Pica~Post No.13 AW·MMXVII

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A/W '17' / '18

FREE

feat.

POST

a Fanzine

by Oi Polloi

Suplexes, Sports Shops, Suits for Tracks & Some other Stuff

No. 13 The Sports Illustrated Issue

PICA

Pica~Post is a magazine published

by Oi Polloi twice a year. This is the 13th issue.

Creative Direction: Steve Sanderson Nigel Lawson Editor: Sam Waller Design: Steve Hockett Photography: Adam Hindmarch Sam Waller Josh Rothery Google Images

Illustration: David Bailey Stuart Fear Comic: David Bailey Words: Harry Longstaff Sam Waller Nigel Lawson Clothes Wearers: Ebo Nwabuokei Mike Steele Thanks: A Kind of Guise, the people of Salford, 80s running magazines and the Stockport wrestling community Printed by: MARC Push Print

www.oipolloi.com @oipolloi

No. 13 On Yer Marks...

Ruminations from the Editor 03 Claude's Sporting Trivia 03 Don Meacho vs Sexy Kev 04 Polyester at the Pictures 10 Masters of Sport 13 A Question of Sports Shops 25 A Kind of Interview 29 Rich Lineage on Sports 36

Sports Illustrated

Styling: Liam Daly Steve Sanderson

PICA~POST

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TRAINERS TRAINERS TRAINERS From Mail Order Specialists Oi Polloi

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Claude's Top 10 Sporting Trivia 1. Tiger Woods once ate eleven scotch eggs

Ruminations from the Editor

2. Paul Scholes prefers dogs to cats

3. Greg Rusedski has never seen The Titanic

A man strides by in a pair of trainers designed for tennis... a puddle splashes majestically into a woman wearing a tracksuit... a delivery driver whistles that old Formula One theme tune.

5. Rugby isn't a real sport

Whilst hardly anyone actually indulges in sporting activities these days, ripples echoing from the essence of sport can be felt all around.

How did we get to this point? When did sportswear become something more than just clothes which sports were played in? And what nice trainers are we selling at the moment?

This issue is our attempt at answering these eternal questions.

4. Lucas Radebe loves afternoons in the Trafford Centre 6. Rubens Barichello is allergic to face-paint

Sports Illustrated

As I gaze out the window on this damp November morn, many intriguing sights catch my eye.

7. Les Ferdinand prefers baths to showers 8. Hermann Maier has the fourth largest collection of porcelain dogs in the world 9. Giancarlo Fisichella doesn't own a microwave 10. Richard Blackwood is very good at badminton

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VS

SEXY KEV! Words & Photographs by Sam Waller.

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A brief voyage into the burgeoning Stockport wrestling scene.

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DON MEACHO

You don’t need the full Sky Sports package to witness the wonders of sport. Right now some real life sporting motion is happening very close to where you’re sat. A pub team might be taking penalties on a muddy pitch, or maybe some young buck is hurtling sideways around a speedway track... or perhaps, somewhere in a nearby hall, a man in underpants and a pair of knee-high boots is leaping off a turnbuckle into a masked opponent for the delight of at least 38 onlookers.

The WWF (or the WWE, if any pandas are reading) may be the pinnacle of the theatrical grappling world, but for every Stone Cold Steve Austin (or Doink the Clown?), there’s a thousand more sluggers, unheard of by the masses, duking it week after week for little pay or recognition. This is the bruised backbone of wrestling, and whether or not any of it counts as a real sport, it’s most definitely, undeniably, some sort of spectacle.

What follows here is an account of just one evening of local wrestling that took place in the satellite town of Stockport. It was a Sunday night, it was autumn, it was pretty cold, and there was a load of people lined up outside a masonic hall...

Magic Mark Returns!

Sports Illustrated

I arrived there just as things were heating up. A line of people stretched out of the door, down the steps and onto the pavement. There were a lot of black hooded sweatshirts with things like ‘Foetal Corpse’ written on them, and some people wore massive boots that weren’t designed for walking or working in. The lurid, nuclear green glow of the Monster Energy logo also had a heavy presence.

