Cool Hunting
At São Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW) a kiosk stocked with tees caught my attention. Yet another project that creative team ag407 has its hand in, one of the firm's partners told me that they had come up with the idea to mimic the "bancas" or newstands of São Paulo. The pop-up version at fashion week was based on six other Banca de Camisetas that exist permanently in the city.
Founded in 2002, the concept features a rotating collection of tees by Brazilian high-end fashion designers, artists and graphic designers are packaged into neat rectangles and lined up along shelves like magazines. During SPFW there were several standout designs from some of the more well-known designers, like Rio-based multi-disciplinarians Oestudio and Marcelo Sommer's Do Estilista (a new line for the designer, which debuted very successfully at SPFW). Also of note, the collection included several collaborations as part of Fiat's Fashion Innovation campaign, which are still available from the Banca de Camisetas online.
Just over a year old, the Baltimore-based line Squidfire now boasts a whole range of goods hand-printed on manual presses with their original designs. In addition to Vans (actually hand-painted), messenger bags and a line for kids, they've recently introduced hoodies, like this "Workout" sweatshirt (pictured left, $45) that features overlapping images of a smiling 70's-era muscleman in red, blue and black on grey....
The world's first international news magazine on cotton, T-post is a subscription t-shirt service based in Sweden. Silkscreened onto American Apparel tees, subscribers get a new "issue" every six weeks with a design about a current news item on the outside and a short article on the topic printed inside. Many of the stories covered by T-post are outside the radar of the traditional...
An exclusive first look, Context drops another collabo today, this time with Kicking Mule Workshop for an ultra limited-edition pair of denim pants. A small production of only 50 pairs worldwide, the shuttle-loomed denim leaves a clean white selvage line—but the dying process is what really sets them apart. To make the dye, harvests of the indigo leaves from the Okayama Prefecture in Japan...
From the award-winning restaurant design team Avroko comes an equally adept collection of "uniforms" for the playful womenswear label Mona & Holly. Muddling the lines between service and fashion, Avroko's recent endeavor was inspired by the modest nurse attire from the 1900s and the glamorous steward outfits of the '50s, resulting in a collection of beautifully detailed, elegant apparel. The limited edition line will...
Spring has sprung and summer is hot on its heels, and when I think summer I think t-shirts and when I think t-shirts nothing comes to mind quicker than those that are buttery soft and vintage-inspired, like those from our good buddies at Vintage Vantage. Choosing to do things right and develop their own t-shirt fabric from scratch, combining clever slogans and quirky graphics has...
Levi's recently released a limited-edition series of four pairs of jeans featuring vibrantly colored graphics. Geometric prints in red, blue, orange and yellow line the inside of each of the four jeans included in the collectible series. Inspired by 1980s video game graphics, the arcuate thread stitching on rear pockets and a button on the fly both smartly coordinate with the respective colorway. The...
