FREE VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2
THE FASHION ISSUE 2013
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Photo by Ryan McGinley (courtesy of Team Gallery)
VOLUME 11 NUMBER 2 Cover by Terry Richardson
THE WORLD’S AMERICAN DREAM International Designers Discuss the USA’s Global Fashion Domination (or Lack Thereof) . . . . . . 26 THE FIRST WILD ONE The Genesis of the Motorcycle Jacket . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 SNOOP THROUGH THE AGES The Clothes Made the Dogg, and Now Make the Lion . . 50
DE NÎMES The Long Journey of Blue Jeans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 JOHNNY MARR TAKES FASHION AND MUSIC SERIOUSLY An Interview with the Coolest Guitarist to Ever Breathe Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
16 Masthead 18 Employees 20 Front of the Book 32 Fashion: American Gigolo 42 Fashion: Herb Ritter 84 Fashion: Denim All Day 80 Reviews 88 Johnny Ryan’s Page
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FOUNDERS Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER Eddy Moretti
EDITOR Royce Akers (royce@viceaustralia.com) EDITOR AT LARGE Briony Wright (briony@viceaustralia.com) EDITOR IN CHIEF Rocco Castoro GLOBAL EDITOR Andy Capper MANAGING EDITOR Ellis Jones SENIOR EDITOR Aaron Lake Smith ASSOCIATE EDITOR Harry Cheadle FASHION EDITOR Annette Lamothe-Ramos CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Thomas Morton LAYOUT inkubator.ca WEB DESIGN Solid Sender DESIGN ASSOCIATE Ben Thomson (ben@viceaustralia.com) EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Wendy Syfret (wendy@viceaustralia.com) WORDS Jenni Avins, River Donaghey, Wilbert L. Cooper, Brian Moylan, Nicholas Pell, Johnny Ryan, Matt Shea, Luke Winkie PHOTOS Guillaume Belvèze, Awol Erizku, Noam Griegst, Richard Kern, Richmond Lam, Allessandro Macri, Sylvan Magnus, Ryan McGinley, Hanna ter Meulen, Mîndru, Fernanda Negrini, Tim Neugebauer, Noah Rabinowitz, Terry Richardson, Ben Ritter, Steve Robertson, Kevin Shea Adams, Yvonne Venegas ILLUSTRATIONS Alex Cook, Johnny Ryan, Michael Shaeffer COPY EDITOR Sam Frank
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F R O N T
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WHY NOT RENT YOUR HEAD TO ADVERTISERS? Remember in the 90s when you’d walk through the mall and see teenage morons hanging outside Foot Locker or whatever wearing JNCOs and stupid earrings, and they’d sometimes have Nike swooshes or Mercedes-Benz logos shaved into their hair? It was the epitome of brand loyalty—a bunch of suckers who were using their heads as walking billboards for free. We’re not sure if Andrew Lardinois, a 33-year-old living in Portland, Oregon, was inspired by his mallrat days or came up with the idea of making extra cash by shaving the logos of local businesses into his hair all by himself. So far, he’s served as a walking commercial for a liquor store, a fashion boutique, and a coffee shop, among other places. I wanted to talk to him about how it feels to invent the “human billboard” look.
BY RIVER DONAGHEY Photo by Sylvan Magnus
VICE: What was the first design you shaved into your hair? Andrew Lardinois: One day I was having my legs waxed and saw my sideburns in the mirror. I thought, These look like cowboy boots. All they need are heels etched in one side. I asked my waxer if she could turn my ’burns into boots. I knew she’d love a challenge. And that turned into, “I should sell my head as a space for advertising”? I began seeing a barber who specialised in using straight razors from the 1800s. He knew about the designs my waxer friend had done and wanted to try. But sideburns are an itty-bitty canvas, and he wanted a bigger surface: my head. I liked this local beer shop with a rooster logo, so my barber shaved it into my head. He even shaded the rooster with hairs of different lengths. The amount of complexity was unbelievable. Tragically, I could never see it since it was on the back of my head. Did you just walk into the store with their logo shaved into your hair? Oh yeah. There were a lot of jaws dropping and people running to get cameras. My hair has been exploited and abused on their Facebook page. Initially, I never asked for anything, but I got a lot of free beers. Businesses started approaching me after a while. I had to work out a pricing guide. How much does your head cost? Fifty dollars a week. Some of that goes to my barber. That’s still way less than any of the ad rates in local papers. I’m a walking and talking advertisement, and I’ll promote the store, no matter what. If I’ve chosen to have it on my head, everyone knows it’s worth checking out. Do you support yourself with ad sales? Well, I also work at a Jackson Hewitt tax kiosk inside a Walmart. Do they make you wear a suit or cover up your hair? No. One of the awesome and freaky things about the Northwest is that everything’s accepted. I’m not about to wear my 13-inch mohawk in the tax office, but it’s a very progressive Walmart tax office.
Flying American Slobs BY BRIAN MOYLAN Illustration by Michael Shaeffer
I was hanging out in a business-class lounge at JFK airport, waiting for my flight, when I saw two women enter, one American, one Italian. Try to tell me which is which: The first was tall and slender, wearing a fitted puffy jacket, tight jeans, aviator sunglasses, and a pair of high-heeled boots that could have been featured on the front page of Gilt that very day. She looked relaxed, classy, and very rich, like she was about to go to the plastic surgeon’s office for a tune-up. The second woman was wearing Uggs and grey sweatpants with the word PINK scrawled across the back. A mismatched sweatshirt completed the look, topped off by a sloppy bun that looked more like a pile of garbage than a hairstyle. In other words, the American. Revelation, America: Other nationalities make fun of our seeming inability to dress like full-grown adults on airplanes. It’s no secret that, by and large, we look like shit. “I think every American female I have ever seen on a flight has been wearing Victoria’s Secret yoga pants,” said Naoise, a rather fashionable Irish national. “Yoga pants, a baggy college sweatshirt, and Minnetonka moccasins. This is a thing my friends and I genuinely talk about. Americans on planes dress like they’re going to bed or were recently bereaved.” In the days when air travel was new and exciting, flying through the sky on an awe-inspiring work of engineering was a special occasion for which people were inclined to look their best. Now flying, for many people, is just the least inconvenient means of conveyance. The TSA doesn’t help matters either, with its insistence we remove our shoes and all of our accessories and skulk through metal detectors while holding our pants up like criminals. It makes people want to dress “comfy,” which is just making this problem worse. Somewhere along the line, Americans decided that they would rather be comfortable than glamorous. “I think a lot of people take flying as a chance to let themselves go, even if they are taking a one- or two-hour flight,” said Amira, a young lady who’s spent time in both the Middle East and the Midwest. Thus the international stereotype that Americans are slobs who stumble off planes with enormous body pillows, Crocs, and cargo shorts, not caring at all how other people think they look. No wonder everyone hates the United States. If we’re going to keep bombing everyone, the least we can do is not wear pajama jeans in public.
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F R O N T
BULLETPROOF KIDS In December, the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, threw the country into a deep depression, followed by a fiery debate about guns. As January brought the US six more school shootings, many “solutions” were proposed, from arming janitors to banning all guns, while companies hawking bulletproof blazers, suits, and even children’s clothes saw sales skyrocket. One of these vendors, Amendment II, has bulletproof backpacks starting at $300. I called company president Derek Williams to ask if business was still booming.
BY MATT SHEA Photo courtesy of Amendment II
Do People Really Dress Like Shit in Buffalo? BY HARRY CHEADLE Photo courtesy of Mohawk Press/ WNY Book Arts Center
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VICE: I assume from your company’s name that you really love the Second Amendment? Derek Williams: We’re trying to develop products that save lives, but we all are concealed-weapons carriers, and we all believe firmly in the right to bear arms. Do you feel that selling body armor somehow encourages people to buy more guns? I can see that from outward appearances, it looks like we’re promoting the Second Amendment by selling body armor. But there is really no causal relationship between body armor and shootings other than the fact that the increase in shootings has caused people to want body armor. The reason I stress that is that we’ve had a lot of hate mail from those who say that we’re contributing to the problem of gun violence.
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to people like celebrities; anyone who wants to look good and be protected. Could you bulletproof a beret? Or a cravat? Yep, absolutely. Tell me about the children’s backpacks that have caused all this
Aren’t parents also worried about protecting their children’s chests? Well, any body armor has gaps. I did get an order the other week from a woman for a purple bulletproof vest for her six-year-old. But with the backpacks, if you’re running away from a situation then your back is protected. If you’re trapped, you can get in a corner, lie down, and put the backpack in front of you. Hopefully it gives you decent odds.
You sell something called “designer armor.” What does that mean? We can bulletproof anything you’ve got: jackets, dress shirts, things like that. Prices are high—some items cost $2,500. We sell
As if the city of Buffalo, New York, didn’t have enough to worry about with its struggling economy and tons of fat people and brutal winters, last year a website called Bundle.com named the town of 260,000 the “least fashionable city in America.” Bundle based this assessment on the percentage of households that bought goods from high-end designer merchants four times in a year—New York City and LA were near the top of the list, while Buffalo was near the bottom, even trailing the terrible-looking trolls who inhabit Jacksonville, Florida, and Louisville, Kentucky. Understandably, this pissed off Buffalo’s more stylish residents and business owners, who are sick and tired of hearing about how their hometown is inhabited by nothing but mouth-breathing, obese, Zubaz-wearing, unemployed rubes. To get their take on the matter, I spoke with Erin Habes, a Buffalonian who returned to her hometown in 2005 after a stint as a sales rep for high-end footwear. Shortly after
controversy. How did they come about? At trade shows I’d have people come up to me and say, “Hey, this armor is lightweight, I’d love to have a vest or a backpack for my kid so I can take him hunting,” or, “My kid was at Virginia Tech during the [2007] shooting, I don’t want to risk anything else like that.” After the Connecticut shooting everything just exploded, and we now have a four-week backlog on orders for the backpacks.