Once inside, I sat down on a folded chair in the main room. It was all pretty fancy. Chandeliers dangled from the ceiling and a large curtain was hung across one side of the room for the oncoming wrestlers to wait behind. In the middle was a square ring about 12 feet wide. The song ‘Problem’ by Ariana Grande was playing over a speaker system.

After a few minutes, a thin, bald man with glasses known as ‘Magic Mark’ clambered into the ring. Despite his name, he did zero magic tricks, and instead just made a few quick quips before announcing the first match. A seven foot lurker in big boots was fighting against a smaller man... who also happened to be wearing big boots.

According to my research, professional wrestling started life back in France back in the early 19th century when travelling showmen would challenge lowly civilians to scrap with massive goliaths called bold names like ‘Gustave d’Avignon, the Bone Wrecker’.

By the 1900s, full-blown matches were taking place, and a mild-mannered vegetarian heavyweight called George Hackenschmidt had rose to prominence thanks to his use of his signature move, the bear-hug. George’s dominance eventually led to professional wrestling’s turn from legitimate fighting to fixed matches — as crowds got bored of watching him win, he was persuaded to lose in a bid to add a bit of spice and intrigue.

Although at first the public felt duped, by the ‘30s the floodgates had been thrown wide open to all manner of gimmickry; from daft weapons to female mud wrestling.

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But anyway, back to Stockport in 2017...

On entering the ring, the tall one shouted and pointed angrily at people in the audience. This man was what’s known in wrestling terms as a ‘heel’ — a dishonourable wrestler designed to be disliked. The smaller wrestler, on the other hand, was a real a man of the people, high-fiving small children and smiling with perfect teeth. This man was a ‘face’ — one of the good guys.

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THE POSTMAN ALWAYS DELIVERS!

The bell rang and they started grappling. As you might have expected, the tall one had clout, but was sluggish, whilst the small one was quick, but a bit weak. The tall one also had his promoter with him. He was a gangly fellow, stood around in white tennis shorts and sunglasses. On his head was a Royal Mail cap, apparently because he ‘always delivered’.

During the match the promoter would lark about, distracting the referee as a bid to strike out unseen at the small wrestler. None of this amounted to much though, and after a bit of tussling about and the occasional turning of tables, the small one took the win via a fairly classic pin. Everyone in the crowd was happy about this and the big guy was booed and heckled as he staggered out.

DARK LORDS DEFEATED!

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The following matches followed a similar format. A friendly, clean cut wrestler would be pitted against a devious and underhand adversary with a daft name. Although the wrestlers always fitted into one of these two categories, they each had their own defined character or gimmick. One came on with a child’s toy and chanted nursery rhymes as he fought, another had short man syndrome and was constantly wound up. One was apparently a model, all the way from the catwalks of Milan (or at least Marple...).

The main event was a tag-team battle between two satanic dark-lord types and two respectable and upstanding members of the community. The match quickly spilled out of the ring and into the crowd and at one point one of the dark lords swung a folding chair into someone’s head.

Despite this cunning use of furniture, the dark lords ended up losing the match and scurried back behind the curtain in anger.

And that was it. The lights then came back on and the spectators started to filter out onto the A6. One of the wrestlers who had been fighting a few hours earlier had set about taking down the ring. He was tall, his teeth were white and he had the muscular physique of an upside-down triangle. In the ring he wore the classic wrestling outfit of underpants and boots, but now he was in the more civilian ensemble of a purple t-shirt and shorts.

With nowhere to be, I pestered him for a bit about wrestling. It turned out he owned the ring with another wrestler, and travelled around the country putting on matches and teaching people the art of wrestling. He told me he’d been a gymnast before he’d found his true calling, and showed me various scars on his arms from where grappling had gone wrong.

When I asked him what he thought wrestling was – whether it was a sport, or theatre – he seemed a bit offended.

“Whatever it is, people seem to enjoy it,” he said. Fair enough — according to a quick snoop around the internet, ‘sport’ is defined as, “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” Alright, there’s no mention of anyone wearing daft masks and smacking their adversary round the head with a fold-out chair, but still...

