White Wash: The massive DKNY advertising mural turned Soho icon at Manhattan’s Houston and Broadway is, like all the other signs of the neighborhood’s 80s heyday, not long for this world. [WWD]

NFL Lock Out: Football may ban excessive hair use, putting an end to those Thors and rastas of the gridiron. [Styledash]

Chaste Bunnies: The Philippine version of Playboy will be a fully-clothed, demure affair with, “maybe one nipple,” here and there. No fun. [Canadian Press]

Forever in Blue Jeans: Mike “Muffin Top” Albo searches for recession-proof denim. [NYTimes]

Panic at The Mexico: Emo kids are facing systematic beat downs south of the border and uniting to defend their rights and feathered hair. March on, wasted youth. March on. [The Daily Swarm]

Forged Signature: Refusing to let a little thing like legal permission hold it back, an Italian clothes maker bravely strikes out on its own to create the George Clooney collection. [WWD]

The Holy Grail: Bring on the male birth-control pill. [Altpenis]

Il Bue Che Dice Cornuto All’asino: Italy bans Tom Ford ad because of their long tradition of high-minded, unporny public discourse. [Radar]

The Distinguished Gentleman From Milan: In related news, Santo Versace, business manager of the family label, has joined Italy’s Parliment. [WWD, 2nd item]

“Masturbation Cuts Cancer Risk”: Well, in that case, maybe we’ll try it some time. [BBC]

Slip Ons: Socks for men without shoes. [Men’s Vogue]

Ripped From the Headlines: Our very own Jared Paul Stern is set to be detonated in effigy in an upcoming episode of “Law & Order.” We couldn’t be more proud. Also, Chung-chung. [NY Daily News]

Ring of Fire: Like a ribbon ‘round your finger, this accessory will remind you of appointments or anniversaries or burn you in the process. [Uncrate]

Beggars and Choosers: A probing piece about the difficulties of funding and presenting at Fashion Week. [Papierdoll]

Monroe Doctrine: The Marilyn sex-tape fantasy goes “pop” in 1,460 words. [Defamer]

Members Only: A jacket checklist for these windbreaker months. [Refinery29]

Fresh Meat: These gory Eva Herzigova shots by Mario Testino have us hot, hungry and a little bit scared. [The Photography Link]

Curb Your Dog: Some horrid pooch went and peed on our beloved Natalie Portman while she was traipsing about the part with Freak-Folk boytoy Devendra Banhart. Gentlemen that we are, we already have a contract out on the hairy mutt (and the dog as well). [NYPost]

Drawers Raise a Stink: The latest banned ads in Europe aren’t by Tom Ford, but rather the product of Hanes’ anti-racism, anti-subtleness marketing department. [DNR]

Car-Port Chic: Ksubi, Maison Martin Margiela and Adam Kimmel create couture car covers for Intersection Magazine. [Intersection]

Designs from the Pokey: Germans are buying up prisoner-made clothes. The prisoners, predictably, not so much. [CNN]

Street Talk: Izzy points us in the direction of Times fashion photog Bill Cunningham’s new audio slideshow. [Manolo for the Men]

Vampira Lives: Alabaster exhibitionist Dita Von Teese avoids the sunlight. We’ll share the darkness with her any time. [NY Daily News]

Time Travel: Men’s Vogue cast their eyes forward to the Patek Philippe exhibition at Tiffany & Co, offering us some jaw-dropping preview images. [Men’s Vogue]

Courting the Bro’ Vote: There are conflicting reports about who placed those Abercrombie & Fitch jokers behind Barack Obama at a campaign speech. If, as reported, this was the Obama campaign’s attempt to reach out to young voters, it redefines “going negative” in our opinion. [WWD]

Tomorrow Never Knows: The Moment stares into the future and, as Kempt icon Leonard Cohen says, it’s murder. That, and chairs made of stuffed animals. [The Moment]

Rocky Road: Our Gisele pairs up with Sly Stallone to film a Volkswagen commercial for Brazilian television. We’ve been scratching our heads all day on this one. [NYPost]

Check List: Señor David Coleman takes on the whole plaid-on-plaid mishigas. [NYTimes]

Today, PSFK points us to another web gem. This time it’s a post about pre-experience design. That’s (apparently) what brainy ad folk call your expectation of the product, built up by the various things you’ve heard about it. The shining example is the ubiquitous iPhone ads that made everyone want to be able to turn their phone sideways and “pinch” to zoom. Creating the experience starts before anyone buys an iPhone, the argument goes. If you really want to enjoy that wine, he suggests, you should start by buying an expensive glass.

What all this has to do with style»

Although you might not know it from the copy, advertising is spreading out. It’s not just television and print anymore; it’s viral stunts, sponsorships, naming rights, and product placement. The world is getting more media from more angles and advertising is coming along for the ride. Anything you can do, you can do for advertising. All you have to do is tack a logo on the end.

Given that, we’re happy to see videos like this. We’d never heard of Bowmore before, but they just showed us the perfect way to polish our shoes.

And that has to count for something.

See the video after the jump»

via Dan Mendell/NYT

The Times has an unusually thoughtful piece by Justin Porter today about skateboarding shoes. Because the skateboarders tear up shoes so quickly, Porter says they tend for flashier, more disposable pairs, even if they aren’t much cheaper. That caught our eye as the opposite of workwear, where the need for durability means more rugged materials like denim, canvas and metal come into play.

Another point is that this makes skateboarders ripe for sponsorship—Porter refers to some skaters being “on flow,” meaning they get a steady stream of free shoes from a particular company—but we aren’t sure this makes their shoes more important. If anything, they’re so disposable that the kids don’t mind making them billboards.