Should we arm children too? I don’t know. We try not to get into the politics, but I’m personally a believer in the Second Amendment. Yeah, I think that’s pretty clear.
moving back, Erin founded her own clothing store, began producing one of the city’s biggest annual fashion events, and was called “Buffalo’s premiere fashion maven” by Buffalo Spree magazine. So I figured she’d be a good judge of whether or not everyone in Buffalo dresses like a slob. VICE: How badly do people really dress in Buffalo? Like, do they even know how to put on pants? Erin Habes: Any city has its fashionable community and then has the average community that wears flannels and PJ bottoms and scrunchies in their hair. I think that there’s a healthy mix of individuals here who know how to dress. When I came back after being in New York City, it was definitely a struggle owning my own store. I like to think that I was really ahead of my time in terms of the fashion products that I had. It’s a completely different environment now; all my friends who have their own stores are
doing unbelievably. Buffalo loves supporting its own. Were these fashionable Buffalonians angry about the Bundle.com ranking? Yeah! We always end up at the bottom of every single list and survey like that. People were pissed off and were using choice words. But they based it off of how many people were purchasing products from highend, top designers, which is kind of funny considering the economic state that our country is in. If you gathered all the Buffalonians together, what fashion advice would you give them? Dress appropriately for your body type. A lot of times, women and men are very misguided. They’re putting together outfits and they’ve got it going on, but sometimes someone should tell them, “You know, that’s a little too tight, you shouldn’t be showing off too much.”
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IS FACEBOOK GETTING AWAY WITH SELLING COUNTERFEIT CRAP? The ads on Facebook’s sidebar make it easier to buy clothes, handbags, and jewelry than ever before. Unfortunately, some say they also make it easier to sell knockoffs of name-brand products, even though Facebook officially bans ads for phony merchandise. In October, an NFL-apparel retailer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, brought a lawsuit against Facebook for what it says is the website’s duplicitous inaction when it comes to advertisements for counterfeit jerseys. That lawsuit, which is still being litigated, brought a smile to Eric Feinberg’s face. Eric isn’t directly involved in the case, but he’s the founder of Fans Against Kounterfeit Enterprise (FAKE), a nonprofit organisation that aims to wipe out counterfeit jerseys. I called Eric to learn why he cares so much about knock-off sportswear.
BY LUKE WINKIE Photo Illustration by Alex Cook
VICE: How did you become an activist against counterfeit jerseys? Eric Feinberg: I was handling social media for my PR clients, who were paying me to create word-ofmouth advertising via photo contests and comments through Facebook. I found that when I posted pictures of specific things, like NFL games, my photos were being tagged by sponsored ads for counterfeit jerseys, which would appear on everyone’s timeline. Facebook targets ads based on your preferences. So how could I, in good faith, handle a client’s socialmedia marketing when I know that my marketing would appear next to counterfeit ads? And when I would talk to these companies [who were selling legitimate merchandise] about these ads, they didn’t know what I was talking about. It’s easy to say that counterfeit merchandise is really only detrimental to giant corporations like Nike or Reebok. Why should ordinary people care? How does it affect them? When you go on a counterfeit website, you are giving them your personal credit-card information. So if you feel it’s worth the money you save to give your information to a website out of China, then go for it. Privacy is a whole other issue. How are these ads showing up? Is my information being sold to China? Counterfeiting costs between 750,000 and 1 million jobs [in the US] annually {this number is disputed). The consumers trust Facebook to deliver legitimate advertisements, and that’s not happening. Do you think people who knowingly buy counterfeit jerseys should be held accountable? The ones who should be held accountable are those who retail them. There are people who buy these things in bulk and resell them. It’s not against the law to buy counterfeit goods; it is against the law to profit off of them.
Anarchy in Hip-Hop BY NICHOLAS PELL Photo by Steve Robertson
Hip-hop and punk were born at about the same time (the late 70s), in the same place (New York City), with the same rebellious and aggressive spirit; however, their fashion aesthetics have always clashed. Although there have been some instances of style crosspollination—Public Enemy rocking Minor Threat gear, Lil Jon cloaking himself in Bad Brains apparel—rap stars have traditionally liked things loose-fitting, expensive, and flashy while punks go for tight, ripped, and dirty. Somewhere along the line that all changed, and today’s MCs look like first-wavers at CBGB: The skater degenerates of Odd Future call themselves punks and wear skinny jeans, while the goth-influenced Harlem-based A$AP Mob are regularly seen in Ramones-esque biker jackets. The bigger stars are following the trend, too: Lil Wayne went crust punk for a 2011 feature in Interview magazine, and Wiz Khalifa has been known to don a coloured frohawk. R&B kids are also going punk. Heartthrob Miguel sports a slickedback pompadour reminiscent of Joe Strummer, and Chris Brown has appeared on the red carpet in a punk battle jacket. Surprisingly, his painted and studded jacket, which features the Exploited, Cro-Mags, and D.R.I. logos (and was first worn by Rihanna), didn’t come from a couture shop for the stars—it originated in the living room of Noel Austin, a 40-year-old from Seattle who owns DNA Fashion Designs. Noel doesn’t even know how Breezy got ahold of his jacket. “I haven’t always been the most sane or sober person,” he said. “I’ll see stuff on the street I don’t even remember making.” Back in the day, Noel refused to sell his gear to anyone. “I’d say, ‘Fuck off, make your own.’” But he finally caved in when he needed rent money. Now he makes jackets for celebrities for $6,000 a pop when he’s not creating gratis pieces for Poison Idea and D.R.I. “I want to sell all my shit to A-list douchebags,” he said. And Noel says that like punks, rappers and R&B artists want the authentic stuff. “They want to look rugged, like they smell of whiskey and cigarettes.” Australian illustrator James Jirat Patradoon, who created the inverse of Chris Brown’s punk gear by putting together a battle jacket covered in R&B artists’ names, offered some insight: “There’s such a pansubcultural thing going on; it’s easier to shift from one look to another.” After all, you can now buy bondage belts at Target and H&M. While it’s clear from their music that some rappers actually get the punk thing, others are clearly posing. “If I saw a bunch of guys in leather jackets with mohawks, I’d think they were a boy band,” James said. “Maybe the new way to rebel is to wear a three-piece suit everywhere you go.”
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THE WORLD’S AMERICAN DREAM International Designers Discuss the USA’s Global Fashion Domination (or Lack Thereof) BY VICE STAFF
LAURA VA˘RGA˘LUI
SIMON PORTE JACQUEMUS
ANN-SOFIE BACK
Model and stylist Nothing influenced Romanian fashion and behavior like the American dream from movies and TV shows. We ended up believing it could be real for us, too. Unfortunately, all you have behind this concept is a movie ideal that can’t work in real life. The shows that influenced us the most were Dynasty and Dallas. When I think of American fashion, I think of the whole cowboy look: the hat, denim jackets, and jeans. The latter were the most influential on our day-to-day lives. We all wanted jeans after we saw them on TV. And you couldn’t really buy them in stores during the Communist regime, but my dad was a sailor and brought back 20 to 50 pairs after every trip. If you were caught selling them, you risked going to prison.
Designer and CEO of Jacquemus Calvin Klein is the only American brand I like. I like the very minimalist aspect to his stuff—you know, a girl all dressed in grey, with a centerparted haircut, wearing low-heeled shoes in front of a white wall. Growing up, I thought all the American stuff sucked. The US has never attracted me or ever made me dream. Not even American movies. Today, I can be amazed by a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I enjoy it because, basically, there’s nothing funnier than that—though it has nothing to do with what I’m actually doing with my work.
Designer and founder of her own label I think American fashion has changed a lot in the past fi ve or six years, thanks to all these new, cool Asian-American designers who have popped up recently. I would never have considered showing up to New York Fashion Week if it weren’t for them. Then there are Swedish brands, like Gant and Lexington, that market themselves with an American-dream vibe. I think that’s funny. I love America. I once did a collection inspired by 80s American horror movies and the archetypes you always encounter in those films: the horny teenager, the virgin, the redneck idiot, and so on. That collection also has jewelry made out of chewing gum, checkered shirts, dungarees, and dreamcatcher accessories.
Portraits by Guillaume Belvèze, Noam Griegst, Alessandro Macri, Hanna ter Meulen, Mîndru, Fernanda Negrini, Tim Neugebauer, Yvonne Venegas
The 20th century is often referred to as the American Century, and that’s not just because the US bombed and invaded whomever it felt like, whenever it wanted. From the glamour of old-time Hollywood to Jackie O to Britney Spears’s schoolgirl slutdom, American fashion and trends were admired all over the world and changed the way people dressed from Poland to Japan. While globalisation and labor outsourcing mean that today most of the world’s clothes are manufactured in third-world sweatshops, the garments were likely either designed or heavily influenced by Americans. Foreign fashion designers both love and hate the US’s global influence on style, so for this American-themed Fashion Issue we thought it would be interesting to ask our international offices to get in touch with their countries’ most influential designers and fashion icons to see what they thought of the country’s fashion sense. Not surprisingly, opinions were mixed.
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DUDU BERTHOLINI
MARGI ROBERTSON
ALEJANDRA QUESADA
Co-owner of NEON and designer for CORI I think that the greatest legacy of the US in fashion was to create casual, practical, commercial clothing. The US’s gift to the world was [Roy] Halston, who made minimalist work, sold millions, and is very important to contemporary fashion. What Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein do now follows from that. After World War II, Americans were seen as the biggest trendsetters on the planet. The entire world wanted to be American. This attitude is dissipating in the 21st century, but we absorbed a lot of it—in Brazil, for instance, with streetwear and hip-hop. It’s a good thing this is dissolving now, because the USA, which has always been synonymous with innovation, has also become synonymous with bullshit.