Sports Illustrated

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Polyester at the Pictures

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Harry Longstaff chronicles the use of tracksuits on the silver screen...

Few things in life reach the same levels of sleekness and comfort that a tracksuit does. The tracksuit, like watching the sun rise from atop a mountain, or watching your child laugh for the first time, is something to behold. If you think I’m being dramatic, you’ve obviously never worn one. Go wrap yourself in some polyester perfection and then we’ll talk...

Done it? Good; let’s continue.

The tracksuit was originally designed in the 60’s to keep athletes toasty and snug before they had to get off and do various athletic things.

Cinema, being the wonderful medium it is, began to appropriate tracksuits, in order to add detail and authenticity to its characters.

After seeing adored athletes and idolised film stars in them, it wasn’t long ’till us, the unwashed masses, cottoned on to how darn stylish they were and how comfortable they must be.

So without further ado, let’s get into the history of tracksuits at the multiplex...

BRIAN GLOVER, KES, 1969 First up, we’ve everyone’s favourite Yorkshire nutjob, Mr. Sugden, expertly embodied by Brian Glover — a man who once surmised his cinematic career by saying, “You play to your strengths in this game, and my strength is as a bald-headed, rough-looking Yorkshireman.”

The use of the humble tracksuit in Kes is fairly elementary, but still interesting — he definitely wasn’t wearing one to look sharp (although, he does), it was for its utilitarian purpose; for sports.

Put simply, Mr. Sugden wears his red Fred Perry number to keep warm before he goes and batters a bunch of 14-year-old boys at football.

BRUCE LEE, GAME OF DEATH, 1972

Goodfellas is the name of a company that makes small volcanic pizzas.

It’s also one of Martin Scorsese’s masterpieces, and one of the best films about crime families ever made.

Goodfellas tells the story of mob associate Henry Hill’s rise and fall between the 50s and 80s, and features the image that possibly gave credence and legitimacy to all those New Jersey gangsters smoking cigars outside butchers — Ray Liotta in a blue adidas tracksuit.

By the late 80s, tracksuits had evolved past sportswear; rappers were wearing them left, right and centre in the States, and over here in England we had our own casual culture, meaning that the tracksuits had very much departed from its humble origins and had finally become a fully ‘postsport’ item.

Henry Hill isn’t wearing the tracksuit because he’s training for the Olympics, he’s wearing it because he’s incarcerated and he demands comfort.

At this point in the film, he’s been imprisoned by the FBI for ten years, yet he still refuses to give up the life he’s become accustomed to. As he says himself, “When you think of prison, you get pictures in your mind of all those old movies with rows and rows of guys behind bars... But it wasn’t like that for wise guys. It really wasn’t that bad” The tracksuit shows us that even though these guys might have been ‘caught’, they’re still living very much in the lap of luxury, with nothing much to fear. There’s crime, but no punishment.

Much like with a tracksuit — there’s warmth, but no sweat.

Very wise guys indeed.

Sports Illustrated

Here we have what might just be the most famous slab of sportswear ever seen in cinema, Bruce Lee’s yellow tracksuit as seen in his final, incomplete, film, Game of Death.

Our kid Bruce plays Billy Lo, a Hong Kong based movie actor who fakes his death and alters his appearance, in order to hunt down an underground, evil crime syndicate. Needless to say, with a name like Game of Death, he doesn’t pop round to have a polite word with them.

Here the tracksuit is used to keep Bruce Lee comfortable whilst he’s dispatching various faceless villains.

No politics, no philosophy, no nothing, just ease and comfort while kicking other dudes in the jaw — simple, elegant, inspiring stuff.

This is often cited as the film that elevated the tracksuit from the sporting realm, and offered a fresh perspective on how a tracksuit could be used as a lifestyle item, banishing the image of Olympic athletes and old, crusty P.E. teachers as the sole wearers.

