven’s Gate Nike Decade tee (was this the first blog to ever talk about that shoe/mass shoeicide via Ghettrocentricity’s oracle-like shoe knowledge? I think it was), with some old style copywriting that makes it the best cultural reference to trainers on a shirt that I’ve seen in a long, long time. Salutes to KSSK for that one.

HEROES IN PRINT

James Hyman is the guy who resisted the voices telling him to get rid of his magazine collection. I’ve been weak and thrown away my favourites and, contrary to tech prophets, never seen the content that’s slowly fading from my memory, like a paperback on the windowsill, anywhere online. As a testament to Hyman’s hoarder mentality, his archive contains 450 crates and 52,004 issues of 2,448 unique publications. There’s titles in there that the internet doesn’t even mention once. I could spend a long, long, long time just browsing old Sources and Faces to bring some colour back to those eroded psychological snapshots. Check out the Hyman Archive right here (and I’m not just saying that because I’m quoted at the start of the video.

Kelefah Sanneh’s profile of Daniel ‘Dapper Dan’ Day in this week’s New Yorker (complete with a Louis Vuitton ad on the back cover) is tremendous. It places what Dan created in a greater context, discussing the (il)legalities of his work, talking to Tyson, breaking down the infamous ‘Alpo Coat’ with the gun pocket, the connection between the audacious hustler outfits and Africa, the previously undocumented part of his career where he bootlegged Timberland and Guess, Fat Joe’s status as a longtime customer and how Floyd Mayweather Jr. still works with him. It’s the reason magazines are important and it’s tremendous that they gave it 8 pages — a story that needed to be told given the position it deserved. The Man Who Dressed Hip-Hop is up there with some of the great articles on the subject. Go buy it if you’re trapped outside their paywall (Calvin Tomkins’ When Punk Becomes Art piece is good too). It’s a shame that the blogsphere lacks the attention span or reverence to put out something this comprehensive that celebrates a figure whose contribution to the streetwear and high-end collision that causes queues today. Hyman’s horde is proof that print still has an aura and depth, and this is proof that print is still extremely relevant.

While we’re on the subject of entrepreneurial New Yorkers who inadvertently spawned strains of hip-hop fashion that built empires, it’s worth (air)brushing up on Phade of Shirt Kings (who’s putting out a book next month) and his work via this 6 minute documentary. Dues are being paid and it’s better late than never.

Fast-forwarding to hip-hop style in 2013, Gunplay’s Allhiphop weed-addled post-house arrest video shows him wearing a Supreme-style tee that’s Tumblr fake in its brazen knockoff status. I don’t now who Specials are, but I know that’s not a Terry Hall or Jerry Dammers collab right there. Even that bellend from Made in Essex buys his own stuff from the store. The expression on Gunplay’s face indicates that he probably doesn’t know what it says anyway. Homages of homages are weak— like when Bobby Davro used to parody Smashy and Nicey on Rock With Laughter (I’m glad he smashed his face open for that one). Does anyone else remember the glut of fake Supreme tees in TK Maxx circa 2003 with the box logos on the back? Smedium Exploited shirts next to the Full Circle garms, plus knockoff Bounty Hunter and Recon. I’ve always wanted to know where they came from.

Finally, shouts to Jian from Four Pins for the shout in this interview right here. I like how haunted menswear blogging is by the realisation that it’s just an ordered cluster of natural shouldered jackets, denim, leather accessories, technical runners, NATO straps and factory tours. It tries to skip from menswear to fashion but then it’s all lost like Marcus Brody at the fair in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It’s like getting upset because other people like wearing trousers. As long as men wear stuff, then menswear will probably be quite a popular thing.

I find that if I look too far into how facile my lifestyle is, I find myself staring into the abyss and realize that every aspect of my existence is an irrelevance. So to all the worriers — just keep posting lookbooks and don’t think about it too much. I read about some guy going crazy from studying quantum mechanics because it rendered all he knew irrelevant and I heard talk of post-menswear can do that too. Just wear your gear and accept that the post-apocalypse world will not require stylists, writers or curators.