Designer and founder of Nom*D We think of American fashion as casual and simple, wearable. Definitely not avant-garde like Paris, Japan or England. Think Halston, Ralph Lauren, and Geoffrey Beene, who had their time back in the 60s and 70s. Some amazing designs are coming out of the Americans now, Alexander Wang, Rick Owens, Rodarte, etc. I think the US is having another moment and it’s great. On America’s influence on NZ Fashion, we are very influenced these days with the internet, movies, Twitter and Instagram. Also, Americans are the leaders in fast food, 24/7 trading, and I suppose fast fashion. Online shopping presents an opportunity to purchase anything, anytime, anyplace. You don’t have to be a big city dweller to be a fashionable consumer anymore.
Designer and entrepreneur As a Mexican designer, it is impossible to compete against the American fashion industry. They produce so much that they can sell at cheaper prices. I’ve always championed the idea of buying less stuff at higher quality, even if it’s more expensive. For a long time, it was very hard to buy good clothes in Mexico, so Mexicans shopped in the US. Then a few years ago, Inditex [one of the world’s largest fashion distributors] started opening stores in Mexico, and people began shopping for clothes here. In Mexico, there’s still a lot of malinchismo, which means that people prefer what comes from abroad to what’s local. That idea just started changing recently, and now more and more people are producing local clothes, and people are starting to support that.
KATHERINE HAMNETT
ELIO FIORUCCI
PATRICK MOHR
Designer and founder of her own label America invented the bra! That’s been enormously influential—women fi nally have their tits in an interesting place rather than slung around their ankles. That changed the look of women worldwide. The worst aspect of American fashion, I guess, would be the not giving a shit about human rights—where stuff is made, how the workers are treated. The saddest thing is when you see the bosses on vacation, the owners of these huge corporations, being flashy in these enormous yachts that look like housing projects tipped on their sides. They don’t have the intelligence or imagination to work out how to properly spend the money they made. I think they are irresponsible.
Founder of the Fiorucci label All the fashion iconography from the 50s is American. For years, American cinema inspired our lifestyle and the way we dress, from Cadillacs to home appliances—it’s a world we’ve all been inspired by without even knowing it. Personally, I relate more to American fashion than European fashion, which is more restrictive. High fashion is really pretentious. One thing I love about American fashion is the “shabby chic” style.
Designer and founder of his own label American fashion is very traditional, stuck in a rut. It’s practical in a way, but it doesn’t take any risks or experiment. On the other hand, it’s fashion that is strongly connected to the country, clothes that serve a purpose and that will last for many years. When I think of America I think of cowboy history and designers like Tommy Hilfi ger, a leather jacket with fringes on it, or simply a classic denim shirt. That’s very American to me. Americans live very differently from Germans. It doesn’t seem to matter who they’re talking to. They’re open-minded people. That’s something we’re missing here, where people might look at you and ask: “Who are you, what can you do?” The pursuit of equality is something to be recognised in my work too. VICE 27
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This jacket is an example of the pride motorcycle riders have for their Schott Perfectos. Even after many long years of loving wear, the owner made sure to keep its tattered Perfecto tag intact with safety pins.
THE FIRST WILD ONE The Genesis of the Motorcycle Jacket BY WILBERT L. COOPER PHOTOS BY NOAH RABINOWITZ
merican ingenuity is responsible for some of the world’s greatest creations. For instance, the cheeseburger is arguably the best all-around food ever, LSD is the epitome of drugs, and the internet is borderline godlike in its scope. The same goes for a garment that has been adopted by crusty gutter punks, beer-gutted bikers, and yuppies alike: the infallible leather motorcycle jacket. This timeless icon of utilitarian fashion came from the mind of Irving Schott, cofounder of a company now known as Schott NYC, who made history with his iconic asymmetrical jacket design, commonly called the Perfecto. The scrappy son of Russian immigrants, Irving started his career as a patternmaker for clothing manufacturers in the early 1900s. In 1913, he opened a factory with his brother Jack under the name Schott Bros. in the dingy basement of a tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Irving’s first successful products were sheepskin-lined raincoats, which he peddled from door to door. Like any good business, Schott Bros. began to
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diversify its offerings, bestowing its top-of-the-line coats with the Perfecto brand name. Inspired by Irving’s favorite torpedo-shaped cigars, Perfecto labels were stitched on all of his best leather and wool-lined outerwear. At the time, motorcycles were probably the furthest thing from Irving’s mind, considering they had only recently become commercially available and he didn’t even know how to drive a car. Irving was introduced to the world of boss hogs by a friend who was a member of the Beck family. The Becks were one of the country’s largest Harley-Davidson distributors and published a popular catalog of their wares that was available at motorcycle dealerships across the country. Schott Bros. began manufacturing outerwear for the Beck catalog in 1920, including early iterations of what would become the modern motorcycle jacket. Up until this point, there wasn’t a single piece of outerwear on the market sturdy enough to be synonymous with riding motorcycles. Wool jackets lacked the ability to protect the rider from the cutting wind at high speeds, and the leather coats of the day were not designed for the hunched-over, extended-arm posture necessary to drive a motorcycle; this was compounded by the fact that wearing either type of jacket on a motorcycle almost guaranteed that anything in the rider’s pockets would be
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blown into the air while barreling down the road. The advent of the zipper solved these problems and became a key element to Irving’s design. Modern zippers—invented in 1913, the same year Schott opened its first factory—were at first prohibitively expensive for clothing manufacturers. But then World War I happened, and the US military found several ways to utilise the newfangled enclosure device, which helped drive down the cost and made zippers affordable to the consumer market. Sensing the potential of this new technology, Irving was the first clothier to put a zipper on a jacket in 1925. In 1928, after a series of designs, Irving created what is now recognised as the modern motorcycle jacket, using the defining diagonal zipper to fasten the enclosure. The angle of the zipper was essential to blocking the wind, and it ensured that the jacket didn’t bunch up when the rider sat down. It was made out of horsehide, produced for Beck under the Perfecto brand, and sold for a whopping $5.50. Back in those days, the motorcycle jacket was a total oddity, and those bold enough to wear them probably looked peculiar amid the longer formal coats popular at the time. Nearly everything about Schott’s jacket was designed for utility, disregarding style almost entirely. Two decades later, the design had become more common, and the modern mythos of the motorcycle jacket began to take hold. Its adoption into popular culture coincided
with its appearance in films like The Wild One (1953), which depicted an angry and aimless Marlon Brando wearing a tightfitting Schott Perfecto as the leader of a motorcycle gang that terrorises a small town. By the end of the 1950s, schools across the US were banning students from wearing the jacket, which of course only cemented its status as a fashionable symbol of rebellion. This explosion of popularity resulted in the Perfecto name becoming synonymous with Schott’s motorcycle jacket, superseding the brand’s other designs. The steely-eyed, fuck-everyone cool Brando perfected continued to be embraced over subsequent decades by icons like James Dean, the Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, and Jay-Z—all of whom donned some iteration of Schott’s black leather jacket. Like blue jeans, it is a classic American garment that has been reinterpreted by virtually every major fashion designer and brand: from avant-garde weirdos like Rick Owens to traditionalists like Ralph Lauren to no-name companies that supply cheap and inferior versions to big-box stores. But there’s still nothing like the original; no one has managed to best the motorcycle jackets made by Schott NYC, who continue to use turn-of-the-century machines and hand-cut leather in their manufacturing process. This year, Schott NYC celebrates its centennial. We figured it was high time to pay a visit to their factory in New Jersey and share with you the ins and outs of this impeccable American classic.
Stepping into Schott NYC’s Union, New Jersey, factory is like going back in time. They use machines that date back to the early 1900s, employ men and women who’ve been making jackets longer than you’ve been alive, and emphasise quality above all else.
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ANATOMY OF THE SCHOTT MOTORCYCLE JACKET
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EPAULETS The button-snap epaulets were military inspired and lend an authoritarian élan to a jacket that was eventually appropriated by rebels. The epaulets also function as glove holders. For a short time beginning in the late 40s, the epaulets on the 613 One Star model sported chrome stars, but they were discontinued because shoplifters had a penchant for pulling them off jackets on the racks.
ASYMMETRICAL ZIPPER
This motorcycle jacket, which dates to the 1930s, is the oldest specimen in Schott NYC’s archives. It’s notable for its use of a button enclosure, its flannel lining, and the extreme contrast of its short body and superextended arms.
The diagonal zipper is the defining design element of the Schott Perfecto. Its asymmetrical placement ensures that the jacket won’t restrict the wearer’s movement while seated on a motorcycle and keeps harsh winds from penetrating the enclosure. It was a design element that was ahead of its time.
COIN FLAPS AND ZIPPER POCKETS Irving was concerned with riders losing their belongings on the road. Early iterations of the motorcycle jacket, including the first model with a zipped enclosure, sported D and vertical-zip pockets. However, Irving ultimately settled on coin flaps and asymmetrical-zip pockets to batten down the hatches.
SLEEVE ZIPPERS Zippers were added to the bottom of the jacket’s sleeves, allowing riders to adjust the tightness at the wrist to stop the wind from penetrating. When zipped, the sleeves became narrow enough to fit underneath gloves with extralong gauntlets (oversized cuffs), a style motorcyclists appropriated from cowboys.
BELT Belts sealed the waist of the jacket from the wind. Later iterations such as the Perfecto 125 didn’t include the attached belt so that motorcycle cops could wear a gun holster unencumbered. The One Percenters of motorcycle clubs love the 125 model, because they can personalise their belts.