On an interesting side-note, because the original film was never finished, various plot holes arose around the use of the tracksuit, so in the 1978 re-edit, the filmmakers were forced to explain it by adding a scene where he disguises himself in the suit to fit in with a gang of jumpsuit wearing, motorcycle thugs.

RAY LIOTTA, GOODFELLAS, 1990

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TAKESHI KITANO, BATTLE ROYALE 2000

Battle Royale is the story of a class of high-school students who have been chosen by a dystopian, failing Japanese government to take part in an annual game where they all must fight to the death until only one remains alive. A bit like University Challenge, with more decapitation.

Takeshi Kitano (the geezer wearing the tracksuit) is the genius who brought Takeshi’s Castle into the world; a dark, nihilistic game show that explores life’s inherent meaninglessness – not too dissimilar to Battle Royale.

In this film, Kitano wears the tracksuit while he watches the students butcher each other. This infers a sly socio-political message that the film constantly alludes to; the adults in the film are selfish, lazy, cruel and uncaring.

So while the kids are forced to brutally dispatch each other, it’s fitting to see the only major adult character relaxing to the max in the ultimate relaxation tool humanity has to offer.

BILL MURRAY, BROKEN FLOWERS – 2005 Not even a gold chain-wearing polar bear in a snow storm eating a Fab while listening to DJ Screw through an old-school Walkman is as cool as Bill Murray in a tracksuit. The film which really captures the essence of Murray’s deadpan coolness and affinity for polyester sportswear is Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers.

This film focuses on an aging ‘Don Juan’ (called Don Johnston), who embarks on a cross-country journey to track down four of his former lovers after receiving an anonymous letter stating that he fathered a son 19years prior.

At the start of the film, Bill strides about in his Fred Perry tracksuit to show how relaxed he is, how he wants his life to be comfortable and easy, but when he’s traversing the country in search of his son, he’s wearing a stuffy blazer/ trouser combination.

In a tracksuit, he’s stressfree, but when he dons the regular suit, he’s trapped, restricted, confused. Mise en scène through the use of a tracksuit — wonderful.

Well, there you have it — a brief history of the most impressive tracksuits in the history of cinema. I hope you’ve learnt something about one of the most versatile garments of recent times, I hope you’ve learnt something about the wonderful medium of cinema, and, above all, I hope you had a jovial old time. Now get lost punk, daddy has some tracksuits to slip into...

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MASTERS AND MIKE

WITH EBO OF SPORT

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Ebo was wearing a Battenwear jacket, a Ralph Lauren rugby shirt, Margaret Howell cords, a Patagonia tee, Anonymous Ism socks and a pair of Reebok Club C trainers. Mike was wearing a Patagonia jacket, a Nanamica smock, a Battenwear tee, some Patagonia trousers, a Norse Projects cap, some Wigwam socks and a pair of adidas New Yorks. Photographs by Adam Hindmarch. Styling, location knowledge & vape clouds by Liam Daly.

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Ron Hill’s Running Wild I remember when I was ten I was saving up for a pair of trainers called adidas Leaders, which were like a white leather version of the adidas Kick. Every single kid at school had adidas Kick, because they were cheap and they were astroturf football shoes, and because they were black, you could wear them with a snorkel parka and your school kecks.

If you had a pair of adidas Kick, you weren’t a ‘casual’ or a ‘Perry’ or anything — punks had them on, rockers had them on, even regular scruffy Herberts had them on — everyone had them on. If you had cheaper shoes in your sports kit, there wasn’t any point in turning up.

But then, that summer, I went on holiday to Weston Super Mare, and at the swimming pool there was a cabinet advertising a sports shop. Inside there was a tennis racket, a squash racket and this pair of Nike Wally Waffles — and suddenly my obsession for this white adidas shoe with the green stripes flipped to a royal blue nylon running shoe with a yellow swoosh. It was the perfect design.

And then I went to school, and somebody walked across the playground in this pair of Wally Waffles that he got from Ron Hill’s Running Wild in Hyde.

