Big in Japan

Why do the Japanese get all the coolest stuff?

As part of a collaboration with Italian designer Neroli, Stussy have released a Stussy-branded messenger bag made by Porter. Porter are the luggage manufacturer of choice for Tyler Brule so its damn cool whichever way that you come at it.

More in Japanese here.

STUSSY Sample sale

I am gutted as I am off back to Liverpool and will miss this stellar opportunity. Peepz grab ya' snapz and head to the Truman Brewery. Which reminds me, posts will be thin on the ground for the next week or so. Peace out, rc :-)

Stussy World Tour trailer - freakin' awesome

Some of the biggest names real art including Futura himself in a documentary. The world series refers to Stussy's guest range of world series t-shirts, but the film is more than an advert; it captures the thoughts of dozens of artists and designers who've led the cutting edge in graphic and visual design for the past two decades.

Street life

PingMag has an interesting interview with some of the street fashion photography crews in Tokyo.

These are the people that provide style magazines with 'cool hunter'-type shots of crazy Tokyo kids. Its a strange mix of authentic and commercial as the photographer also brings along a stylist and items of clothing for these temporary models.

Some of the most interesting comments came from the FashionSnap crew:

Sometimes people don’t want to get involved when they hear, that we are an online magazine. They simply don’t trust the web and are scared that their pictures are misused for something else…

This distrust of the web in gen Y Japanese is interesting and very much at odds with the MySpace/Bebo/YouTube exhibitionists we are used to in Western media.

Picture FashionSnap.com (cc licence).

Sharp threads

The pranksters over at Social Pest have come up with a great new t-shirt design.

The art work has been done by Jeremy Madl a well-known art toy designer, comes in a limited production run of 100 shirts AND is made of 55 per cent hemp, 45 per cent cotton to appeal to both stoner and green market demographics.

It's The New Style

The adidas boutique on Newburgh Street have some fly new colourways of ZX8000s in and a remake of sweatshirts designs originally worn in the Rocky films.

Whilst I won't be going with the pink ZX8000s there is a lot of other fly gear there. Get the full skinny here.

Hot Stuff

InfoWorld's daily podcast claimed that Wi-Fi hotspots had passed 100,000; 2,000 of which are in Seoul (South Korea). The US had the most Wi-Fi hotspots, with the UK in second place.

Talking of hotspots, Simon Willison pointed me in the direction of Memeorandum.com which highlights what's the heat online in terms of blogs and news articles. At the moment it has two sections: technology and news.

The folks that write the WWNK newsletter look at the likelihood of a hot war with Iran and indicated that the next edition of their thought provoking emails will be their last:

Dear Subscribers,

After more than two years and 114 issues of What We Now Know, it's time to say goodbye.

The reason why we are calling it quits is trivial but significant: Money. Call it filthy lucre, but as our investor-readers know, ultimately it's the substance that makes the world go around... and that keeps newsletters get published.

What We Now Know initially started out as a pet project of Casey Research's Managing Editor, David Galland--soon after being fed and cared for by Senior Editor Shannara Johnson and a small but excellent team of freelancers.

WWNK was controversial and funny, scientific and flamboyant at the same time. Not everybody always agreed with its contents... in fact, it managed to step onto various toes with precious regularity. But it also amused, informed, entertained, and touched many people.

Like all proud parents, your editors had high aspirations and goals for our brainchild, and we frequently talked and dreamed about what it might become when it grew up.

Destiny had planned differently, though. The big brothers and sisters of What We Now Know grew and blossomed far more quickly and soon overshadowed their little brother, taking precedence in daily business. Sadly, we had to admit that although WWNK was receiving raving reviews from its readers, it failed to pull its own weight.

So, in the same way as we buy stocks low and sell them high, we feel it's important to give up a good thing while it's still good. It was a great ride, and we don't regret a minute of it.

Next week's What We Now Know (1/31/06) will be the last.

Meanwhile the folks at IG Trendcentral had a couple of interesting links:

• Gabriel Urist makes jewellery based on classic trainer designs for a touch of bling. It reminds me of the adidas superstar pendants that Oki-Ni had when adidas did the big celebration of the the superstar last year.
• Worn Piece make clothes that look like Maharishi raiding a thrift store. They customise surplus fatigues and have clothing designs that make political statements a bit more clever than your red Che t-shirt.

Kanji Selecta

British designers Terratag have got some new funky threads for all you folks mourning the departure of Burro. Their work draws on a number of influences including anime, manga, technology including giant robots and graffiti.

The picture is one of their hooded top designs using a mixture of Kanji script and traditional Japanese imagery with a thoroughly thugged-out cut of a sweatshirt in Crips blue for all y'all 'bangers out there that want to roll in style.

Also check out their wall hangings that mix graffiti and traditional Japanese calligraphy.

Whilst we are on the subject of giant robots and other non-human cultural artifacts there is an interesting article over at Slate.com that talks about how increased realism in games has reduced user enjoyment and character empathy and created gamer discontent.

Jargon Watch

Uncanny Valley - Empathy with gaming characters drops off as they come to a point were they look as if they are close to being real. Our perception of them moves from character to something more disturbing like the undead, and can be become repelled or disgusted. The dip in postive consumer attitude as the character better mimics human life is the Uncanny Valley. The term was originally used to describe a similar human reaction to robots in 1978 by Dr Masahiro Mori.

Paradox of Realism - after a certain point, the closer to reality that the gaming experience gets in terms of graphics and player experience; the harder it is for the game to seem real. This inability to believe makes it harder for the players to fully engage in the game.

Nike steals Adidas' clothes

Nike has finally woke up to the fact that there is more to exploiting its heritage than trying to make Nike Cortez the new Reebok Classic and selling them in JD Sports.

It has taken its iconic Air Max design that fits in as well in the gym as the dancefloor and come up with some striking colour ways. It is selling these limited edition shoes through specialist retailer Size? and launching them with a graffiti exhibition.

In essence the company is trying to steal the clothes of Adidas' Originals range.

The key problems that Nike have is that they don't have a visual identifier like Adidas Originals have with the trefoil. Instead Nike has made its difference by taking a leaf from Sun Tzu's concept of void and actuality; Nike's approach has been understated with greys and blacks contrasting with accents of acid green. Now if they would stop making those god-awful buck rogers designs and bring back their skills that would be progress. Maybe people wouldn't worry about all the children that labour in dangerous factories cranking these out.

Maharishi Sale

Maharishi Sale
Originally uploaded by renaissancechambara.

Expensive streetwear brand Maharishi have a sale in Brick Lane next week.

Absolut Marketing

One of the things that surprised me about the way in which the PSP was launched and marketed was that it did not play to Sony's Japanese roots.

The launch instead was bland. They launched a product not a cultural phenomena with a brand personality like the iPod or the original PlayStation.

The Absolut Metropolis campaign just gives an glimpse of what Sony could have, but failed to achieve.

Whilst the Sony has good engineers its marketers have proven themselves to be third-rate. This combined with a patchy developer relations programme will be the death of Sony in the gaming industry yet.