This jacket was purchased in Japan at a vintage auction by Irving’s great-grandson and current Schott NYC COO Jason Schott. Its previous owner had worn the jacket so long its stiff leather had molded to the contours of his body and its original dark brown colour has faded from years of sweat and steaming-hot sun. The owner decorated it with subversive pins (typical of One Percenter motorcycle gangs) that boast several trips to the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which takes place every August in South Dakota.
SHORT LENGTH At the turn of the century, men wore their pants slightly above their waists, influencing the traditionally short length of Schott’s jacket. Also, the cumbersome long coats popular during this era didn’t jibe with motorcycle riders’ needs.
CHROME HARDWARE Chrome began to be incorporated into consumer products following the advent of the automobile. By the 1920s, everything from toasters to furniture was coated with the mirror-like metal. Irving’s use of chrome for the hardware on his jackets was extremely forward-thinking.
LEATHER Leather was the go-to material for Irving because textilebased fabrics did little to block the wind, and synthetic fabrics like nylon and polyester hadn’t been invented yet. The earliest jackets were made from horsehide fashioned into a stiff outer skin that protected riders from the wind and the pavement.
This is a Schott Perfecto 613 fresh off the production line at the New Jersey factory. This era of jackets boasts slight tweaks to earlier models, such as a longer torso. But other than that, they are made as close as possible to Irving’s original design.
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Jack Spade shirt, Vivienne Westwood Man pants; AG Jeans top, J Brand jeans, Pluma cuff
AMERICAN GIGOLO PHOTOS BY RICHARD KERN STYLIST: IAN BRADLEY Hair and Makeup: Tayler Treadwell; Photo Assistant: Max Dworkin; Stylist Assistant: Miyako Bellizzi; Models: Christopher Leabu at Request, Tanya Sweet and Aline at Ford; Special Thanks to The Hudson Hotel
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Costello Tagliapietra dress, Gemma Simone earrings and ring, Tous necklace, vintage clutch from Screaming Mimi’s; Vivienne Westwood suit, Jardine shirt, Ralph Lauren Purple Label tie
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Ralph Lauren Purple Label shirt, Billy Reid pants, tie, and shoes, Perry Ellis by Duckie Brown jacket, Illesteva sunglasses
Yuasa boxers
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Ralph Lauren Purple Label suit and tie, Vivienne Westwood Man shirt; vintage dress from Screaming Mimi’s, Tous earrings
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THIS PAGE: Gemma Simone ring OPPOSITE PAGE: Osklen shirt, Perry Ellis by Duckie Brown pants; vintage necklace from Screaming Mimi’s, Gemma Simone ring
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Tous necklace, vintage slip dress from Screaming Mimi’s
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Astrid Andersen jersey, Minimale Animale bikini top and bottom, Han Cholo earrings
HERB RITTER PHOTOS BY BEN RITTER STYLIST: ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS Hair, Makeup, and Body Art: William Lemon for Temptu Photo Assistant: Vincent Perini Stylist Assistant: Andrew Courtien Models: Chanelle Elise at Next LA, Melissa Stretton at APM Special Thanks to Darren Tereul
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Irina Marinescu dress
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Patricia Field rain cloak, Assembly New York bodysuit, Pedro Garcia shoes
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Patricia Field bra, shorts, and hat, Han Cholo earrings
Alessia Prekop bodysuit
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Aqua by Aqua swimsuit, Mandy Coon cuff
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SNOOP THROUGH THE AGES The Clothes Made the Dogg, and Now Make the Lion
BY ROCCO CASTORO PHOTOS BY TERRY RICHARDSON Stylist: Annette Lamothe-Ramos Photo Assistants: Rafael Rios and David Swanson Special thanks to Milk Studios
he 2000s saw fashion and style surreptitiously removed from the overmoisturised hands of high-end designers and busybody critics. It was snatched from them in the dead of night by forwardthinking bloggers, affordable boutique brands, and most importantly, rappers. There is one man who, since the early 90s, has been a harbinger of the sort of unapologetically authentic style that is worn by anyone under 40 today. That man is Snoop Dogg—or rather, more specifically, was Snoop Dogg. Last year he renamed himself Snoop Lion following a trip to Jamaica where he recorded Reincarnated, a reggae- and Rastafarianisminfluenced album that features very little rapping. It will be released in mid-April alongside a corresponding documentary about his journey to find Jah. One of the first rappers to truly shock the public based on his lifestyle alone, Snoop was thrust into the cultural consciousness in the early 90s with the one-two punch of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Doggystyle. These albums served as a blueprint for more than a decade of hardcore, explicit hip-hop made by artists who lived the lives they were rapping about—gangbangers and miscreants from the hood who had no problem dealing, shooting, fucking,
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smoking, drinking, and all sorts of other activities that freaked out parents everywhere. Snoop’s various looks followed suit, running along a larger continuum of style that has evolved into a glorious mishmash of skinny jeans, flat-billed baseball hats, oversize sweaters, preppy layering, limitededition sneakers, flannels, vintage curiosities, weird screenprints, and whatever else makes its wearer look good without pretense. There are no rules anymore, and thank fucking God that’s the case because everything was getting predictable and boring. With this in mind, we thought it only proper to revisit Snoop’s looks from years past for this Americanthemed Fashion Issue and interview him about them. He was even gracious enough to allow us to pull the real artifacts from his wardrobe archive. Suffice it to say that watching him slip on his purple pimp coat for the first time in years and adjust it while he glared into the mirror would definitely be something I’d check off my bucket list if I thought keeping one of those things wasn’t utterly gross and depressing. A busy man without much time to spare, Snoop is a supreme multitasker, so, appropriately, we conducted this interview while a manicurist touched up his French tips.
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VICE: I was worried you might not be into this idea— a fashion shoot revolving around your looks from the past—because you have reinvented yourself as Snoop Lion. But you seemed totally at ease with fully immersing yourself in the concept; even your demeanor seemed to change according to each style. Snoop Lion: I mean, they never left, you understand? I always incorporate a little bit of anything and everything. I always go back to yesterday, and it’s good to be able to find yourself completely in that moment, in that era, with that mind state, and be able to capture that. You’ve defined a lot of fashion just by being who you are, by wearing clothing you like and feel comfortable in. But we pulled some pretty specific clothing for the shoot, like the Crip suit. Where did that come from? Was it your idea? The first time I saw that suit was on Coolio and a bunch of guys called the 40 Thevz—they were a rap group that were backing him up. He had the suit on and I liked it, so he turned me onto the guy who was making them— Perry White—and I started wearing them. Before you knew it, they became a part of my look because it was so symbolic of who I was and what I represented. It was the first statement of me being in the fashion world, to show that I did have style and understood what style was along with being gangster and West Coast.
“The average guy can’t see himself getting a French-tip manicure, but I’m not the average guy.” Were you following any particular designers back then? I was, like, more about what made me look fresh, you understand? If certain designers, like for example if Tommy Hilfiger had a tight shirt, I would get a Tommy Hilfiger shirt with some Capezio shoes or maybe some Girbaud pants or some Guess overalls. Whatever fashion I was on was whatever my money could afford, and at the same time whatever made me look good. It wasn’t dictated by a fashion designer or maker, it was more about the style, and certain makers had different styles that fit me that I would take and make mine. But you have remained loyal to certain brands over the years. Specifically, Polo and Adidas come to mind. What is it about these companies that has kept you coming back for more over the years? They stay true to what they do, and they appeal to me because they won’t change. They make it the way that they make it; they stick to the script, and that’s who I am. I like to wear clothes and things that represent the same things that I represent, and those two brands, Polo and Adidas, stay true to the streets. They stay true to their look, and they make gear that fits a real player.
People have been wearing football jerseys forever, but I think you may have been the first rapper, and really the first musician or notable person, to consistently wear hockey jerseys in a fashionable way. Where’d this look come from? Are you a big NHL fan? You know what it was? I had a stylist at the time called Toi Crawford. She brought the hockey jerseys because I liked the African-American hoodies people were wearing back then—the ones from black colleges. Then she said, “You should try this hockey jersey.” It had an Indian on it or something. And another had, like, a leaf, a chronic leaf. I liked that one. Then there was the black-and-yellow one for the Pittsburgh Penguins. There were so many things about them that were fly to me. I liked the way they looked, and they were big, and I was like, “Ain’t nobody wearing these. This is me, this is my look.” It was just something that felt good to me. Around the same time, you were wearing a lot of flannels, and now everyone wears them all the time. I don’t think that was the case in the early and mid-90s. For instance, Terry Richardson and flannels are like peanut butter and jelly at this point. Do you feel partially responsible for that trend? We called them Pendletons. They made it like it was a fashion statement, but that was the only thing we could afford back then in the West. We would go down to the surfer’s store and get like ten, maybe 15 of them at a nice little price, you understand? It was warm and representative of who we were and what we craved. It was like our dress code. They were utilitarian and functional while also fashionable, which is why I think people were so surprised when you started dressing like a pimp. But again, it was what you were living at the time so people shouldn’t have been so shocked. In contrast to your previous style, it was very flamboyant. It was flamboyant and outlandish. One thing about that look is that it represented you, your girls, the car that you drove, and this is in the pimp world. It represented the pimp. If his colour scheme was green and yellow, he had on green and yellow, his car was green and yellow, his apartment was green and yellow, the girls wore green and yellow, and everything was about that particular colour scheme. They matched all the way from the top to the bottom. It was about flair, glamour, glitz, and all of that comes out of the era I grew up in. I was infatuated after seeing it from afar. Most of my uncles dibbled and dabbled in pimping, and my wife’s father was one of the biggest pimps around. It was fascinating for me to see that look and say that I was in that world and to wear that fashion for the eyes of the world. It was a beautiful feeling because I know what that fashion means; it’s a real fashion statement. Even when I’m getting getting my nails done, that’s real player. The average guy can’t see himself getting a French-tip manicure, but I’m not the average guy.
