023: Greasy Rider

If you’ve not spotted it already, our latest STYLED was shot on location at the historic and self-reviewing North London transport café, Ace Café.

Combining an English version of Easy Rider with a greasy spoon café (Greasy Rider, if you will), Ace Café established itself as central to the history of UK motorcycle culture thanks to the masculine trifecta of “motorcycles, cars and rock n’ roll”. Opened in 1938, the café was the home of the “ton-up kids” throughout the 50s and the Rockers in the 60s who would race along the newly opened motorways, stopping briefly to refuel with petrol, tea, and larger.

Apparently, the Ton-up kids at Ace Café used to start a song playing on the jukebox and then attempt to race to the Hanger Lane Junction and back (a three mile round trip) before the song had finished. This was no mean feat in the 1950s when - as everyone knows - the average length of a song was 2m30s. Try the same thing twenty years later with Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb (running time 6m30s) you could leisurely complete the route and have time for a cup of tea before David Gilmour crooned the last line.

More information about Ace Café and its history can be found in their newly published book, “Ace Times - speed thrills and tea spills, a cafe and a culture”, which is available from their website.

022: Run Carlos, Run

Admittedly we’re not trainer nerds but some reissues really capture the imagination. The latest styles from adidas Originals, for example, are slices of vulcanised history, each representing a stride forward in sportswear giant’s development but also in this history of athletics.

One such reissue is the ZX 8000. Launched in 1985, the ZX 8000 introduced the Torsion sole system to the world, providing improved support and movement for runners. A significant development in running shoe technology, the ZX 8000 was quickly adopted by professional athletes and soon became tied to the story of one athlete in particular, the Portuguese long distance runner Carlos Lopes.

Lopes became a Portuguese national hero when he won the marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in a world record time of 2:09:21. He was the first athlete from his nation to win Olympic gold and also the oldest ever winner of the marathon at 37. Remarkably, his Olympic record stood for 24 years until it was finally broken in Beijing in 2008. Here are edited highlights of that winning run. Carlos even finds the time to smile and wave at supporters as he enters the home straight.

Carlos wasn’t wearing adidas ZX 8000s in Los Angeles in 1984, and more’s the pity. He was, however, wearing them a year later in 1985, when he competed in the Rotterdam marathon. It was to be his last competitive race and, with a fresh pair of newly launched ZX 8000s on his feet, he shaved 53 seconds of the world marathon record, finishing in 2:07:12 – a whole 2 minutes and 9 seconds quicker than his gold medal winning effort.

Finally, as if the man hadn’t achieved enough, Carlos also features in an episode of The Simpsons, and there’s no pinnacle of human achievement higher accolade than that.

021: Some of Graham’s Favourites

This week our mix comes from indie icon Graham Coxon - yes, him from Blur.

Graham’s mix is a companion piece to his new solo album A+E, and includes some of the tracks that have inspired his latest record. Listen out for post-punk from The Monochrome Set and Butthole Surfers sitting next to Crystal Castles and Beck.

Listen to the mix here.

020: Just The Fax

When this picture found its way into our office last week we were a little surprised. Not just by the content, but because it’s widely know that Paul Smith is a bit of a technophobe. He doesn’t use e-mail and has an aversion to the internet.

We couldn’t imagine a situation where Paul was sat at a computer, casually browsing Hypebeast, and came across this post of our staff member Latoyah shot by one of our photographers Bevan.

After a little digging we uncovered that one of Paul’s diligent staff members brought it to his attention. He was kind enough to put his John Hancock on it and fax is over, 90s style.

Our reply: Thanks Paul! We’ll keep buying your things if you keep making them.

019: Life of Grimes

When a new act can break, rise, and fall on the strength of one YouTube video, it’s refreshing when a hyped artist not only meets but surpasses your expectations. Grimes is one of those artists.

We first came across Grimes last year when she released a split EP with MIX SERIES contributor D’Eon. Since then we’ve been following her avidly and her debut album Visions has been on solid rotation in the oki-ni office for at least a month now.

The talented Mrs Boucher is now a well-established blog darling, but if you burst the social media bubble you reveal a complex individual who produces her own music, creates her own artwork, writes songs about obscure Russian philosophy, and constructs beautiful music that combines warm nostalgia with a sharp edge of modernity. The girl also knows how to dress and has already been photographed by the soon-to-be YSL creative director Hedi Slimane for the April cover of Dazed.

That said, no amount of waffle will endear you to Grimes as much as this video will.

Just don’t call her adorable, she isn’t into that.

018: Guess Who?

Does he have a beard?

Are his leggings leopard print?