At that time there wasn’t that thing like there is now where mums will buy their kids Nike TNs from Footlocker for £190 that they’ll grow out of them in ten minutes. I remember begging my mum for these trainers, and her not understanding why I wanted running trainers. In the end I decided I was going to run for Stockport Harriers – the running club – as that was the only way I could explain needing these trainers.

It was a Saturday, and we got in my mum’s Mini and trundled from Hazel Grove to Hyde. I went in to the shop and there was a wall full of running shoes. Up until then I’d only seen three or four trainers in sports shops – but this was one of the best specialist shops in the country.

All I’ve got in my head are these Waffles – and there they were. I tried them on and they felt like the most technologically advanced things in the world. On the way out it felt like Indiana Jones, getting something out of the crypt. I’ve tried to go back into my memory and look and see what else was in the shop at the time. It’s still probably the ultimate thing I’d want to go back to if I could.

Sports Illustrated

“There was jeans shops, there was record shops, there was military surplus, there was boutiques — and then... there was sports shops...”

Oi Polloi boss-man Nigel Lawson charts the potted history of the humble sports shop...

A Question of Sports Shops

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Hurley’s

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Hurley’s was a sport shop that started out in Eccles in 1955. By the early 70s, it had moved to Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester – right under where Burger King is now, but no one has any clue about this.

I only know about this because a man called Mark Prestage told me he would buy his adidas Sambas from there back in 1973. He was wearing Wranglers and a Fred Perry t-shirt with Sambas, which is a very early example of people wearing trainers outside of sport. It sounds strange, but in the mid-60s, mods were wearing bowling shoes with stripes down them, so wearing Sambas wasn’t much of a leap.

But by the late 70s, Hurley’s had moved to Piccadilly Approach, near the train station, and that’s the one everyone remembers. My mum used to work at the university, so we’d always get the train from Hazel Grove, and sometimes we’d walk into town past Hurley’s. They had a sports shop, and they had a golf shop.

Inside the golf shop you had all these Lacoste golf jackets hung up, Lyle and Scott jumpers, loads of roll necks, loads of weird brands we’d never heard of — and then they started having the really, really expensive tracksuits in there from brands like Fila, Tacchini and Cerruti. And that seems to be when it all went bananas.

You don’t get many golf shops in city centres, but because Hurley’s was in the centre, you’d get this really weird mix of people going in.

I think tennis and golf were the sports that had the most items borrowed from them — it was all about looking like you were going golfing. And everyone had the same haircut as Seve Ballesteros — that side-parting basin cut.

I think Hurley’s knew what was going on. From 1978 to 1979, things had quadrupled. At one point in 1979, every single adidas trainer in Manchester had sold out. It had gone crazy, and this sportswear thing was a commodity that there wasn’t enough off.

Another interesting thing about Hurley’s was that it was the place that Wade Smith came over from Liverpool to look at before he opened his shop...

Wade Smith Wade Smith opened in 1982.

He was a lad who worked in Top Shop in Liverpool, and he knew there was a market for these rare, expensive trainers as he’d just diverted all the adidas Forrest Hills from Lillywhites – a sports shop in London – up to Top Shop, because they couldn’t sell them down there.

He was the first person that was selling trainers out of something that wasn’t a ‘sports shop’. Yes, it was a shop designed to sell sportswear, but he knew that people weren’t going to be buying it for sports.

He was meeting the demand, whilst all the other shops were lucky. Up until then, it had all been accidental.

Allsports had the same stock, but they were just following the market that appeared in front of them, whilst Wade Smith was inventing something new – he’d opened a casual shop – a scally shop.

The weird thing about Wade Smith is that when he opened a shop in Manchester it didn’t work - it completely bombed. It had good trainers, but no one went there.

Chandlers In and around acid house times, I was searching for Henri Lloyd coats.

Everyone was wearing Berghaus, and I wanted to own a shop in Affleck’s selling sailing jackets.

When I figured out I was going to sell Henri Lloyd, someone said, “Oh, they sell Henri Lloyd in Eccles.” I was like, “Bollocks they do – I’m going to be the first to sell it.” So I went down there, and I found this yachting supplies shop called Chandlers that sold Guy Cotten, Henri Lloyd and yachting shoes.