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How long have you been getting French tips? It’s about being spooned and groomed, dipped and whipped, suited and booted, gooted and looted, scuttered and buttered. Where did you get the purple fur coat that you were wearing in the shoot? Was it custom-made? I’ve never seen anything like it. [laughs] That’s out of the pimp files. I’ve got so many different animal furs: beavers, chinchillas, lambs, horses…
having more control over what I do and say. I had to have a look to match that. You have to look the part to play the part. No one would take me seriously if I came in with a jogging suit on. They would think I was going to jog. So I was going to put a business suit on so they would know I was going to do business. One thing about the business that I do is it’s about fun. Once we get past the fun, it becomes a great business venture because if it’s fun we’re going to love doing it, we’re going to do it all the time.
Horses? Yeah, I got horses, too. I got everything, man. Everything. You understand? When I was in the pimp world, I’d be shopping all over the world and we would always try to find things nobody had, because when you go to a player’s ball you get some of the flyest pimps in the world, and they show up with some of the grandest outfits you can imagine. So you try to upstage. One year I remember I had a big black-and-gold sombrero with diamonds and rhinestones on it, and I had it tied around my head. All my girls dressed like they were Mexican girls, and it was just awesome. When I was there I was the real el jefe.
And that brings us up to your recent trip to Jamaica and new reggae-influenced album, which has resulted in yet another look for you, but it seems that this one is more spiritual in nature. I imagine embracing Rastafarianism has changed the way you shop. Where are you getting your clothes these days, specifically the white linen smock-type suits you’ve been sporting? I got a store that I shop in, you understand me? Rastafari, sugah! I don’t want to give that location out because I don’t want to have too many people looking like me. You know, before I know it I’ll see you doing the interview looking just like me. [laughs]
“I’ve got so many different animal furs: beavers, chinchillas, lambs, horses… Yeah, I got horses, too.” So did you have stylists and other people sourcing all of this clothing? How did you find these off-the-wall items? I had different stylers, and I’d seen different things. I liked that sombrero because I’d seen a lot of the players wear the nice hats. But no one wore one like that. I’d seen Bishop Don “Magic” Juan wear one before, and his was like Louis Vuitton. That’s a fly style right there: When you’ve got a nice suit on and you wearing that sombrero, you gotta understand me, that’s some real fashion. I take it that you were buying more jewelry around that time than you do now? Yeah. I still have some of that, but most of them are a thing of the past. They went with the times. Your next evolution in style was, for lack of a better term, your “business look.” It was around this time that you were appointed creative chairman of EMI’s Priority Records. I imagine this was the impetus for the new duds? It was about transforming myself from an artist to a boss, and then trying to be more effective on the business side and not just creating but understanding that, creatively, I am the boss because I’m creating everything people want to buy and see—so why not be in control? It’s the fact of me having to fire people and
No, I don’t think that would be possible. I couldn’t pull it off. But it is an enviable look: You’ve got comfort, class, and a stately presence all rolled into one. That’s what we seek; we seek to be comfortable and relaxed but also to be sharper, because at the same time we like to look good, we want to look good. One thing about the West is that we always try to look good. We try to outdo our friends to get a girl. The one thing about the ladies out here is that they like a man to be dressed up sharp and be serious about what he do. It gave me some insight on fashion at an early age, when we got to where we started to want to have girlfriends and be impressive— trying to get a job, to do things in the world, to try to bring yourself to another level, to step up. Your hairstyle has drastically changed throughout your career alongside your various looks. I feel that hair is so make-it-or-break-it—so many public figures have tried to change their hairdos, and a lot of the time it ends up being a totally embarrassing disaster. But you’ve never had a misstep in that regard. What does the way a man styles his hair say about him? It’s your strip. That’s what it’s all about. Most definitely, that’s been my style since day one; my hair has always been my main focus. I always make sure it looks right, and that I’ve got a new style, something that fits me that’s different. Even when I wore it in pigtails, or permed my hair like Shirley Temple, whatever it was, it was always something that was on the edge. It was like, “Wow, it looks nice.” But it was always different, so even now that I’m locking up, this is me being me. My hair has always told the story, and this is my journey at the moment. Reincarnated is playing in select theaters beginning March 15, with a DVD release to follow on April 16. The album will be released in April.
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Vintage jacket from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel shirt, Naked & Famous jeans
PHOTOS BY RICHMOND LAM STYLIST: OLIVIA WHITTICK
Vintage bikini top, pants, sunglasses, and bracelet, vintage necklaces from Citizen Vintage, Duy jacket
Concept: Raf Katigbak Photo Assistant: Adam Biehler Hair and Makeup: Alexandra Apple Models: Beaver, Cary, Dane, Daouda, Dave, Idil, Inès at Montage, Micheala, Sadjo, Salina, Sam, Sophie Shot at Studio Made of Stills
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Vintage overalls from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel top
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Vintage shirt and hat from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel jeans, vintage belt
Yard666sale shirt, vintage jeans and bracelets
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Vintage jacket from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel jeans and backpack, vintage bracelets and ring
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Vintage vest, shirt and gloves, American Apparel pants, vintage bracelet from Citizen Vintage; vintage jacket and bracelet from Citizen Vintage, American Apparel pants, vintage rings, glove, and earrings
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Vintage shirt, Naked & Famous jeans, Penfield bandana; WeSC shirt, American Apparel shorts, Penfield hat, vintage watch and bracelet
THIS PAGE: A farmer shows off his trusty blue jeans in Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940. Photo courtesy of Russell Lee/Library of Congress OPPOSITE PAGE: Workers on the Alexander plantation in Arkansas picking cotton in 1935. Photo courtesy of Ben Shahn/Library of Congress
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DE NÎMES The Long Journey of Blue Jeans BY JENNI AVINS
Before we had low-rise, straight-leg, skinny, selvage, stretchy, resin-coated, lotion-infused, or mom jeans, there was simply jean—the fabric. The name likely originated from gênes, referring to Genoa, Italy, where sailors wore a twill blend of cotton, linen, and wool that came in a variety of stripes and colours. Today’s jeans are made from heavier, all-cotton denim woven in a combination of indigo-dyed vertical yarn and natural horizontal yarn, resulting in the fabric’s white-speckled surface and pale underside. And although the original name for denim came from Nîmes, France—as in, de Nîmes— the fabric was most likely first produced in England. nce the United States emancipated itself from British rule, the former colonists stopped importing European denim and began producing it themselves from allAmerican cotton, picked by slaves in the South and spun, dyed, and woven in the North. The Industrial Revolution was largely fueled by the textile trade, which almost singlehandedly upheld slavery. When the cotton gin mechanised processing in 1793, prices, already subsidised by slave labor, dropped dramatically. Cheap goods drove demand, and a vicious cycle ensued. In the period between the invention of the cotton gin and the Civil War, America’s slave population shot from 700,000 to a staggering 4 million. After the Civil War, companies like Carhartt, Eloesser-Heynemann, and OshKosh slung cotton coveralls to miners, railroad men, and factory workers. A Bavarian immigrant named Levi Strauss set up shop in San Francisco selling fabric and work-wear. Jacob Davis, an entrepreneurial Reno tailor, bought Strauss’s denim to make workingman’s pants, and added metal rivets to prevent the seams from ripping open. Davis sent two samples of his riveted pants to Strauss, and they patented the innovation together. Soon after, Davis joined Strauss in San Francisco to oversee production in a new factory. In 1890, Strauss assigned the ID number of 501 to their riveted denim “waist overalls.” The Levi’s 501 blue jean—which would become the best-selling garment in human history—was born. Initially, jeans were proletarian western work-wear, but wealthy easterners inevitably ventured out in search
O
of rugged cowboy authenticity. In 1928, a Vogue writer returned East from a Wyoming dude ranch with a snapshot of herself, “impossibly attired in blue jeans… and a smile that couldn’t be found on all Manhattan Island.” In June 1935, the magazine ran an article titled “Dude Dressing,” possibly one of the first fashion pieces to instruct readers in the art of DIY denim distressing: “What she does is to hurry down to the ranch store and ask for a pair of blue jeans, which she secretly floats the ensuing night in a bathtub of water—the oftener a pair of jeans is laundered, the higher its value, especially if it shrinks to the ‘high-water’ mark. Another innovation—and a most recent one, if I may judge—also goes on in the dead of night, and undoubtedly behind locked doors—an intentional rip here and there in the back of the jeans.” Around this time, jeans were a nostalgic souvenir from an increasingly closed and diminished western frontier. By the 1930s, the buffalo was all but extinct, the vast majority of Native Americans had been put on reservations, and western farmers had divided up and fenced off the once vast, wideopen land. Levi’s were unavailable east of the Mississippi, making them the quintessential California brand. To the rest of the country, it barely mattered whether the real cowboys wore blue jeans, when movie stars like John Wayne, Will Rogers, Gene Autry, and William S. Hart did. In the South, as sharecropping was just dying out, jeans carried a different set of connotations. A 1941 fashion spread in Life magazine titled “Doris Lee Offers the
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THIS PAGE: The oldest-known pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, circa 1890, were found in a mine in the Mojave Desert. The following timeline illustrates the 501’s transformations from the late 1800s to 1978. Photo courtesy of Levi Strauss & Co.
1890
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE TOP LEFT: When bikers and beatniks embraced jeans, denim companies tried to whitewash their image by showing clean-cut youth donning blue jeans. Photo courtesy of Levi Strauss & Co.
1922
Calvin Klein may have sexualised blue-jeans advertising with Brooke Shields in the early 80s, but Gucci was no slouch either. Photo courtesy of Advertising Archives North Carolina’s Cone Mills has been the source for Levi’s 501 fabric for nearly a century. Today, they also supply material for highend, locavore jean brands like Raleigh Denim and 3x1—as well a 501 reissue sold at J.Crew.