And what good is a sponsorship if your shoes are being ripped to shreds?

Celebrity brands are usually pretty dicey, but this one is just plain off-the-wall. Beloved Canadian Dan Aykroyd has emerged as the face of Crystal Skull Vodka, a line of spirits inspired by an obscure archaeological mystery. (It may sound familiar.) The vodka itself is fairly bizarre, the occult mumbo jumbo is surprisingly tangential, and Aykroyd comes off as either completely off his nut or brilliantly deadpan. We prefer our skulls with a little more glitz…but we’ll settle for this.

You can actually buy the vodka (if you need a glass skull for your mantle), but just because it’s real doesn’t mean it’s not a joke. The Ghostbusters 3 timing may be too convenient for us to take all of this at face value, but we won’t complain too loudly.

Hoax or not, it’s the funniest thing Aykroyd has done in a very long time.

See the video»

The world of product placement is not all good ideas. In fact, for every Heineken contract you see on Mad Men, there’s some NASCAR racer with an Whole Foods logo on his hood or a pair of sunglasses with the GE logo pasted over the nose.

Or this.

Dance Off: The world record for simultaneous reenactment of the Thriller video has broken once again. We can only hope this escalates into an arms race of some kind. [Daily Intel]

Clean as Soap: The best shaving soap in the world, courtesy of Portland’s finest. [Winn Perry]

A Good Vintage: A look into advertising’s past. But, you know, not on television. [Blog001]

The Vote has been Rocked: Make sure you’re registered before Tuesday rolls around. [Can I Vote]

Marketing has become a bit of a dirty word lately, but it has a lot more to do with modern fashion brands than anything that comes out of a factory. After all, where would Tom Ford be without a few well-framed photographs?

With that in mind, Commonwealth Utilities had a good idea. The label is a back-and-forth collaboration between designer Anthony Keegan and marketing guru Richard Christiansen—Anthony provides the clothes while Richard provides the image—and the fact that they go back a decade-plus doesn’t hurt. The advertising end has been impressive so far, with a perfectly designed shirt package and a lookbook shot with a UFC fighter, but naturally, we’re a little more interested in Mr. Keegan’s contribution.

If their Spring line is any indication, we’re about to see a lot more high-buttoned blazers. And we love a well patterned pocket.

See more from Commonwealth Utilities»

War Pants: Bruce Pask ponders the colonial charm of Gurkha pants. For the sake of our knees, we really hope this doesn’t catch on. [The Moment]

Blog on Blog Crime: Kanye gets arrested for another paparazzi altercation. When will they learn to live in peace? [Vulture]

Together at Last: Paisley and Tweed: Two great tastes that taste great together. [A Suitable Wardrobe]

Who Watches the Trendwatchers?: Fashion mags feel the pinch in ad sales. We still blame crocs. [WWD]

As it turns out, this doesn’t come from Apple itself but from a very devoted Japanese farmer who put stickers on them halfway through the season. Still, it’s only a matter of time before the marketers of the world get their hands on our fruit.

Maybe we’ll just eat the logos first.

No Logo: The logo of every superbowl, including at six that have been won by the steelers…in case you’ve forgotten. [NotCot]

Ad-tion: Gawker’s top five superbowl ads of all time, sadly devoid of sassy CGI animals. [Gawker]

Fast Cars: Kanye goes to Paris…or should we say KANYE GOES TO PARIS!!!! [Kanye West]

This is the Story of the Murricane: Bill Murray gets a signature cocktail. [NYTimes]

The brewery tour is a long-standing highlight of masculine tourism, but the days of wooden kegs and sketchy tour guides may be coming to a close.

This pic is from is an experimental marketing plan for Heineken that would put visitors through a veritable Haunted Mansion of Heineken, including a psychedelic screening room, interactive tasting desks, and a star-shaped bar area that looks like it came straight from the notebook of an interior design class.

Sadly, none of it’s real yet, but we’re more than a little bit jealous. How long do we have to wait before ridiculous things like this start actually happening again?

Take the tour»

Anyone who’s seen an action movie in the last ten years can probably recognize the work of Michael Bay—our particular favorite would be The Rock which, along with Armageddon, has the honor of being the unlikeliest Criterion edition we’ve come across—but now that he’s the recipient of everything from fake screenplays to a fake twitter persona, it might be time to dig a little deeper into the enigma that is Mr. Bay.

Luckily, some hapless assistant on the western coast has spent their morning uploading all of Mr. Bay’s commercial work onto Vimeo, with an almost unbelievably pretentious title card at the beginning of each spot. If you were looking for the core of the Bay aesthetic, this is pretty much it. Let the car commercials begin!

See our favorites after the jump, including the timeless “Aaron Burr”»

The street artist known as Poster Boy has been cutting up subway ads for over a year now, growing from a neighborhood curiosity to a citywide phenomenon. And naturally, when the Museum of Modern Art took over a station in downtown Brooklyn with posters of some of their finer pieces, he had his work cut out for him.

Of course, he had the ad exec behind the MoMA campaign along for the ride, so it’s hardly an anti-establishment move, but this time around it may be more about art than politics. After all, he can’t stay an outsider forever, and these reworkings are the best case for mainstream recognition he could have arranged.

See what Poster Boy hath wrought»

As Pepsi recently discovered, the world of soda bottle design can get pretty contentious, so it’s worth remembering what it looks like when it’s done right.

Afri Cola was a German, Jolt-style caffeine bomb popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s—and briefly, Seattle in the ‘90s—and while the taste didn’t catch on quite the way you’d expect, the design may be the best we’ve ever seen. As far as vintage colas go, this one seems ripe for a revival—and the more caffeine the better.

Ladies and gentlemen, the soda of the past»