Sports Box was doing the same thing as Wade Smith, but on a much smaller level.

It was in the Underground Market in the centre of Manchester, and was kind of a folk-lore thing the kind of which was never really written about.

Whilst Wade Smith filled the demand for lads in Liverpool who wanted Trimm Trabs and chunky, fat soles, Sports Box filled the demand for lads in Manchester who wanted to wear flares and flat soled trainers. It was the other side of the coin. Because this thing had become so big, a certain element wanted to be different again – and that became the Manchester scruff look.

It’s a top boy thing. As the kids start to get into something, there’s always an older generation who wants to change things along. Things move on.

Thinking about it now, it was a weird thing to find there... did people sail yachts down the ship canal?

The funny thing about it all this is that the reason I sold loads of Henri Lloyd coats was because everyone went to the Hacienda in them, but before the Hacienda was built in 1982, it was a place that sold yachts and yachting equipment. And that’s why it had high ceilings – because of all the masts.

Sports Illustrated

Sports Box

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"Allsports was, for a lot of people, the first sports shop, and when it had gone, it was the last as well."

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Allsports (and

the end of sports shops)

Allsports really capitalised on the obsession for trainers that seemingly everyone in the North of Europe was wanting in the late 70s and early 80s.

They had footballs and tennis rackets, tracksuits and kagoules – but then upstairs they had all these trainers.

There was one in Manchester, one in Ashton, one in Chorlton, one in Stockport... to be honest, I don’t know how many there was – but it played a big part of things.

I remember going into Allsports in Altrincham in ’88 and buying a pair of navy adidas Gazelles, and the lad who served me said, “That’s the last pair – they’re going out of production.” And to me, that was the end of sports shops — I think it all finished for sports shops when Allsports shut in Manchester.

By the early 90s JD Sports had come up with this thing called Athleisure.

Like Wade Smith, John and David at JD knew what they were doing – as kids, they were scallies or casuals or whatever you’d want to call it, and then when they were teenagers they wanted to open a shop. But they didn’t just want to be a sports shop – they wanted to sell things like Façonnable as well.

So they invented this thing called ‘Athleisure’, which was their ‘menswear’ experience, and that shut down all the sports shops. I know ‘Athleisure’ is now this big girl’s workout fashion thing with Beyonce and everything, but at that time it meant this ‘acid casual’ look. This was around the early 90s, and somewhere around then, sports shops just seemed to die off.

The reason you’d go to sports shops was to buy the trainers, but then suddenly this shop had opened which had the trainers you wanted, and the clothes and everything else – so there was no reason to go in the traditional sports shops anymore. Allsports was, for a lot of people, the first sports shop, and when it had gone, it was the last as well.

Thinking about it all now, this thing is only really remembered by the kids who were into it — it was outside of pop culture – you weren’t sold it on a plate.

Why did you want to buy this sports stuff? It was the pinnacle, it was expensive, it was designed for purpose, it was stylish, and it was aspirational.

It was all about getting these expensive sports clothes, and wearing them in a dead specific way — it was showing off.

Sports Illustrated

A KIND OF GUISE

A KIND OF INTER––

–––V I E W W I T H

WORDS: SAM WALLER From Ralph Lauren’s penchant for polo shirts to Daiki Suzuki’s twist on the humble grey sweatshirt, the most ingenious clothing conjurers have always mined the world of sportswear for precious wearable ore. Munich’s A Kind of Guise follow in this esteemed tradition.

Whether they’re crafting tracksuits made out of ultra-luxurious wool or making winter-weight terry-towelling baseball caps, this lot take classic sporting designs, and ramp the quality levels right up to eleven. I phoned up co-founder Yasar Ceviker to peck his head about his designs, Germany and the modern age. We start by talking about his recent trip to America...

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Where were you?

We were in Las Vegas – we were there during the shootings. It was only two hotels down the block from where we were.

Madness. What was that like? There must have been a weird atmosphere.

