At the moment, Kanye West can seemingly do no wrong. Ignoring the downsides – and the urge to make an incredibly tasteless joke – things are going pretty well for Mr West. So, you can understand the palpable excitement around his new trainers called the Air Yeezy’s. But are they any good?
As much as I want to like them, I’d have to say no. It’s just too busy. The design seems to be going in several different directions, ending up with a trainer that looks like four trainers cut and pasted into one. That said, I do have a preference for clean and simple trainers, so maybe these will appeal to those who like their Dunks splattered in different colours.
Savile Row tailors John Pearse, under license for Konaka are the name behind a new suit which needs no dry-cleaning. The idea is that thanks to the special fabric — a mixture of fibres including wool and polyester — developed in association with Australian Wool Innovation Ltd you can wash your suit in the shower before you got to bed and the next it will be dry and wrinkle free and fresh.
Unofortunately unless you’re Japanese you can’t yet buy it but amuse yourself instead with this promo clip which sounds like a dodgy Kraftwerk video and assures us the suit needs “no ironed”. Indeed.
Men.Style.com have a great article on Marc Jacobs up where he addresses issue with his shows, his body and accusations of a midlife crisis. His response to the latter is “I don’t feel like I’m in crisis, and I don’t know that it’s the middle of my life”. Fair enough.
While it’s great he’s decided to get fit and all, he does look slightly bizarre – like a regular persons head stickered on top of a picture of a Calvin Klein model. Andy Peters and Gary Rhodes also have this effect and there’s something slightly unsettling about the look of it. Not that I’m knocking them for working out, I’m just saying.
[Picture by Martin Schoeller/Taken from men.style.com]
Sticking to their Japanese roots Onitsuka Tiger launched the world’s first vending machine for trainers today.
Stocking trainers in UK sizes 5 to 10 the vending machine will be dispensing shoes until Wednesday when it will embark on a tour of the country. If you fancy some ultra quick retail therapy head down to their London store on Newburgh St and if you’re lucky enough to win their competition you might just get you pair of vending machine trainers for free!
See after the jump for pictures of people larking about with the vending machine.
Captured while waiting for the limited edition Bape-branded Nintendo DS released earlier this month, although it took two and a half minutes to get to the front, apparently that’s still only 2/3rds of the number who actually turned up.
It’s been a busy week for Bape fans. After a holding a concert headlined by Pharrell and Kanye on Thursday, the brand threw another bash on Saturday at their flagship Hong Kong store; and wrapped the week up by releasing a couple of bits from the S/S collection on Sunday.
A few pics after the jump (the last one is a bath mat by the way).
You might have noticed a new addition to Brandish, we’ve added a Twitter feed where we will be posting our sartorial musings. If you’re on Twitter yourself you can add us to your list here and we can start making friends.
I’m sincerely hoping Will didn’t get a mullet, or if he did that he’ll post a picture on Brandish for us.
What do you get when you combine a fashion director, a fairly underground-style publication, techno dancers and new fashion? No, not a waft of nostalgia (at least I should hope not) and not a drug-fuelled roller-disco but the latest Dazed & Confused cover.
This is big not only because Dazed has decided to give a male model its cover but also because this male model is an unknown. In fact according to the notorious fashion grapevine, Kevin is not a model at all but a dancer caught up in “Tecktonick” (a dance supposedly all the rage in France!)
Read on for the full editorial and more on the issue.
The Dutch duo behind the beloved Fantastic Man magazine have teamed up with Acne to produce the ‘Gentleman’s Jeans’, a pair of slightly tapered slim-ish fitting dark denim jeans. The Fantastic Man editors Gert Jonkers & Jop van Bennekom describe it thus:
“It’s reminiscent of a style that we’d see on our fathers and uncles — the dreaded pleated denim chino — but then updated and made wonderful for today and for ourselves.”
Taking the origins of jeans as workwear as a starting point Acne have adapted the classic trousers for the modern man, and they suit formal wear as much as a casual look. They are available from Acne’s online store for £170.
Not many musicians can claim that their concert costumes are designer-made. Sure the Spice Girls had Cavalli and Madonna can have just about any designer she fancies, but I think Lenny Kravitz has to be one of the few male performers to receive this special luxury treatment.
Paul Weller and Fred Perry are so deeply linked that you wonder why he hasn’t just gave up the music stuff and just started working for them full time. It’s not like anyone wants to hear a new album from him. This collection of polo shirts, due for release in June, are pretty much what we’ve come to expect from their collaborations, in a good way.
With these shirts, it’s the details that count. The detail on the neck manages to make it stand out whilst still looking like a polo shirt. If you’re absolutely dying to get your hands on these, you can register at the Fred Perry website to get them a full 72 hours before everyone else does.
Essentially a large pair of pants, Fundies allow you to share undergarment space with a loved one; I’ve never seen anything quite like it before but they are up for grabs on eBay for $4.99 (link kind of nsfw). Why Dov Charney hasn’t picked up on this and decided to release a range of Fundies modelled by a pair skittish underlings I don’t know, it seems perfect for the brand.
If American Apparel decide to get in on the Fundies idea I definitely want full recognition though, perhaps in the form of a pair of gold lamé legging Fundies.
Gemma and I hot-footed it over to Old Street on Friday for the opening of Mr Start, Start Boutique menswear tailoring store. Mr Start is offering a made-to-measure tailoring service as well as a host of other labels including Peckham Rye. The shop itself is pretty stylish, combining traditional wood cabinets with industrial shelving and neon lighting.
So I realise that this is the second time we ( fine, I) have looked at Hayden Christensen on a magazine cover over a relatively short time period but surely a young male celebrity who has every reason to be guarded with the use of his image but agrees to be on the cover of a men’s (non-dirty) magazine in only its second issue deserves to mentioned in our blog? Now better looking blog I might mention.
That and the fact that this issue contains interviews with Alexander McQueen, Editorials with Catherine McNeil, Sean Opry, Camilla Akrans and a whole feature shot underwater. Honestly, am I the only one supressing their child-like excitement here?
The Guardian had an article up about men with messenger
bags – I refuse to call them ‘manbags’ – Although I just did. Damn. They ask five people ranging from Topman’s design director to NME’s editor about what’s in their bags, what make their bag is and how they feel about the term ‘manbag’.
The answers as to what’s in them are relatively the same; books, notebooks, ipods, phones, everything that’s too big for your pockets. The fuss over ‘manbags’ is a silly one. They’re just a replacement for rucksacks – not an example of a new breed of man emerging. The reason they’re popular is because they’re functional and fashionable, with the emphasis on functional. There’s nothing more to it than that.
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