Jian, Jon Moy and the Four Pins squad do an excellent job of writing in a learned snarky manner that I respect, making it one of the rare sites on its chosen subjects that I return to (I tell everyone else that I do, but I don’t). I hope it spawns a new wave of blogging on shoes, clothes and related matters, because most people are still covering stuff as if they’re describing it to their grandparents. In an age of unauthoritative authorities, Four Pins is one of the few voices that’s on point. /enddickriding

HOLY SHIT, THERE’S A SHIRT KINGS BOOK

Schemed a blog entry on the train then found out another better blog had done it already. I was going to blog about the Nike & Stüssy project but there’s about 3,000 things about it on the internet already — needless to say, I’m extremely grateful that Adam and Jorge (a phenomenal designer) let me write some stuff and Eric Elms was kind enough to put me in touch with those guys. I missed out on the opportunity to work in a period of advertising I worship and they retroed an aesthetic beautifully in #the #hashtag #era. But you can Google that and see better coverage. As I wait for a Rizzoli Dapper Dan retrospective to sit alongside the Hussein Chalayan book, I’ve been looking back at a couple of gems that capture the naivety of Euro teen hip-hop obsession as well as a time when you weren’t so jaded that you didn’t look at your new shoe/track top/cap/t-shirt last thing before the lights went off at night. Now we’re all scheming the next purchase before the email confirmation of commerce even arrives. That’s why I loved Dokument Press’s ‘Cause We Got Style!’ last year, laden with plenty of pasty faces pulling off b-boy poses in gear that almost certainly required some fraternal hookups and pen friend behaviour as well as complicated – and perilous — modes of payment by mail. European hip-hop posing in 2012 doesn’t seem as fun.

‘Cause We Got Style’ was a fine supplement to the Cold War East Germany hip-hop scene documentary, ‘Here We Come’ — further proof that Europeans rival our friends in Japan on the obsession front and manage to make good use of scant resources like some sub-cultural survivalists. Dokument are dropping something equally exciting in April 2013 with the release of ‘Shirt Kings — Pioneers of Hip-Hop Fashion’ by Edwin “PHADE” Sacasa and Ket. PHADE and his NYC crew’s contribution to the print t-shirt, hip-hop style and as a result, street style as a whole is substantial and 144 pages of Shirt Kings is a serious prospect, given how popular a mere scattering of images from blogs and PHADE’s MySpace of happy Shirt Kings’ customers proved. I’ve always wondered how many of the shoes in those shots came from the legendary Mitch’s shoe spot near the Shirt Kings set up and Eddie Plein’s OG gold grill location. This is a promising publication — salutes to Dokument for putting out this kind of thing.

That was an anaemic Wednesday entry — I promise I’ll make it up to you.

In the meantime, go read the new issue of Oi Polloi’s Pica~Post here. On the subject of re appropriation and style, there’s a good interview with Olmes Carretti the man behind Best Company in there — a brand worn by some top boys as well as Russ Abbott in the ‘Atmosphere’ video. Carretti’s own website is a treasure trove of Euro ads for his brands, including a ton from ten years of Best Company. Is that coke or snow on that guy’s nose?

HYPE

Hype makes the industry tick. No blog buzz within 24 hours of launch? Disaster. Nothing gets time to breathe. I find myself laughing at peers picking up on something that went wall-to-wall on Facebook 48 hours prior, and it’s not something that I’m proud of. I’m convinced that the downside of this quick hit, tentacled notion of “street culture” is that while it might snake out far beyond printed tees (and my friend Mr. Marcus Troy made an interesting point on Hypebeast regarding the possibility that too many brands might be dwelling on an “over it” audience at the expense of an audience who want to wear caps, tees and hats, rather than washed-out, button-down blues), it doesn’t seem to take time to create any roots.

