Tilak is a Czech outerwear line producing some of the best looking technical jackets I’ve seen in a minute. Designed in conjunction with Acronym at their Munich studio, the pieces are then manufactured in the Czech town of Šumperk. A mix of Gore-Tex, Ventile and Windstopper, Tilak produces a focused range of mountain, hiking, and city-focused product, well-styled as a secondary benefit, high functioning as the primary goal. Such rad looking pieces, click through for more.
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Posted in accessories, clothes, technology
Tagged Acronym, Czech Republic, Germany, mountaineering, outdoors wear, Tilak
Founded in 1981 in Sheffiled UK, Rab Carrington’s eponymous technical outdoorswear and accessories line is designed to meet the needs of a new breed of lightweight alpinist using techniques pioneered by Rab himself. This equipment had to be designed ‘for the most extreme conditions in the world.’
I came across the Rab line digging through quality local independent outdoors retailers and really liked what i saw: great fits, inadvertently stlyish colorways, and a total commitment to high function. From what I saw in real life the gloves, waterproof pieces and shoftshells would all be perfect for my westcoast routines, and come in at a comparable pricepoint to upper-end North Face or Patagonia. Hit the jump to check more of my online selections from Rab and check their site for more.
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Technical garment specialist Acronym are back at it for the spring/summer 2012 season with this highly impressive collection. Not only do I really really the collection itself but the label really nails it with their presentations. The video for s/s 12 fully breaks down the collection pieces by piece as well as how they integrate together. I highly recommend watching video in entirety, its some advanced styles for sure. Read through for a few more looks.
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Here is the spring/summer 2012 collection from NYC’s ISAORA, a line we’ve been highlighting with for a couple seasons now, perhaps the best when it comes to meshing a true high-fashion aesthetic with technical fabrics and performance. This s/s collection is inspired by ‘the origins of science and the ancient practice of alchemy,’ with a colour palate built on ‘mineral tones and elements of the period table.’ Super cohesive execution, and you know the pieces are manufactured right and built to last… more after the jump.
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Technical tailored garments is an emerging trend in the men’s marketplace with the likes of Stone Island Shadow, Arcteryx Veilance, Achronym, and Nanamica, just to name a few. New York-based ISAORA is another label to include in that group: the advanced sportswear brand takes its inspiration from ‘forward-thinking design, progressive tailoring and a mix of athletic lifestyle influences to seamlessly deliver cutting-edge cool and relaxed sophistication.’ The fall/winter 2011 collection is primarily made up of highly technical outerwear pieces, with a few pants and base layers mixed in. The garments are all constructed from the best materials and state-of-the-art production methods: ‘ISAORA clothes are manufactured using only the most advanced fabrics, innovative layering technologies and state-of-the art construction. Japanese-made Toray® fabrics, PrimaLoft® One insulation, Schoeller® Nanosphere™ and Phase Change Materials, YKK Excella®, Aquaguard® and RiRi® AQUAzip™ zippers are standard features throughout the collection.’ Check the video lookbook below and keep reading for a look at the collection itself…
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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
LA’s Brainfeeder collective has been known from day one for providing a complete A/V experience at their now-legendary clubnight, and while an impressive lineup of resident beatsmiths certainly is a large part of that, in-house visuals don Strangeloop (also an accomplished producer) seals the deal with his highly-complex synced projections. In this new A/V project for Fields TV he goes even deeper in to the wormhole, in his words creating ‘an environment that leans more in the direction of Steve Reich-inspired minimalism’ than the beat-centric style people may expect of him. This video+soundscape is a tour de force: lately I’ve been loving beat-less productions, and this evolving, nuanced piece is a stunning marriage of warm synth textures and the high-compression production techniques the BF collective have perfected … check it out above (make sure to go full screen), but also make sure to visit the Fields site for the full experience.
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Posted in music, technology, video
Tagged beats, Brainfeeder, LA, Steve Reich, Strangeloop, visuals
Ahhh, Pirate Bay, Mininova, and a few other sources i dare not reveal for fear of blowing up my spots… free music is everywhere on the internet, all the time. Sure, the quality of a lot of these files might be low, but the price is right, and the accessibility is 24/7. Granted, I much prefer to own the vinyl, but in this day and age of mixtapes, unsigned artists, and singles releases, everything I want and need doesn’t get get pressed on wax. And while I’m in my mid-20′s and can kind of sort of remember buying CDs, I wonder about those in their teens who have never known a life without unfettered free access to music online. Well, according to the findings of recent a study published on BBC.com, ‘illegal downloading amongst young music fans has actually gone into a decline, and that the CD is still the most popular format, even amongst teenagers, and is not ready to be sent to the digital graveyard just yet.’
Sorry BBC, but I just don’t buy it… with the high price and low selection of CDs, and the internet-savy approach of the teenaged generation, I don’t see how this is possible. Perhaps we’ve stepped away from the big illegals like Limewire, etc, but now we’ve moved on to sites with shielded, floating IP address, and the mass hosting of .zip or .rar files, all stored for easy downloading. And then there’s the massive hard drive swaps I’ll do with anyone who has worthy music/movies/tv to trade.
You can always count on relatively intelligent commenting on these BBC blogs. This is one is some of the best I’ve seen thus far: very much worth the read to see how readers tear the original study apart due to flawed sample size and approach. So while the record companies and backwards-looking artists would like to be believe some sort of moral order or lawfulness has returned to downloading, I would have to claim the opposite: the youth are just get much more nuanced and a whole lot sneakier.
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