Here’s an extremely well executed video featuring two of my good friends, Andrew Ly and Melissa Matos, the founders and directors of Trusst. The black and white treatment here really fits with their aesthetic, and I think the pari do a great job explaining their inspirations, motivation, and direction. A bit of an aside from the type of stuff we normally cover here but a great watch if you’ve any interest in the more conceptual ‘high fashion’ side of this biz.
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Another year down and damn was it a crazy one for the 84/85 boys. Significant change went down, both making career moves and once again finding ourselves in different cities. Although we weren’t in the same area code we still maintained the same routines: spending plenty of time riding bikes, riding motorcycles, having them break down (Brendan mostly), fixing them, pursuing our artistic endeavors (drawing/painting/music/etc), drinking plenty of beers with the boys, and getting in to all sorts of trouble along the way.
Not only was it a solid year for both of us personally but it was also a great year for the blauge: we feel like we have really carved out our niche in the vastly overcrowded internet menswear market, caring less about what the ‘other guys’ were up to and more about what we liked, no matter who or what it was. We also watched our hits steadily increase, perhaps as a direct result of this. So on that note, a big thank-you to everyone who dropped by our online homestead here at 84/85, whether it was just a knock at the door, a surf on the cyber couch, or a daily return trip, we appreciate you all. We do this site for ourselves and for those of you out there who live and feel the same general life aesthetic. Cheers for making 2011 a great year for us here, and we hope you tune back in once our regular posting schedule resumes, post NYE hangovers.
Also, we wanted to send shouts out to Selectism for their numerous credited reposts this year, which always drove a lot of traffic for us. Cred is given where it is due and Selectism deserves all that they get.
For the year in review we’ve broken it down in to two sections, reader’s favourites (as determined by total post hit count) and a couple of our personal favourite collections. Click through for the lists, and thanks again for reading – here’s to a rad 2012!
- 84/85
HBTV recently put up this great short vid featuring interviews and footage of Erik Brunetti, as shot by David Gallardo during Bruntetti’s retrospective show at LA’s Union. From the writeup,
‘Concisely recapping 20 years of Erik Brunetti’s involvement with FUCT is difficult; the artist and graffiti writer founded the label in 1990 and has since attracted many people with re-interpreted cultural themes and iconography and above all else a strong opinion’
Nothing but respect and admiration for Brunetti and his many artistic outputs from the 84/85 camp, and this vid is definitely worth the watch.
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Ever since I moved to Vancouver in the summer my main dude Rob Squire and I have had a rotating cast of synths and drum machines in the back of his Catalog Gallery, anchored by a few key pieces. We would jam out tracks, record them, and then we finally got it together to edit some down in to proper songs. Bricks is a techno record, and we decided to give it away for free, for a bunch of reasons that are a two hour conversation in and of themselves. There’s a nice review over at FACT that will tell you a lot more and you can download the LP there as well, 320 kbps files with a .pdf booklet, all fancy like. 2011 was a really great year for me and music, if you want to hear more about that check my recap over at sub|div. And of course, many thanks if you give a listen, plenty more to come in 2012.
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There has been a bit of a resurgence in rap over the last year or so, with lots of new cats coming out such as Aesop Rock ASAP Rocky, Danny Brown, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Maffew Rogazino, Casey Veggies and many more, but one that has really stood out for me is Action Bronson. The Queens bred, Albanian descent, Ghostface-esque rapper has taken it back to classic NY rap shit. One thing that has been lacking in rap and rappers for that matter is style, charisma and character, and Bronsolini has all that. He rolls with the Smart Crew, and the Woodsmen (Mayhem Lauren etc.) who are two NY crews that are really doing it right now. He recently released the mixtape Well Done, produced by Statik Selektah, the combination of the two makes for some great new NY rap that I highly recommend you give a listen to. Bronson also keeps it real in the style dept; Polo, Carhart, Knicks hats, Oakleys, and shorts year round. Keep reading for a few of his videos as well as his Action in the Kitchen video series which is hilarious…
Action Bronson & Statik Selektah – Well Done
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Really awesome brand identity vid featuring Swedish label Uniforms for the Dedicated, covering topics such as their inspirations, how the line came to be, the intersections of mediums in their ongoing creative process, and the current state of Stockholm. The most notable part for me was when when one of the brand founders was explaining how Sweden’s tangible desire to consume Swedish lines was responsible for their rapid expansion and market gain… if only we had the same sort of attitude in Canada regarding our home-grown lines…
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Last weekend while in Seattle I dropped by the Patagonia store to pick up one of their Down Sweater Full-Zip Hoodies, which I have worn every day since I purchased it. For me buying a piece of clothing, especially an outerwear piece, takes some time and thought as well as deciding if I really need the piece and if I will get good use and wear out of it, which leads me to the subject of this post, the ‘Common Threads Initiative’ program from Patagonia. The ad seen above was run in the New York Times on Black Friday to address the issue of consumerism and to promote the company’s new project, the Common Treads Initiative. The Program has been set up in an effort to promote smart consumerism, and as a consumer and company to have as little environmental impact as possible.
“The most challenging, and important, element of the Common Threads Initiative is this: to lighten our environmental footprint, everyone needs to consume less. Businesses need to make fewer things but of higher quality. Customers need to think twice before they buy.”
“Why? Everything we make takes something from the planet we can’t give back. Each piece of Patagonia clothing, whether or not it’s organic or uses recycled materials, emits several times its weight in greenhouse gases, generates at least another half garment’s worth of scrap, and draws down copious amounts of freshwater now growing scarce everywhere on the planet.”
The Common Threads Initiative promotes you to reduce, repair, reuse, recycle our garments and rethink the way we buy them. The company encourages you to buy as little as possible and wear for as long as possible, repair what can be repaired, reuse what can be donated or shared, recycle by giving back your old garments and finally rethink the way we buy and make our products. This is a really solid move from a company that I have always had respect for and makes me happy to support in ways that I can. So head over to the Patagonia site to find out more about the Common Threads Initiative and take the Pledge…
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Posted in clothes, environment, insight
Tagged California, Common Threads Initiative, Patagonia, recycling
Stopped by Haven yesterday to kick it with the homie Jeremy, and we got in to the topic of serious technical gear, and the outdoorsmen and/or nerds for whom it’s a dedicated passion… Haven now carries Acronym, and combined with White Mountaineering’s more tech offerings, they’ve attracted a new clientele who are looking for a performance/styling blend, more so than just ‘fashion.’
Enter SF’s Triple Aught Design, makers of fine soft goods and accessories. Liking what I’m seeing, simple functional outerwear and other rad pieces like knives, axes, and carribeeners. I think the fact that this post is even on 84/85 is indicative of where we’re headed: in the four years we’ve been doing this blog(!), a lot has changed for us… I for one no longer work in menswear, and really haven’t been too excited about what’s going on in contemporary men’s fashion, let alone the way it’s presented… I think it’s safe to say both Brendan and I are more concerned with a balance of function and aesthetic these days, and hence the blog will inevitably reflect this direction.
Basically, if you’re looking for another surface-level menswear blog, this probably isn’t it, and we’ll likely continue to move further away from that in to the future. Stuff like TAD will keep getting posted, and combined with the mc/bike/art/music blend we accompany the clothes with, I’m pretty stoked on where this is all headed. Thanks for reading this tirade, and click through for more Triple Aught Design.
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Posted in clothes, insight, lifestyle, technology