1933
1937
1944
Southern Negro” featured a series of the artist’s Maira Kalmanesque sketches of African-American women in midriff-baring halter tops, turbans, and colourful skirts, juxtaposed against photographs of white women in similar outfits. The text read: “[The artist] reports that these ‘low-country’ Negroes, more primitive than elsewhere, have a flair for colour, a ‘proportion oddity,’ great resourcefulness and ingenuity especially in their adaptations of castoffs.” One pair of images included “faded coveralls… readily adapted into clam-digger-style blue jeans.” The spread suggests that, like the blues, American blue-jean styles were adapted—or stolen—from African Americans. It’s little wonder that jeans didn’t catch on in black fashion for decades. Southern blacks had no use for clothing that harked back to a brutal history of violence, oppression, and exploitation. During World War II, off-duty American servicemen wore their jeans while overseas, exporting their appeal like Westernstyle democracy. From there, blue jeans’ allure continued to increase internationally. For instance, East German authorities noted the prevalence of “cowboy pants” at a workers’ revolt in 1953. Jeans represented a similar kind of rebellion in the postwar US. But brands weren’t ready to associate their products with antiauthoritarian delinquents like the 501-clad Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Instead, they viewed this semiotic shift as a disturbing departure from the clean-cut movie-poster cowboys of the past. The Wild One was, after all, based on a real motorcycle riot in California. Newspapers made sure to mention when criminals wore blue jeans, and high schools banned them. Rather than exploiting the bad-boy image and embracing what could have been an easily executed marketing campaign, denim manufacturers tried to whitewash it with slogans like “Clean Jeans for Teens” and “Jeans: Right for School.” They even formed an organisation called the Denim Council to hold wholesome “blue jean queen” beauty contests and outfit JFK’s first Peace Corps volunteers. But it was all for naught. By the late 60s, actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Dennis Hopper smoldered onscreen in movies like Cool Hand Luke and Easy Rider, while the counterculture assimilated into the mainstream, and teenagers became a market that wielded serious buying power. “That mass consumerism, with all the standardisation it implied, could somehow be reconciled with rampant individualism was one of the smartest tricks ever pulled by Western civilisation,” wrote historian Niall Ferguson in 2011’s Civilisation: The West and the Rest. Ferguson’s point was observable on an international scale, as a Cold War-era sociological conundrum: As cheap, widely available proletarian clothing, jeans were the ultimate paradoxical symbol of consumer culture for the USSR. He summed it up nicely: “Perhaps the greatest mystery of the entire Cold War is why the Worker’s Paradise could not manage to produce a decent pair of jeans.” Life observed the results of this back in 1972. “Fashionsensitive Russians might be forgiven for viewing blue jeans as an international capitalist conspiracy,” the magazine reported. A pair of contraband Levi’s could fetch $90 on Russia’s black market, and American travelers financed European holidays by selling extra pairs. Soviet officials even coined the term “jeans crimes” to describe “law violations prompted by a desire to use any means to obtain articles made of denim.” By the 70s, jeans began to enter the realm of high fashion. And the fi t had to be perfect. American designers like Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Geoffrey Beene, and Calvin Klein transformed jeans into a status commodity and promptly cashed
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in on their handiwork. Klein in particular understood the sexual potential of a tight butt in an even tighter pair of jeans. After his first denim attempt failed commercially in 1976, he adjusted the fit: raising the crotch for emphasis on the package beneath and pulling up the back seam to accentuate the buns. Three years later, Klein had cornered 20 percent of the designer market. A 1980 Calvin Klein print and TV ad campaign infamously featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields (“You want to know what comes between me and my Calvins?”). Klein quickly turned $25 million into $180 million. This was before stretch denim flooded the market, so these jeans were not only unusually high-waisted and skintight, they were also thick and unforgiving: so tight and rigid that women had to lie on their backs and use pliers to pull up their zippers. As distracting and perhaps painful as they must have been to wear, it was also the final realisation that jeans could be more than just clothing. If a sexy fit defined the 70s and early 80s, the next phase in denim culture was all about the finish, achieved with an array of tools like stones, bleach and acid washes, scissors, and safety pins. The look may have started in the street, but soon enough, designers like Vivienne Westwood and Dolce & Gabbana sent punk-inspired denim down their runways. In 1988, Vogue’s new editor in chief, Anna Wintour, put a model in stonewashed Guess jeans on her first cover.
By the mid-90s, denim’s ass was owned by high fashion. Tom Ford embroidered, beaded, and feathered jeans for Gucci. By the mid-90s, denim’s ass was outright owned by high fashion. Tom Ford embroidered, beaded, and feathered jeans for Gucci. Torn and slightly oversize, they hung from models’ hips and sold for more than $3,000. “Before they were even in stores, the first shipment sold out through advance order,” the New York Times reported. “Winona Ryder, Mariah Carey, and Helen Hunt ordered the skirt; Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett, the jeans. The singers Lil’ Kim, Janet Jackson, and Madonna ordered both.” For all of its potential guido pitfalls, Diesel was the first brand to successfully bring Italian-designed, artfully distressed designer denim to suburban consumers. The brand paved the way for flared legs and whiskers (those faded crease marks that fan out from the fly) with $100 price tags. Seven for All Mankind, Habitual, Citizens of Humanity, Paper Denim & Cloth, True Religion, Chip & Pepper, Earl, Yanük, Frankie B., and too many more to name here followed suit with stretch yarns woven in, to better allow for low-slung, thong-exposing waistlines.
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While it may not look like much has changed over the years, many alterations have been made to Levi’s most iconic cut throughout history, including variations in leg width and waist height. Photo courtesy of Levi Strauss & Co.
1947
1954
And now, in the midst of the Great Recession, we have come full circle, with the fairly recent demand for nostalgic “heritage” jeans that recall the hardscrabble industrialism of the Great Depression: work shirts and overalls faded to shades of cornflower blue, and rough-hewn, no-nonsense, deep-dyed dungarees. Like their precursors from the 20s and 30s, these jeans seem imbued with a sad nostalgia for a bygone country (but maybe this time with a better fit). We’ve entered the Dorothea Lange era of fashion—clothed in flecked wool cardigans, formidable flannel shirts, and sturdy work boots, Depression-era from head to toe. The look is cataloged in magazines like Free & Easy from Japan, which is where much of the aforementioned heritage denim originates. In the 70s and 80s, effi cient American mills perfected cheap, voluminous product. The Japanese went the opposite direction, working with premium designers, employing old-fashioned shuttle looms and less consistent yarns. The resulting fabrics have the kind of selvage (the unfrayed woven finish along the material’s narrow edge) fetishised by denim snobs everywhere. They wear out with much more character than the fuzzy, overwashed denims of recent decades. A new breed of bloggers are obsessively documenting their jeans’ disintegration, extensively cataloging brands, ages, washes, and wears. The phenomenon is similar to the recent barrel-aged cocktail trend, observable at any number of artisanal “speakeasies” across the country.
1955
We’ve entered the Dorothea Lange period of fashion.
1967
1978
The vast majority of Americans cannot afford bespoke, ringspun, resin-coated dream jeans, however seductive and special. Most buy their jeans at places like Walmart, where a two-pack of house-brand Faded Glory jeans can be had for around $22. Adjusted for infl ation, that’s the same price the Vogue writer paid for one pair of jeans in 1928. Of course, these cheap jeans come with the hidden cost of US jobs. Cotton Incorporated reports that only about 1 percent of jeans available in the US were manufactured domestically. By 2009, most American denim factories had been closed, with manufacturing moving to plants in China, Mexico, and Bangladesh. Perhaps a nation of unemployed Americans in $11 jeggings is our dystopian eyesore of a future. Glenn Beck, of all people, addressed the issue last year by launching his own line of American-made jeans ($129.99 a pop) with a jingoistic PR campaign after he was upset by Levi’s ads he felt glorified “revolutions and progressivism.” Beck is by no means the first Levi’s customer to conflate his own values with his blue jeans’ branding, but no matter how nostalgically we clutch our denim, it’s no longer just about us. The US market for blue jeans has been left in the dust; Latin America and Asia drive the future of denim. That said, there is a small, healthy designer-denim production chain alive in Los Angeles, and one of Levi’s early suppliers, Cone Denim, still weaves fabric in North Carolina, where small-scale manufacturers like Raleigh Denim market their product. Maybe one of these operations will be able to grow to an economy of scale and make “Made in America” accessible to its masses once again. Or it’s possible that blue jeans will just live on as America’s greatest contribution to the global closet. Until then, they’re still here. Faded, whiskered, and stretched. But still here.