I also think that exposure to everything that goes down globally in ten minutes of browsing is homogenising local scenes. I still the joys of information overload provide benefits that outweigh that issue, but I felt it was something worth discussing, because when you turn into a miserable old fuck like me, you cease to create, and commence with utterly unnecessary introspect. Eugene at Hypebeast was kind enough to let me vent a little on the site about a lack of movements (though the title accidentally invokes my lazy way of life and approach to my career too), complete with a little disclaimer too for the site’s Op-Ed experiment.

Lest I look too much like an ageing hipster doofus, I wrote it a short time before the OFWGKTA movement truly went mainstream with the Kimmel and bug-chewing and I realised that nearly every hip-hop blog had become a redundant Johnny-come-lately. So please allow for the token trendy dad reference point. It’s the kind of unfocused ramble you might find here – mostly BlackBerry written and bearing my trademark cavalier approach to grammar. But the aim wasn’t another tiresome things were better in 19_ _ or 20_ _” rant, rather a query as to how cultures might progress in the abundant information age. You can find it here. The next Hypebeast crossover with this self-indulgent corner of the internet will be more focused, but it’s a fun opportunity I appreciate.

Any talk of HYPE also reminds me of the excellent 1989 Sports Illustrated article of the same name, talking about the relationship between sport and hyperbole, using the white leather jacket with “Don’t Believe the Hype” in gold and black across the back that Mike Tyson was fetching from Harlem’s Dapper Dan store at 4 in the morning when he ran into Mitch “Blood” Green and left him needing expensive sunglasses.

Just as the Lo-life gang’s illicit efforts popularized Polo, Hilfiger Nautica and The North Face in such a way that they altered street style forever, Dapper Dan deserves similar status — Gucci, MCM and Louis Vuitton can’t have been too pleased to see themselves bootlegged to the point where folk thought they might be making the madcap items taking pride of place on record sleeves sailing up the Billboard charts, but they created a brand loyalty and aspiration that’s made these houses a fortune. The Louboutin Swizz hookup and Kanye Vuittons are the by product of what “Dapper” Daniel Day was capitalizing on when he stayed open 24 hours for an audience of celebrities and the criminal minded back in the day.

Exclusive Game clothing are following that lineage with their gear for Jadakiss, Rick Ross and Diddy (check the custom MCM piece in the ‘Another One’ video) and anyone crying “FAKE!” might be missing the point. I only recently noticed that DJ E-Z Rock is wearing some customised Louis Vuitton monogram Air Force 1s in Janette Beckman’s 1988 photo shoot for the ‘It Takes Two’ album. Maybe I’d always been too distracted by the early Uptown sighting on an artist’s foot as well as that Dapper Dan tracksuit to pay full attention to the swoosh and heeltab. I always thought the designer fabric Air Force was a late 1990’s phenomenon, but this was Harlem style in full effect.

PHADE and the crew’s Shirt Kingz empire that ran relatively concurrent to the Dapper Dan movement with their printed sweats and tees deserves its props as part of the bigger contemporary picture now too. Mr. Paul Mittleman posted up some images of the crew’s heyday (I love the Safari sighting and some shots reiterate just how popular the Air Force II was — there’s some Assault action beyond the Fat Boys too) recently and it was clear that while the west had its own surf and skate culture for new brands to gnaw on, hip-hop’s golden age informed the east coast’s streetwear — Jamaica Coliseum Mall, where the Kingz had their retail operation apparently has a stall selling airbrushed shirts up to the present day, but PHADE, NIKE and KASHEME helped form a uniquely hip-hopcentric apparel and an industry that’s worth billions.

Shit, even the cheap artist photo tees that followed (usually incorporating a deceased artist) inspired Supreme’s teamups with Raekwon, Jim Jones and Juelz, plus the rest of those eBay-friendly releases. That lineage makes the sight of a sullen Lou Reed on a shirt even more entertaining.