The Anklet: Vogue China seems more capitalist all the time. [Fashion Gone Rogue]
Trousers Up: The thrifty charm of the canvas web belt, thoroughly detailed. [Valet]
The Frozen South: Antarctica is our new favorite continent. We will move there as soon as Uniqlo does. [Boing Boing]
We Must Obey: New York gets a new Shepard Fairey piece. The good news: Andre is finally taking a backseat. [Complex]
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Public art can mean more than just posters on walls…but when it starts to move to denim jacket liners, we get a little queasy.
Shepard Fairey’s Obey label just announced a large-scale collaboration with Levi’s and this jacket is only the beginning. Next Thursday, Fairey will take over the façade of Levi’s Times Square shop, and unveil four new posters to be given away with a Levi’s purchase.
Fairey’s pleading “public art”—it’s populist denim, after all, not Louis Vuitton—but we’d prefer calling it what it is: marketing. It’s not such a dirty word, really, and Fairey has to pay those legal bills somehow. But next time, he should probably start by looking into spray paint endorsements.
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Go Jump in the Lake: Nothing like a warm day and a swimwear collection.
[FreshnessMag]
Shepard Fairey has a Posse: Mr. Obey gets a softly glowing writeup from the art press. [ArtNet]
Continuing to Shake It: The hunt for a cheaper Polaroid is on. We’ll save this medium yet! [NYTimes]
Give ‘em the Boot: Another day, another good pair of work boots. [CoolHunting]
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Apparently Shepard Fairey has been busier than we thought. Not 24 hours after the AP took aim at him, the Boston police got in on the action at a local event honoring the storied graffiti artist and hauled off to the slammer for a few outstanding vandalism warrants.
Of course, this is hardly the first time Mr. Fairey has run afoul of the boys in blue, but it’s the first time it’s happened since he had any serious clout behind his name, and it’s hard to think of better outsider cred than getting arrested at your own gallery party.
In other words, despite what it looks like, we would say Shep’s having a very good week.
Although he’s made a few questionable calls, there’s still a lot of good will behind Shepard Fairey, especially when he’s helping out the newly minted prez. But now that the flush of the election is over, the Associated Press has decided to take a few shots.
It’s a long-running joke that Esquire and GQ publish the same “new rules for men’s style” every year—the sartorial equivalent of Cosmo’s “487,000 Ways to Please Your Man”—but we’ve never minded too much. The rules tend to be genuinely overlooked lessons, like that fit matters and a well-dimpled tie is never wasted. We just wish they’d stop telling us how new it is.
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We have officially turned on Shepard Fairey. It took a lot, but he’s finally soured us on the idea of him ever doing anything at all.
It took a lot. His early work was so interesting, he’s paved the way for a lot of more interesting street art, and let’s face it: the Obama poster buys a lot of good will. But he’s finally run through the last bits of it.
Market capitalism has had a rough few months, and everyone seems to be piling on. It lost the bankers to corporate bailouts and now it may lose its most vocal and culturally important spokesmen: the rappers.
The new single from the production team N.A.S.A. manages to lure Chuck D out of obscurity for an impressive verse, and that’s a MOTH you’re hearing on the chorus, but the song—titled “Money”—doesn’t seem to think too highly of the stuff. In fact, it’s downright skeptical. Maybe it’s Shepard Fairey‘s video, but the paper chase comes out looking pretty unseemly. And if we can’t believe in material wealth, what’s left to rap about?
Whatever happened to putting five carats in your baby girl’s ear?
He may not realize it, but Shepard Fairey is one of the most promising artists of his generation. We can’t think of any American street artists who have managed as thorough an urban transformation as he has in New York, and his Obama poster is easily one of the most iconic images produced by any artist in over a decade. He deserves a cash-in or two; we just wish he could have made it a little more tasteful.
Fairey launched the OBEY clothing store today, and it’s genuinely abysmal. It’s a thrown together assortment of sub-Urban Outfitters schlock that treats Fairey’s meticulously collected phrases as if they were a brand on the level of Bugs Bunny, ready to be silkscreened onto sweatshirts en masse without any attention to actual style or design.
In every item, it’s obvious that Fairey has absolutely no interest in becoming a viable clothing designer. Which is fine by us. We just wish he could have stuck to gallery sales.
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Belle du Jour: Kate Winslet steps into Catherine Deneuve’s shoes for the win. [FashionIndie]
Just for Kicks: What the world needs now, more than anything else, is crocodile skin sneakers. [Luxist]
The Writing on the Wall: A countdown of the top 25 parodies of Shephard Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster. Sadly, Nate Dogg does not make the list. [Village Voice]
Dov Love: The cops are after Dov Charney, for all the obvious reasons. [PSFK]
The art tee business is getting pretty crowded, and new ideas are always in short supply. An outfit called The Affair has come up with one: limited editions.
This tee comes out of a closed batch of two hundred…impressive until you realize that the Threadless print runs aren’t that much larger. They just have the foresight to call the number up front, and stick to their guns when it sells out early. It’s the same gimmick that lets Shepard Fairey sell an Obama poster 350 times and the gallery owners of the world grab a slightly bigger piece of the pie.
If they’re going to be *art* tees, it’s time they started acting like it.
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He may lose the hockey mom vote, but it’s a safe bet that Barry is still the favorite among the graphic design crowd. So it’s no surprise the man has better t-shirts.
This one is our pick so far, splitting the difference between Andy Warhol and Shepard Fairey. It’s got more irony than most campaign shirts—after all, who wants to vote for a soup can?—and a little wit goes a long way.
So far they’re just online, although you can probably find one in person if you take a stroll through central Williamsburg over the next few weeks. As for a soup can-fueled bump in the polls…we’ll keep you posted.
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Style: some people have it, and some neighborhoods really have it. To show you what we mean, we’ve partnered with Cadillac to present Style Shifters—a five-part, in-depth look at what the hippest gents in some of the country’s coolest neighborhoods are wearing now. Our intrepid photographers have roamed the streets in search of the most stylish guys around. Herewith, a few photos of what they found...
Williamsburg, Brooklyn is home to some of the country’s best bars, coolest restaurants and, of course, some of the best menswear shops in the world. Naturally, you’ll find more than a few stylish individuals perched outside those locations (and no, not all of them are Billyburg hipsters). See what we mean below...
Oh, and up next: we take a peak at another handsome-as-hell neighborhood, the Mission District in San Francisco. Stay tuned...