Is he wearing a leotard?

These are the kind of questions you would be asking if Bernhard Willhelm released his own branded version of the popular board game Guess Who? Unfortunately, up until the date of writing no such version of the game is known to exist. However, we do encourage fans of the irrepressible Belgian designer who are into DIY to create their own version of the game from this handy group of backstage images taken at Bernhard’s SS’12 show*.

Meanwhile, the first spring/summer delivery of Bernhard Willhelm product – the footwear collaboration with Camper - went live yesterday, with more to follow later this month.

*Download the image here. If anyone actually does this and sends us a picture we would be mightily impressed.

017: EXCITING MIX SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT

This week the gang at oki-ni towers are pretty excited because we have a genuine icon of British music contributing to our MIX SERIES.

While we’re going to play our cards pretty close to our chest until Friday when the mix goes live, we can exclusively reveal that the mystery contributor is a tender performer who isn’t afraid to turn it up. Avoiding stereotypes, he is a member of one of the UK’s most successful and acclaimed bands who have been at the forefront of British music since 1992. Also a celebrated solo artist, this far out musician is a top man whose music will entertain girls and boys from now until the end of a century.

Finally, in completely unrelated news, we’d like to wish a very happy birthday to Graham Coxon, who turns 42 today.

016: COLLEVOCE by jozif

We started our MIX SERIES to give artists an opportunity to do something out of the ordinary and young London-based DJ and producer jozif certainly got the memo. While jozif keeps dancefloors across Europe moving night after night with seamlessly mixed sets, his contribution to our series is an old fashioned mixtape, rich in contrast and variation.

An eclectic collection of the music that jozif been drawn to over the years, COLLEVOCE (meaning “out of time”) starts with the Beatle’s favourite artist, Harry Nilsson, and then embarks on an hour-and-a-half journey through Primal Scream, Deep Purple, ESG and Paul Simon, to name but a few.

Listen to the mix here.

015: Activate Rear Incendiary Devices

In the era of Sky+ and iPlayer you can almost look back at TV adverts with a fond sense of nostalgia. Like an aging Lothario leafing through his little black book, reminiscing about the beauties he used to romance, TV advertising gives the impression of a medium that is well past its best.

Today we are plagued by anthropomorphised meerkats, grating jingles, and countless oh-so-spontaneous flash mobs. You start to forget that TV advertising is a medium that has inspired greatness. Was it not so long age that we were treated to Spike Jonze’s dreamy addidas commercial, Sony’s bouncing balls, and the best work of Guy Richie’s career with his superb Nike Football advert.

Luckily, ever so often, a commercial comes around that reminds you that adverts can be thirty second slices of genius. Thank you Wes Anderson and Hyundai for making us believe again. Now hurry up and release Moonrise Kingdom.

014: Like a Rolling Stone

A rolling stone gathers no moss, or so the saying goes. It seems to be an idiom that our friends over at Stone Island have taken quite literally, as they have just announced that their flagship London store will be rolling down the road from its current location on Beak Street to a whole new address at 79 Brewer Street.

We work in the same office as their web team, so as a gift (and to ensure we get to the front of the free drinks queue at the opening party on the 21st of March) we put together this animation to illustrate the fact.

013: Wax on/Wax off

This week’s delivery of African print shirts from Woolrich and Woolrich Woolen Mills encouraged us to do a little digging into the history of these vibrant materials and their origins.

If you take them at face value these prints are simply formations of colours and shapes (and who doesn’t like those?), but if you begin to pull at the loose threads of this story you soon reveal something altogether more interesting.

While this type of fabric - created by an ancient technique called wax resist dying - is popularly regarded as “African”, its origins are far more convoluted. Records suggest that it arrived in West Africa via Dutch traders in the mid-1800. The Dutch had spotted a similar cloth in Java called batik and, spotting a trading opportunity, tried to reproduce it.

Industrialising the resist dying process, they produced a version of the fabric on a mass scale with the intention of selling back to the Indonesians at a profit. But like all best laid plans this one didn’t reach fruition and the surplus fabric was redistributed to various posts on the numerous Dutch trade routes. One such stop was on the Gold Cost of West Africa, where the people instantly took a shine to this new vivacious fabric.

Fast forward nearly two decades to present day and although the roots of this unique fabric are not strictly African, over a century of use and significance within West African culture has established the fabric and print style as a integral part of the culture’s self-expression.

Soon after the fabric’s introduction patterns were bring created to celebrate local chiefs, community leaders, and dates of historical significance, which ties us back to today – International Women’s Day – as this fantastic fabric below was produced to celebrate this very event in 2008.

