RobbertJan

hahaha, man i can watch southpark episodes 100000 times and still laugh as hard every time!

i'd like to solve the puzzel......NIGGERS! BEEEP

oh naggers, right, naggers......

can we ehm, can we cut to a....BEEEEEEEP

goeie shit man, we hebben meer nederlanders hier nodig!

ps to everyone: rep me, i need it.

Jun Takahashi, Undercover

Monday, Dec. 02, 2002

Wear and Tear

As Jun Takahashi chases global fame, can Japan's hippest designer sustain his anarchist vision?

BY GREGORY BEALS/TOKYO

Jun Takahashi is in the sprawling concrete basement of his ultra-modern Tokyo headquarters, standing near several upside-down depictions of The Last Supper, a three-dimensional photograph of a naked woman, some vintage Vivienne Westwood shirts and a large Sex Pistols poster. His tiny figure—at 1.65 meters and 52 kilos, Takahashi looks like a Japanese Johnny Rotten—appears contorted with pain. Takahashi, the 33-year-old founder of fashion house Under Cover, is shaking his head, tugging on his "Nagasaki Nightmare" T shirt and bitching about the spate of anxiety dreams he's been suffering lately. In one, he's at an unveiling of his offbeat outfits when the models mutate into dogs. In another, his latest collection of hand-sewn jeans and vests entitled "Scab" morphs into a Uniqlo horror of unadventurous banality. In yet another dream he's watching someone's head, probably his own, melt. "It's been like this for months," Takahashi moans.

Our pop psychology interpretation? His anxiety stems from growing pains. Ten years ago, Under Cover consisted of a single store the size of a one-car garage in the backstreets of Tokyo's trendy Harajuku area. Today, it's a fashion empire stretching from Hokkaido to Kyushu. Takahashi has won just about every fashion award Japan can offer (last year he captured the prestigious Mainichi prize normally reserved for establishment figures like Issey Miyake and Junya Watanabe). Across the country, his fans faithfully line up outside his 31 boutiques, eager for the opportunity to buy a $2,500 dress or a $30 pair of socks. But to maintain his momentum, Takahashi must branch out into upscale markets overseas. His grand plan: by early next year, Takahashi plans to sell his creations in 16 cities, including Paris, Rome, New York, London, Berlin, Madrid, and Hong Kong. If consumers take to him, his reputation as Japan's next designer genius will be cemented. But failure will suggest he's just another local hero whose work couldn't transcend its parochial appeal. Through it all, he's struggling to sustain the punk/anarchist/anti-war/anti-mass media/manic image that makes him the icon of every angst-ridden teenager and 20-something in the chrysanthemum kingdom. "Life is beauty," says Takahashi with a smile that vacillates between gangster-like snicker and angelic beam. "But it's pain as well."

That's how it is with his designs too. In his latest line, launched at the Paris pret-a-porter collections last month, Takahashi takes the very Japanese idea of "deconstructed clothing"—garments torn apart and put back together in novel ways—and infuses it with a sense of violence. Jackets and pants are ripped to shreds, then stitched with loose red thread left dangling in a manner that suggests blood. Shirtsleeves are amputated and re-attached the way a wound would be sutured. The aesthetic nexus between beauty and pain obsesses Takahashi, and the collection is as viciously elegant as a pinned butterfly. "The essence of Takahashi's creations is maniacal," says Kazz Yamamuro, executive producer of Fashion Television Japan, "and very cutting edge." Takahashi's detractors disagree. They insist he's more of a fashion DJ, sampling patterns and designs from others and mixing them up to create his own street style instead of developing a unique vision. "Takahashi doesn't think about originality," carps fashion critic Takeji Hirakawa, "only about copying."

Five years ago that may have been true. But with age and experience, Takahashi's work is growing beyond simple expressions of rage and becoming more sophisticated and nuanced. His vision of fashion and his life has stretched beyond the limits of his Harajuku haunts and even beyond Tokyo itself. Extending his collection overseas has challenged him to adapt his designs for larger, more affluent audiences. "Now I am more of a designer than a DJ," says Takahashi. "I'm looking more to myself for inspiration."

With reporting by Michiko Toyama/Tokyo

Designer Profile: Maurizio Altieri of Carpe Diem

i think it was from faust's blog,

can't find the link srry, ther's pictures with it in the og form

If one wants to talk about artisanship and craftsmanship, to get away from all the garbage that surrounds fashion – advertising, neurotic Chanel-wearing menopause-nearing women, glittery magazines that sell fakery in forms of images and shallow collections of syllables – in other words if one wants to concentrate on the garment itself (and after all, garment is fashion, everything else is filler) – one must talk about Maurizio Altieri.