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JOHNNY MARR TAKES FASHION AND MUSIC SERIOUSLY An Interview with the Coolest Guitarist to Ever Breathe Air BY KELLY McCLURE PHOTO BY KEVIN SHEA ADAMS
usic and fashion go together like pedophiles and children. It’s always been an uneasy, somewhat forced relationship that results from perversion and mental illness. Johnny Marr is one of the few musicians who got it right. His style initially developed as an understated but timeless counterpoint to Morrissey’s blousy and overblown femininity during his time with the Smiths—the most fashionable band ever, in which Johnny played guitar, the most fashionable instrument ever. It’s no wonder Moz wanted to blow him so bad it broke them up. All of you guys prancing around with your stupid tennis shoes and too much jewelry (which, by the way, most men shouldn’t wear at all) and pants so tight that they throb would do well to review
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Johnny’s different looks from throughout his career. With any luck they will give you some idea of how to dress like a stylish adult human male instead of a greasy, degenerate plastic-booger baby. The Messenger, Johnny’s first solo album, comes out this month, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to talk to him about his music, how he learned how to not be an asshole, and who’s stronger: him or Moz. VICE: There are very few bands that demand as much reverence as the Smiths, and it only seems to be growing as the years ago on. Do you think it’s healthy for people to take music so seriously? Johnny Marr: I think pop culture, as I know it, gets intense, and it’s never just about music. Aesthetics come into it, and lifestyle and politics, and that’s when it’s really good. I don’t mind when people take what I do lightly, or what they like lightly, but for some people it is very, very serious, and they feel lucky to have found something with all those elements in there. It seems like there used to be albums and groups that were life-changing. I don’t think it happens much anymore, if ever. Am I just getting jaded? It depends on what you’re looking for, doesn’t it? If you’re looking for some profound poetry, not everybody is going to provide that. If you’re looking to change your clothes, and you discover the Strokes when you’re 15, then it happens, right? If you’re in high school, and you
just discovered Karen O, then that’s going to be pretty cool. The Messenger sounds like it might’ve been heavily influenced by girl groups and the blues, musically as well as stylistically. Did you let anything contemporary trickle in? Honestly, no. I had no interest in being regressive or repeating myself, but at the same time I had no problem with just being myself on this album. The stuff that I liked when I went to school had a good ethos and was aesthetically pretty cool. One of the reasons I moved back to the UK from Portland was to be in the place that reminded me of where I was when I first started writing songs. As far as worrying about being relevant, I really could not give a shit. I’ll let other people be relevant. I’ll put them on my iPod. I’m just concerned with being the best at being me. You are the furthest thing from a “here’s my penis” male-centric rock star even though you’ve been in all of these big bands. Would it be fair to say that you’re female-centric or at least a female-aware guy because you were so into all of these girl groups when you started out? And if so, was this a conscious choice? It started to be conscious when it was pointed out to me by some of the girls in my life. I think it’s maybe a generational thing. Guys from my generation, in the UK as well as in the US, were just not at all fucked up about femininity. It wasn’t that big of a deal for girls to be in bands. And I’ve grown up with girls—there’s never been a time when there weren’t girls in my life. So, yeah, it was pointed out to me, pre-Smiths, that the way I played guitar wasn’t macho, and I just sort of ran with it and took it as a compliment. I saved this one for last, in case you punched me out: Who do you think would win in an arm-wrestling match, you or Morrissey? Oh, he would, definitely. Wait, what am I saying… It would be me. Definitely me.
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TICKETS ON SALE NOW: MOVEMENTFESTIVAL.COM.AU
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REVIEWS BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: GRAVE BABIES
MIC RIPZ
TO THIS, IT SOUNDS LIKE NOTHING ELSE OUT THERE, IT IS SO AMAZING. TURNS OUT SCOTTISH PEOPLE CAN ACTUALLY RAP GOOD EVEN THOUGH THEY LIKE HAGGIS AND MEL GIBSON IS THE PEAK OF THEIR MODERN CULTURAL RELEVANCE.” RAJESSICA JONES
The One Inch Punch Dead people Ink
CHIEF KEEF Finally Rich Interscope
If you’re a white rapper, you’d better have a “thing.” Eminem’s is that he is a terrible, fuckedup person. Bubba Sparxxx’s is that he is a redneck. El-P is pretty concerned about aliens descending from space and taking us over. I guess this MiC RipZ’s shtick is that he totally sucks ass? Doesn’t seem like a good move to me, but what do I know? MIKE CHECK
Finally Rich? Most people don’t even get rich, plus he’s like 17. When I was that age, I was lucky enough to scrounge together enough cash for a 4-pack of pre-mixed Woodstock, a 2-piece Chicken combo and the new Morbid Angel CD. Also, “Sosa” and “Hate Being Sober” are exactly the same song. RANGI RANGINUI
WAX WITCHES Celebrity Beatings Jerko
Word on the street (the street is the internet) is that Alex Wall played every instrument on this album and mixed it at his house. That’s pretty impressive. The only thing I make in my house is bad food decisions and other people disappointed. Considering that, Celebrity Beatings has an impressive amount of noise and spazz for something that was performed alone. I bet he couldn’t even mazz while making this because he used up all his nervous energy. You can’t give it a shit review with that in mind. Oh, also it’s a sick album. ALLEY McBIEBER
STEP PANTHER
A$AP ROCKY
Dreamcrusher
Long.Live.A$AP
Jerko Records
RCA
Get some hand sanitiser before you touch this because it’s covered in the fingerprints of bitter, old, white, male record executives. Seriously, how does someone go from putting out the best mixtape of the year in 2011 to releasing a soundtrack to a 17-year-old girl getting duck-billed for the first time? RANGI RANGINUI
YOUNG FATHERS Tape One Anticon
The thing about Young Fathers is they have the entire deck stacked against them: They’re Scottish, and it’s a proven, scientific fact that Scottish people cannae feckin’ rap. Plus they’re on Anticon, which is pretty much the Def Jam of shitty, overthought rap music. Yet this is pretty unfuckwithable. It has all of the cool elements of British grime, but it’s also dubbed-out atop a traditional African percussive aesthetic. That’s music-journalismese for “LISTEN
PANTHA DU PRINCE & THE BELL LABORATORY Elements of Light Rough Trade
Like anyone with an IQ over 70 I hate 97 percent of humanity. They’re either complete idiots, or they won’t have sex with me. I imagine that’s how Hendrik Weber feels. He hates everyone these days. A decade ago, his then-underground aesthetic was finding him playing in dank house parties to 20 dudes who still masturbate to old Cure records, but he was happy. Since the overlap of electronic and indie he’s seen his shows escalate to gigantic rooms full of Lynx-wearing bros attempting to finger their girlfriends on the dance floor. So what does he do? He tries to alienate his entire fanbase by teaming up with a Norwegian ensemble and making his new record with a carillon. A three-tonne instrument comprising 50 bronze bells. That said, I really want to take mescaline and slay some ass to this record. WYSON TRAY
Step Panther are rewarding to listen to in the same way giving up a seat on the tram to an old person is rewarding: only if someone sees you do it. It’s polite garage rock for polite people who do polite things in the hope other polite people acknowledge their efforts. The whole record makes you want to put on a GG Allin record, shoot some dope, make a rape joke and give a blind person the wrong change. This record reminds me that in 2013 there are no winners, just a plethora of young indie rock bands tripping over one another to write the album that will cure insomnia forever. AL FROM MINISTRY
FOUR TET 0181 Text Records
The other day Kieran Hebden surprised his fans by freely releasing 0181 completely out of the blue through his social networks. Who the fuck knows why. Maybe he’s realised that in a contemporary society
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REVIEWS WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: MIC RIPZ:
where underground music consumers are selfish and would rather steal music from the internet and spend their money on the premium IMDB app, he should just give up and throw it away for free. Or did he just upload it because his grandmother was hassling him to get off the internet because she needed to use the phone. One of life’s greatest mysteries I suppose. TYSON WRAY
BIG DIPPER
John and Robert Kennedy. Most of this time was soundtracked by Beach Fossils, and you’ve got to give it to them—they can really set a mood. It gives a real poignancy to all that bullshit and whatever else is to come. TESS LEPER
Big Dipper Crashes on the Platinum Planet
GRAVE BABIES
Almost Ready
Crusher Hardly Art
THE DADACOMPUTER The Birth of 5xoD Iceage Productions
This turned up in my mailbox last week. Attached to the front was a wrinkled post-it with ‘KARL’ scribbled on it. I don’t know who Karl is, but he ordered a opus of cyborg bleeps and cruddy vocal narratives that turned up 30 years late. This was recorded in the Autumn of 1981 somewhere between Bristol and Cardiff as an experiment in long distance collaboration. I love the archives, but this needs to be sent right back through the portal of Kraftwerk’s vocoder polished asshole. The guys who made this spent too much time fiddling with Casios and making retro-futurist statements about what life would be like in the year 2013. I know this is experimental, but futurists get it wrong sometimes. By now aren’t we meant to have a cure for cancer, orbiting meth labs and nanobots? Hey, I don’t know what 2013 looks like yet, but it according to these guys, it sounds like Michael J Fox jacking off to a dial-up tone. MEL TAN
THE RUBY SUNS Christopher Sub Pop/Inertia
Wanky, Euro, homo, electro. The lyrics are embarrassing and the beats make me think of glitter, biceps and 2008. You shouldn’t be into this. No one should. JULIAN MORGANS
This isn’t the gay, chubby comedy rapper; this is an indie-rock thing that hasn’t put out a new record in 23 years. I don’t like it, but also I don’t like REM, Weezer, or any of the bands in the realm of this vocal style. It’s so fucking whiny and unpleasant to me. It’s like… just go kill yourself already. Oh, wait, you can’t because you’re a pussy? Fuck you. The only band that sings like this that I can stomach is Polaris, which, if you don’t remember, is the band from Pete & Pete. Everyone else can get choked out by a frat boy who is secretly gay and hates himself. HEYYYYYY
BEACH FOSSILS Clash the Truth Captured Tracks
It’s cold outside, and everything is shades of grey or brown. Everyone is depressed and not having it, especially me. I woke up with a sore throat, followed by a text from my neighbour saying that someone stole my bike’s back tire. The upshot was that it caused me to call in sick to a job I hate and spend the morning lying around in bed with my dog. I checked in on the stats from last night’s fantasy basketball game. It’s dismal how bad I’m losing, but I cheered up when I found a pretty decent record distributor from Australia and ordered some things that I haven’t been able to snag stateside. Then my day really got rolling when I found this site called Chaturbate. It’s basically like Chatroulette except the deal is that they pay you money to masturbate on video chat, which is cool because I believe in empowering the people and not giving away the good stuff for free. Then I read a handful of articles about how Lyndon B. Johnson and the CIA killed
Before she retired, my mother was a guard at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. One time she got wasted on After Shock and told me how she used to catch the inmates “raping the shit out of each other.” So now when I’m watching my gritty crime dramas, I sometimes wonder what songs prison rapists hear in their heads while they’re fisting away at some 19-year-old rich kid who got caught with a bunch of cocaine in Georgia. I guess it would be like Rod Stewart or the Bee Gees or Robyn, or maybe even these Grave Babies dudes. I would totally prison-rape to this record, and I mean that in the most positive of ways. I would gain 80 pounds of solid-gold fat and just jam my greasy fat fists in the guts of any cutie I saw. I’m gonna play this record for my mom. She’ll love it. BARFAGEDDON
GOLDFIELDS Black Sun EMI
I was waiting for the tram the other day when this super balls-out-crazy woman walked up to me and started doing some Tai Chi meets Krav Maga meets Capoeria type moves. The whole situation was topped off with her screaming along to Queen on her Zune and wearing skate shoes. As I attempted to back away I got a good look at her bloated, glazed ham of a face and I thought, “How did you get here?” You’re someone’s daughter, maybe a sister, hell judging by her flabby core, she could be someone’s mum. It made me feel really sad that every decision you make in your life might feel right at the time, but it could lead you to shaking your
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SUBSCRIBE TO VICE AND WIN Are you a person who looks forward to summer so much you promise to never wear jeans again, and throw away your denim shackles in favor of a pair of cargo shorts? If so, that sucks. Also, you’re an idiot. Without knowing you or ever seeing you, you need to put that shit away. This month we’re giving away one pair each of guys and girls Ziggy Sticks & Bones Jeans. All you have to do to enter the draw is give us money for our free magazine. Now there really is no excuse for cargo shorts.