To be honest – there wasn’t. Americans just gamble. For a minute everyone was a bit shocked as no one knew what was going on, but once they knew there was only one shooter, they were like, “Okay, let’s just carry on gambling.”

Somebody had killed 50 people, but they were just acting like nothing had happened.

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Very strange. You were there for work weren’t you — doing a photoshoot or something.

How did that go?

Yeah, I think it was actually the best one we’ve ever done. We always try and photograph people on the street — asking random people on the street to wear our stuff, shooting them in the atmosphere.

Who does the photography?

You lot always manage to make stuff look interesting.

I do all the photography. I come from the skateboard industry, and I was always the one doing the filming and the photography, so it just came from that. Photography was always a good combination that fit with skateboarding.

How did you go from skating to doing A Kind of Guise?

My first clothing project was doing graphic t-shirts for a skate shop in Dortmund that my friend owned. That was my entrance to what we’re doing today.

When I finished school I lived in New York for a while, doing photography assistant jobs and trying to make some money there. But when I came back to Dortmund I had the feeling that I had to leave my hometown — I wanted new faces in my life — so I moved to Munich.

To be honest, I had a lot of prejudices against Munich, as the south of Germany is very different to where I’m from and everyone’s very posh. But once I came here, I immediately fell in love with the city because of the landscape and the nature. I moved here and started studying graphic design, and met my girlfriend Susi.

We had the same idea of doing something ourselves outside of school – it was more or less a student project.

We did a backpack and some knitwear — and we made some bags out of some left over leather from a factory in North Italy that used to make medicine balls.

We only had like 14 pieces, but when we sold it all we put the money into making the second collection.

Where did the name come from?

We were sat in the kitchen and drinking wine. And do you know that film The Wanderers?

Yeah, it’s a top film – a bit like The Warriors.

Yeah — well one of the songs from that was on. In the song he says, “I’m the kind of guy.” And I thought, that’s cool — because when you’re making clothes, you always have someone in your mind who’d fit in it. So originally we were going to call it ‘A Kind of Guys’.

But then I spoke to a friend of mine who’s married to a girl from London, and he said to her, “What do you think of the name, A Kind of Guys?”

She said, “Yeah that’s cool, but how do they know the word?” Cos she was thinking of the word ‘guise’, and she thought it worked well because of the wordplay. That’s how the name came around.

30

Not so much anymore. We have customers who come in to our shop here who are 16 years old, looking for a good quality jacket, and then we have architects in their mid-30s who need a suit, and then old men who want a knitted sweater.

There’s not really any specific ‘guy’ in mind anymore.

Do you design stuff for you to wear?

Yeah – I mean I can’t wear it all, but I’m dressed head to toe in our stuff now.

It seems like France and Italy have definite styles, but I’m not really sure what the ‘German style’ is.

Does it exist?

I don’t think there is a German style in a fashion way, but maybe in industrial design? Of course there’s the traditional German clothing, but that’s more like heritage as opposed to what we want to do.

The thing about Germany compared to France, England or the US is that fashion and quality clothing was never a thing in German culture. Germany is still one of our worse markets.

Generally people here are really into H&M or Primark. They don’t have style.

Haha, why do you think that is?

That’s a good question. I think it’s because Germans are more into technical stuff like cars. They don’t care about clothes. The clothing industry in Germany was mainly just for work-wear.

If anyone here thinks they need good clothes... they just wear Hugo Boss.

It’s a bunch of crap.

Sports Illustrated

Who’s the ‘kind of guy’ you design for these days? Is there still someone you’re thinking of when you come up with ideas?

I suppose you lot are an anomaly then. Years ago people in different towns would wear different stuff; do you think that still happens now?

Not in Germany, no. Obviously you have Bavaria, where they try and keep the traditional life going, but that’s different.

Do people wear that traditional stuff seriously?

Yeah — I don’t think any young people are walking around in that traditional Oktoberfest gear, but I see older people wearing that stuff every day when I ride my bike to work.

31

Pica~Post No.13

I remember going to Germany on a school-trip once and the rat-tail haircut was very popular. Is that still about?