Altieri decided to pursue his real passion – crafting clothes - after getting degrees in economy and jurisprudence. After working for some time at Chrome Hearts, he decided to strike out on his own. Thus his label, Carpe Diem, was formed in 1994. It started out as a leather house, and subsequently moved into cottons and knits (L’Maltieri and Linea lines), and bespoke (Anatomica and Sartoria lines).

The design philosophy from day one was creating timeless, utilitarian, hand-made clothes from highest quality materials that have undergone unique treatments. These included leathers (horsehide, cowhide, anaconda) that have been washed, distressed, crushed, and buried in soil for months, silver sterling buttons, 12-gauge over dyed cashmere, and hard cottons. The pride in craftsmanship techniques and attention to detail is on par with one that goes into fabric development - .all garments are hand made, the pants are lined, seams are carefully distressed. The result of this industrious labor is that the soul of the maker can truly be seen in the clothes. The garments, displayed on meat hooks (to remember the leather-making roots of the company), come with their own tube cases – a sign of respect for a garment.

They call on you to touch, examine, and contemplate them. Their beauty is in their purity, just like the purity of the Carpe Diem house manifests in its refusal to advertise, produce seasonal collections, fashion shows, and engage in other activities that are expected of a fashion house. Such philosophy forces one to appreciate the garment itself, stripped -- and that is the final, most beautiful, and purest manifestation of creating clothes.

Belgian designers:

http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/10/03/wait.t.php

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/f60/belgian-designers-seizing-moment-42142.html

Karl Lagerfeld:

http://nymag.com/fashion/06/spring/15746/

Nigo:

http://www.pigmotel.com/it/mag/2005/05/24/nigo-english/

Hedi Slimane:

http://men.style.com/gq/fashion/landing?id=content_4021

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/20/060320fa_fact

Ann D:

http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/ann_demeulemeester.shtml

http://www.lumiere.com/fashion/97/01/ann/

thought i'd share some, please post if you have some good ones:

Undercover

Jun Takahashi is the essence of Japanese cool, from his hanging curtain of hair to his black boots with tiny silver spoons tied to the laces.

"I found them in Clignancourt," says Takahashi, referring to mustard spoons winkled out of the Paris flea market, from where many weird and wonderful objects have been brought to his Tokyo studio.

The big square space, with the designer's spindly black-and-white painted images on the walls and only a single strip of daylight from a window high above his head, is filled with oddities: a kitschy, big-breasted nude statue; a giant, vomit-green alien toy; a wooden shrine stuffed with flowers; a bust of Lenin; cases of butterflies; and walls of the stuffed animals that he makes obsessively, even the night before his latest Undercover collection was shown in Paris in March.

That show was striking, even shocking, as Takahashi covered every piece of the models' bodies from head to toe, including complex, mummified masking of the faces.

"Why did I cover everything up?" the designer asks. "There was no reason, except to efface all feeling, like a destroyed doll. It was not about bird flu or some deep meaning. It was something aesthetic - I wanted to envelope them."

Takahashi, 37, with his label Undercover, is a powerful new fashion force whose disturbing romanticism and eerie poetry have earned him plaudits and become the foundation of a growing business. In May, the latest store will open in Taiwan, following Hong Kong in January and the Tokyo shop established in Aoyama in 2002.

You recognize an Undercover store because it is just that: an enclosed space. The windows in Aoyama are blanked out with the shop's neatly folded stock. In the Hong Kong store, artificial flowers fill the window space and broken bed springs serve as a backdrop. Undercover designs can also be found in fashion stores such as L'Éclaireur in Paris or London's Dover Street Market, owned by Comme des Garçons.

What about the clothes? They are beautifully crafted and pretty in a weird way. The spring collection, shown at the crumbling Bouffes du Nord theater in Paris, had layers of tablecloth lightness, with insides spilling out as if from a doll's stomach. Another show had feathers intricately cut out in felt. For winter the wrappings included a white jacket bandaged with ties, the headpiece decorated with rings and chains where eyes and nose should be.

The mood of Undercover is expressed in two words that are part of the identifying label: "But beautiful."

"In my head, there is always something beautiful and something ugly, which are equal," Takahashi says. "Simple beauty does not interest me. But just ugly does not interest me either."

Takahashi graduated from Tokyo's Bunka college in 1991 and set up his business two years later. His first retail step in 1993 was in a shop called Nowhere, where the space was divided between him and Nigo, the designer who went on to create Tokyo's hypercool A Bathing Ape store.

In 1994 the first Undercover collection was shown in Tokyo, with a Paris debut following nearly a decade later in 2002. Takahashi says that his beginning styles were street and punk and that his current style just evolved.