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REVIEWS BEST COVER OF THE MONTH: YOUNG FATHERS
ass at a tram stop. Or making a totally painted by numbers record like this one. JESSICA LOVEJOY
JOHNNY MARR The Messenger Warner Music
I often get shit from friends and coworkers when I profess my undying love for the Smiths while simultaneously explaining my general indifference toward Morrissey’s solo stuff. Sorry, Moz, but when you take Johnny out of the equation, you’re just a silky shirt with only one button fastened, blowing in the desert breeze, who refuses to acknowledge anyone in the front row of your concerts aside from 12-year-old vegans wearing homemade antimeat shirts. Ergo, this album is great because Johnny Marr is great and he knows how to make a guitar sound like how I like to be fucked. TONY BARMAN
PISSED JEANS Honeys Sub Pop/Inertia
Have you always wanted to set fire to a football stadium but never had the proper inspiration? Then this album is for you. Do you enjoy blazing riffs and incomprehensible yet powerful lyrics? Then yes, this album is for you. Sure, the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a freight container at the bottom of a ship carrying roofing insulation, but so what. We like it like that. JULIAN MORGANS
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS Push the Sky Away Bad Seed Ltd.
When other musicians listen to Nick Cave they must feel like an overweight lady who trucks her fat ass to the park for her first jog since Clinton was in office because
she told all of her friends at work that this is finally the year she’s going to shed her postdivorce pudge. But once at the park, lacing her spotless, never-been-worn running shoes, a group of tight-assed (in the good way) girls in their 20s blast past her on rollerblades and blow her bangs straight up off of her sweaty, bloated forehead. And it’s like: Why even try when you’re doomed to failure? Some people will just always be better than you at everything. HEY SALLY
KNOTS “Heartbreaker” 7-inch Last Laugh
This is a repress of the classic KBD-era 7-inch. The A-side is about a woman whom the chorus claims is “a heartbreaker! She’s a love taker!” It made me wonder whether there are more songs about evil women in the world than actual evil women in the world. But the B-side, “Action,” is the one that really gets the blood flowing in my cock. Like so many good punk songs before it, “Action” starts with the sound of a bomb whizzing through the air before making impact and exploding. Its subject matter concerns nymphomania, or thereabouts. And I like sex, so I like this. ROCKNROLL OLDMAN
UUVVWWZ
PONY TIME Go Find Your Own Per Se
Go Find Your Own is the kind of high-energy, drum-heavy, short-and-to-the-point-with-verylittle-fuckery album that makes you crave snacks, backseat make-out parties, and kicking holes in walls for pleasure. The drummer has a chipped tooth, and that’s cool too. Something about chipped teeth on lady drummers reminds me of how thrift store T-shirts smell. Neither thing seems that great right off the bat, but they are. RYAN GOSLING
CIVIL CIVIC Rules Remote Control
In my mind, this is the soundtrack to Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore fucking backwards. In space. No subtitles. MT
The Trusted Language Saddle Creek
SAN CISCO San Cisco Fat Possum Records
Sometimes when I listen to albums like this I start wondering whether or not I’ve lost my edge. I start second-guessing: Is this cool, and I’m not? Have I lost touch? Am I a square who just doesn’t get it? But then I go the other direction and get all confident: Stop questioning yourself, Alex, you know what you’re talking about. Then I think maybe I’m just telling myself what I want to hear to make myself feel better, but whatever. The logical conclusion is that either I don’t get it because I’m lame or I don’t get it because they’re lame. I’m going with the latter because it makes me feel better. And because I’m right. (Duh.) ALEX HOLMES
Music like this has the same level of honesty and meaningful expression as other people’s Facebook walls. You listen to it and you think, fuck my life, what am I doing? These people live in a hazy Instagram styled sunset with their beautiful friends who always remember their birthdays, never bone their exes and call them after a big night to make sure they’re okay for coconut water. No wonder you lie in bed every night, wondering if your creative arts degree was a mistake. You know what I want? A band that writes a whole album about what their
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REVIEWS WORST COVER OF THE MONTH: UUVVWWZ:
life actually looks like. With songs like, “My inactive lifestyle is making me constipated,” “I’m jealous of children because they haven’t developed crippling anxiety” and “Why is anti-fungal cream so expensive?” BONITA APPLEBUM
CLUBFEET Heirs & Graces
you usually ignore. You know the deal, there’s the old guy with the white guy blues, the young guy who’s just the old guy 30 years ago, and maybe there’s someone with a cardboard sign offering to clean your shoes for $2. That’s also pretty much what this album sounds like. Which is weird because I like this album, and buskers make me feel like I’m catching head lice. TOBY MCCASKER
GIRLS Volume 1: Music from the HBO Original Series Fueled by Ramen
Illusive Sound
FRANKO Vagabond This is perfect! It follows all the Triple J/M guidelines to ensure that the whole band have tickets to this year’s ARIAS and a nice slot on a summer festival. It has all the usual trimmings including, I assume, a few shaved chests. The most real and honest part on this album were the spotify ads between the songs. BLOODY HOLLY
BIRDS OF TOKYO March Fires EMI
I knew this band sucked even before I watched Big Brother contestants argue about how “mainstream” they were. Good exposure, idiots! Your haircuts are the worst, your facial hair is dumb, your music is not even worth talking about. Nice one EMI for smearing an on-trend sepia filter for the film clips. Nice idea to re-appropriate indie culture for young suburban professionals/pregnant seventeen year-olds that work at the Safeway deli and their twenty four year old brickie boyfriends, saving their money to build a house out at Suicide Hills. OOPS I mean Gembrook South. My fingers slipped! SALLY BEAVER
I AM KLOOT Let It All In Universal/Shepherd Moon
You could listen to this album, or you could save your money (bandwidth) and listen to the buskers
Accompli
The Oxford English Dictionary gets thicker by about 4,000 words every year but there’s still no adjective that does the job like the word ‘bad’. Even fancy synonyms like ‘abhorrent’, ‘deplorable’ or classic ones like ‘shit’ don’t set the right tone for this Nickelback homage. According to his bio, Franko was “born in New Zealand but raised by the world”. I can only assume these alleged foster parents were leper colonies, as there’s never been a release that makes me want to sever all my fingers and stuff ‘em second knuckle deep in my ears like this one. MICHAEL CRACKSON
So the story behind us getting this promo to review goes a little something like this: Not sure if you’re aware of the layout of the VICE offices, and why would you be unless you work here or peer through the window on your way to buy expensive stained shirts next door, but the VICE music editor (me) sits next to the entire staff of NOISEY, VICE’s music channel. (Confusing, I know.) Well, one afternoon I looked to my left to see them all having the times of their lives listening to this Girls soundtrack, and I searched my inbox, spam folder too, to see whether I had gotten a download of it. I hadn’t! See, sometimes people don’t send us things because they’re afraid we’ll shit on it. Usually we do, but not this! I begged the label to send me one of my own and I listened to it all day and smiled and smiled and felt love and love. See? Didn’t we all learn a lesson here? The lesson that girls just want to be loved by girls on HBO shows? Yeah, I said it. KELLY MCCLURE
HIGH HOPES Open Season
OBN III’S
Fine Time
S/T 7-inch Tic Tac Totally
This is totally suitable to put on as background music when you bring a girl home. That way, your housemates only hear the monotonous wailing of music, and you don’t have to feel awkward the next day. The band seem aware of this considering the video to ‘Flowers Bloom’ is literally silhouettes making-out for three minutes. A lot of people are going to be ‘getting down’ to this, it’s like when you try to imagine how many people in your city are having sex right at the one moment and your brain explodes from all the possibilities. Quick warning, actually doing it to this would make you Joseph Gordon-Levitt. KARL HENKELL
This came out in October, which means you guys are the worst-marketed good band in the universe. It’s solid punk rock in its truest form, considering you threw up a MySpace three years ago, called it a day, and then your record label guy was all, “Oh shit, yeah. The download codes are broken because I talked this dude into doing it for me and he never actually did it, so I was just, like, fuck, man.” Weirdly, the songs are all anthemic. What are you guys doing? Tumblr yourselves or something. This is supposed to be your CAREER. WHIMPER DICK
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JOHNNY RYAN’S PAGE
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