Yeah, of course.

Haha – that’s good to know.

If A Kind of Guise isn’t inspired by German stuff, where does the inspiration come from?

When we started the brand, we wanted it to be very international. I remember when we did trade shows, we’d get buyers from Japan saying, “Where are you from? Scandinavia?” People don’t think of Germany when they see the stuff.

When we did the first collection, we had those bags made from leather from Northern Italy, and we just continued with that — travelling around and getting inspiration from different cultures. For example, last summer, the clothes we made were inspired by Italian camping vibes. I was in Italy with my football team, and we had a training camp in a very cheesy Italian camp site. No one on the team is into fashion, and we were sat there on camping chairs, drinking cans of beer, and I really liked the atmosphere.

Sometimes it happens by accident.

32

Do you think the internet has changed a lot of things to do with how people look and how people are? Now it seems like people are influenced more by things they see on their phone than they are by their friends.

Yeah, I think that’s a very big thing.

I remember back in 2002 I would buy stuff from eBay and then I had to make a payment through Western Union. And then maybe five or six weeks later, I’d get the Nike trainers or whatever.

But now it’s so easy to get things in every city.

I remember if you went to New York maybe 10 or 15 years ago you could always find things that you’d never seen before and you couldn’t get anywhere else... but now you can buy that stuff in Munich or Berlin or wherever.

Do you think things are too easy now?

Yeah – it’s too easy. A friend of mine who is a photographer is always complaining that it’s so hard to get jobs now, and it’s because it’s so easy to make a photo look good now.

You don’t need any knowledge, you just need some filter from Instagram now and you can be a photographer. The big companies who used to book real photographers who knew what they were doing don’t need them anymore, because it’s all so easy.

And surely it’s only going to go more that way.

Probably. I’m not too worried about it in regards to clothing — you can copy style, but you can’t copy quality.

But of course, it’s different with photography or things like music. I was really interested in music maybe ten years ago, but now you can’t keep up.

Every day there’s a new band or a new DJ. There are a lot of good ones, of course, but it’s so hard to find them.

Yeah it’s impossible. Every band is touted as the next big thing.

And then they just have one hit and you never hear of them again. It’s the same with some brands... they pop up, and then they’re gone. And I think it’s only going to get worse. Let’s see what the future brings.

Yeah, I hope so. I mean every day it seems like we get more customers who appreciate the quality. We get random guys looking in, and once they’ve bought something, they really begin to support it and they come back. There will always be people going to H&M, but then there’ll also always be people supporting quality.

This is maybe a bit of a vague question, but what do you think makes a good piece of clothing?

It’s got to be well made, and it should be timeless, so you can wear it for the next twenty years. Function is a big thing too. For example, if a coat is well made and timeless, it’s even better when it’s water repellent too so you can wear it in the rain.

Yeah, I always liked the idea of doing well-made tracksuits. For next season we’ve made tracksuits from virgin wool.

This was a fabric we only used for our tailoring, but it looks so nice as a tracksuit. It gives it a twist too, and brings it to another level. It’s not a tracksuit you’re going to wear for track and field; it’s something you can wear for a dinner party without getting turned away. You’ll be the best dressed man there.

Is that ‘twist’ you mentioned something you think about a lot? You’re not afraid to mix things up a bit and use an interesting fabric on clothes you wouldn’t expect to see it on.

Sports Illustrated

People will always need good clothes... hopefully.

You lot make a lot of things that are influenced sportswear, but not necessarily for sports – like those tracksuits you do for example. What’s the motive behind stuff like this? What are these clothes for?

Yeah, we’re always trying to twist things a bit. For example, we made a parka out of some very traditional, Austrian loden fabric, which is usually only used on those very traditional loden jackets. We were bringing that fabric into something completely new, and I think things like that are very important.

Yeah, it keeps things interesting. I think I should probably wrap this up now as we’ve talked for quite a while. Have you got any wise words to finish this off with?

Slow and steady wins the race.

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36

Pica~Post No.13

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MMXVI