"There is no reason to think about it - it comes naturally," he says. Ask Takahashi if these layers of intense decoration make him a maximalist and he says that he tries to be a minimalist.

"It is not a question of appearances - it is more about a feeling," he explains.

His notebooks for each collection are fantastical collages juxtaposing flower bouquets with an image from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" or wallpaper designs with spotted toadstools and manga images. They suggest a creative artist at work.

And the works on the walls prove that Takahashi is just that. He shows the tiny paintbrush with which he and his fellow Japanese artist Madsaki created the surreal scenarios, like disturbing fairy tales. They were shown last year in art galleries in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

"Perhaps in five years I would like to be just a painter," Takahashi joshes.

Right now he has been elected as fashion's new king of cool. Last year, he was tapped by Canon to create an Undercover limited-edition digital camera case. He is guest editor of Antwerp's hip A magazine, published in June.

After 12 years in business, his fashion dreams are modest: to open a store in Paris - or at least to be able to afford to put his team for the Paris show in a hotel with a bath.

"And I would really like to make everything by hand," he says. He has crafted objects since he was a small child - long before he made strange soft toys for his daughter Lala or used them to decorate the stores. Some of the creations are scary: stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall like hunting trophies, their heads reduced to half-bared skeletons.

The designer describes the Undercoverlab, designed by the Klein Dytham architectural group in 2001, as "chaos." But like the apparently chaotic shows, you know that the studio reflects a creative world.

"You enter into the universe of the interior - I am surrounded by objects - and I don't go out a lot," he says.

I'm so glad it's back, i loved the first, the beginning with wheel of fortune is instant classic, great timing on the camera guy, and cartman's laugh when nelson enters the school, hahaha:D

second one was less, but still funny

www.allsp.com for the ones who've missed it

Ralph Lauren BDU

BDU's, what Milspex said, those are unbeatable in summer, and comfortable as hell to!

W)Taps are great but expensive when you don't live in japan (200 pounds in hideout)

i've recently got a pair of ralph lauren, there vintage line (that's what is says on the tag), stumbled upon those, they're great, good fit and material and the design is actually really good, good amount of pockets, i hate it when there's to much or to little, was pleasantly suprised by those.

i always loved dctmfc and serge's was cool to

cronaldo was great last night! so was barca, and valencia lost so good times atm(H)

as for psv:S fucking losing to ajax atm, sneijder with a fantastic goal...

i got a red one from number(n)ine, i usually wear it with a black l/s underneath though, mine also has a ripped body:

thanks dude!, you just took away my doubt about moving to uk!

what btw would be you guys best eleven of all time?

it's hard but i'd go for:

Smeichel

Beckenbauer Krol Maldini

Maradonna Gullit Zidane Di Stefano

Garrincha Pele Cruijf

coach: Cruijf

arcade fire- neon bible

the rakes- ten new messages

lou reed- transformer

the horrors- strange house

^ club football is best except for the world cup, however crappy the level, there is nothing better then to sit with your friends in a pub that is packed with people watching your countries match and totally living in that moment, singing, hating on the ref, celebrating the victory all night or crying at the defeat with all those people, the best soccer experience!

also from back in the day, i got to see the cockpit and have a chat with the pilots.

those times are gone now i suppose

i did that when i was little a couple of times, great days, always amazed(H)

KLM business class, and their business class lounge is great to, food, movies, magazines, great sofa's, perfect for the long wait till boarding time!

^this is true, i hate countries like quatar buying brazilian players for their '' national'' squad, but in canada, their is no way you're gonna ever be able to make it to a decent tournament for national teams, and if hargreaves parents are from uk then it's allright.

RJ, did you just mention Afonso Alves amongst the best strikers in the world? No you didn't.. did you?

at the moment he just got back from an injury, but this whole season i think he's been absolutely brilliant, ofcourse it's in the dutch league, but this guy does everything right, he scores the headers, the freekicks, the long distance shots, the dribbles, he's a complete striker and will be playing in one of the top teams in a short while if he keeps this level up.

^ yeah messi, eto'o and ronaldinho would be the best attackers i could think off, but atm their all injured or just got back from a long one, though messi ofcourse back now with the hattrick against madrid!

^ henry when 100% is way better, drogba is a good striker but he lacks henry's finesse.

best strikers atm imo:

kanoute

ibrahimovic

afonso alves

totti (not really pure striker but he scores a lot lately)

great idea!^

i also have good hopes for valencia, they are a bunch of sneaking thieves in my humble opinion because they beat barca, but they have a good team, especially villa is a good player. and chelsea didn't look good against porto which i think is a bit similar to valencia. if it wasn't for robben's amazing goal..... it would've been very difficult for them. i agree with you mike, psv- l'pool will be sort of the same,and l'pool defend a lot better then arsenal