So, next time you pull on an “African” print shirt should you meditate on the complex wrangling of history that brought it to you, maybe feeling the heavy weight of colonialism on your shoulders? Possibly. However, we are more inclined to appreciate the bright colours and vibrant patterns, as those West African natives did over 150 years ago. 

(Read more about this fascinating subject here, here, and even here.)

012: Undercover

In fashion circles mentioning the name Jun Takahashi provokes a mood of hushed admiration. To call Jun a fashion designer is reductive. Alongside his celebrated clothing line Undercover – which went live on oki-ni yesterday - he has also produced furniture, dolls (which he calls Graces), and a specialist running collection with Nike.

He is an artist who works in many mediums, each time delivering finished product that muses on a problem before offering his unique solution. That he cites iconic German industrial designer Dieter Rams as an influence, and has referenced his “less, but better” design ethos in previous collections supports this appreciation of the relationship between form and function.

For his latest Undercover collection, titled “openstrings”, Jun has produced a collection inspired by the grief of the Japanese tsunami, but with a mood of hope and recovery. Stylistically, it displays the label’s signature mixture of streetwear and couture influences, all subtly tinged with the designer’s early punk roots.

Gain an insight into the mind of this fascinating designer by watching the video for the collection (below).

You can also find more pictures from the Undercover studio and collages from Jun Takahashi’s scrapbook over on the A Magazine site, where he curated an edition.

011: Skowhegan, Maine

A quick scan of Hypebeast, Selectism, or High Snobiety will demonstrate how popular these factory visit videos are at the moment, and with so many in circulation it’s easy to become a little jaded. Luckily, this effort from New Balance has two main things going for it:  the first, that New Balance are amazing; and the second, that the Main accent is fantastically entertaining.

(For further examples of the New England / Boston accent see the recent Ben Affleck film The Town, Good Will Hunting, or Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.)

010: WEARECOLD by Rimar

This week’s mix comes from the talented young Brooklynite, Rimar. If you had to use one word to describe Rimar’s sound it would be slick.

For his mix, Rimar has drawn from a range of influences to create a beautiful downtempo mix, with a sharp contemporary sound but also a haunting nostalgic quality. It really is a case of a mix coming together to become more than the sum of its parts.

Listen here.

009: Raf of the Rovers

This week the fashion world was blindsided by the news that one of the most celebrated and successful partnerships of the past decade – Raf Simons at Jil Sander – had come to an abrupt end. His final curtain call in Milan provoked rapturous applause, cheers, and even a tear or two, as those in attendance demonstrated their admiration for a designer at the peak of his powers.

The media whirlwind that followed the news was just as remarkable and if you follow football it you might have been reminded of the frantic churning of the rumour mill in the run up to transfer deadline day. Such a fast pace can turn out freak stories. Whispers of Raf to Dior or Slimane to YSL were fair enough, but a season-long loan deal for Christopher Kane always sounded fanciful.

But the growing similarity between footballers and designers doesn’t end there. Just as the idea of a “one club player” is now a romantic anachronism in football, the eponymous fashion house also seems like something of a novelty these day. Talent is tapped up rather than allowed to develop at a local level. In Britain alone, stories about big fashion houses waving large stacks of cash under Jonathan Anderson’s nose to lure him away from his own label surface with a predictable regularity.

Yet while individuals are treated like commodities, the houses have also changed their architecture. The idea of an independently-run global fashion house is now as quaint as an independently owned top-tier European football club (although Paul Smith and F.C. Barcelona are notable and successful examples of each), as families and chairmen have been replaced by boards and investment groups.

Jil Sander founded her label in 1968, but creative differences with Prada CEO Patrizio Bertelli caused her to leave the label that carried her name on two separate occasions (Prada were then the majority shareholders). This scenario may previously have been the exception, but it is fast becoming the rule. Look no further than Martin Margeila if you need more evidence of this. Today 75% of Jil Sander is owned by the British private equity firm, Change Capital Partners (CCP). Who can predict if Jil’s third coming will be any smoother than her second?

The abrupt way Raf was ousted points to a disconnect between the creative talent that powers a fashion house, giving it life and vitality, and the corporate structure that underpins its day-to-day running and provides the all-important capital. It goes without saying that Raf is an exceptional talent - if he were a footballer he would certainly have a Ballon D’Or or two gathering dust on his mantel piece - and he will soon be plying his trade elsewhere. But for now excitement about his next project is tinged with a sadness that such as stunning partnership has come to an end.

What comes next only Raf can say, but we will certainly be buying his next strip – home and away – with “Raf 95” printed on the back.