Bean Dip

Hot Air Brand On The Scene

Established in 2007, the concept of Hot Air was birthed from the creative vision of Chike Ozah (one-half of directing team, Coodie and Chike - credits include: Kanye West, Mos Def, Lela James), alongside partners Bee Nguyen (Marketing Maverick from Grand Tactics / Sound In Color), Diego Carlin (Record Executive / Creative Director -credits include: Miles Davis, Fishbone, Spacek, and Sa-Ra), Louis Yakich (Record Executive / Entrepreneur), and Duke Wu (The Meat and Potatoes Company). This quintessential group of enterprising business and design trailblazers push the envelope with Hot Air's unique and rich color palette, influenced by the tradition of air travels via ballooning.

BAPE USA - Website Launch

In the last few months, BAPE (R) has really opened its doors to the markets including Zozotown and the Bape Pirate Store. However, perhaps the most noteworthy unveiling is an all new BAPE (R) USA website which will include not only English updates but a full-fledged webstore as well. For a brand that for the longest time was virtually inaccessible through 1st party mediums, this really changes things up. The site can be visited at US.BAPE.com.

New Brand - Soapy Laundry

Their Manifesto:

Our best guess is that Soapy Laundry was established in the 80's and we just didn't know it at the time.

You grow up with aspirations to be the next Michael Jordan on the basketball court or the next Jerry Rice on the football field. Yet not until a person gets a few years under his/her belt do you start to realize what it took for those type of players to become elite in there respective sports.

Yes, we grew up in the 80’s playing on our Nerf basketball hoops in our rooms and riding our “BMX” bikes down the block, and throwing as many “Thrasher” stickers on our skateboards as we could find. Yet, we always had a passion to try something new and different regardless of the risk. It could have been as simple as deciding to spread sand on the cement garage floor so that when we drove the Powerwheel bike around corners, it would slide like we saw on TV. Maybe deciding to skateboard down hills in our new Nike Dunks’ and Jordan’s’ because they looked FRESH wasn’t the wisest decision (who knew they would become “Collector Items”). We were no different than any other kids in the neighborhood, videogames, pizza, strikeout baseball, tackle football, and riding BMX bikes. We never thought in a million years that when you got older the fun would suddenly stop.

Working hard in the standard 9-5 is a “Different World” so to speak. It’s like every Monday you start a countdown to Friday. Don’t get us wrong, homework, school projects, test, they were definitely hard, and at the time, we felt they consumed our entire life and sucked out all our fun. Yet compared to the adult life that was a breeze. So we decided to step in and turn up the fun again and with our powers combined (yes we watched “Captain Planet”) we created “Soapy Laundry Clothing”.

When two people with different styles have the same dream, reality sometimes can be just a phone call away. In a generation filled with collaboration we felt it was time to join together and make this happen. The garments you will see released by Soapy Laundry will be a combination of two minds creating a style for the masses. We started from the ground floor in a sense….. No… we started from the basement we weren’t even on the ground floor to start. It takes a lot of time/effort to cross all your “T’s” and dot all those “I’s”.

Thankfully we have decided to dive in head first in order to see where it leads us and have some fun while we’re at it of course. Some may feel like this is just another clothing label trying to find its way. We feel that this is more than clothing, its life telling us it’s time to be true to ourselves. Failure is not and option. We are going to stay hungry, stay motivated, and turn these 80's dreams into realities. So how SOAPY is your LAUNDRY?

“Trying to keep a dream from fading is tough; allowing a dream to fade would have been even tougher.”~ Soapy Laundry

Fur Face Boy - Dopeness

Ran across this one in the woods and liked what he had going on!

Bobby Fresh !!!

Big shout out to BOBBY FRESH and his DOPE gear which always comes correct!

The Hundreds - New Collection

They keep bringing the heat non stop. Big ups.

STREETWEAR TODAY MAGAZINE

Mr. Hiroki Nakamura, the creative director and conceptual brain behind the Japanese shoe and clothing brand, Visvim, is the protagonist of streetwear today magazine no. 28.
'Product Fundamentalism' confirms as the title claim of our brand new issue and encapsulates Hiroki's exceptionally strong work ethic; a fundamentalist approach that holds neither religious nor fanatic connotations, but is radicalism based on a love for the product. Hiroki's work bears testimony to the fact that producing apparel items with the utmost meticulousness really adds up in numerous ways. It is a worship of the materials and the processing; something 'genuine' that all producers should share. There's no doubt about it!

Neither is there any doubt that lots of extraordinary cultural accomplishments in history have not been the result of the brainstorms of marketing agents, but have happened organically. In the majority of cases, these manifestations have been the result of a crew of like-minded people who came together to create something fresh and original for no other intention than a mutual love of doing it.
This principle undoubtedly adheres to the domain of DIY arts. The Irieginators from Iriedaily, based in Kreuzberg, Berlin, are prime embodiments of this independent spirit and lifestyle. Like many of us they've been through lives' ups and downs but are kept alive by their curiosity and stay nonconformist and different. This year the brand commemorates its 15th anniversary and we took the chance to portray its history and evolution.

DIY, chapter 2: Aaron Rose. Rose's fresh, new DVD, 'Beautiful Losers,' tells the tale of a loose-knit group of American DIY artists and designers who learned their crafts through practice, trial and error, and good old-fashioned innovation. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine, and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led, most of 'em without any formal training whatsoever. But eventually their movement inadvertently affected the 'established' art world, as well as the worlds of fashion, music, literature and film….

Ed Templeton, chapter 2. Skateboarding veteran Templeton's not only a protagonist of Aaron Rose's aforementioned DVD, but also of streetwear today issue 28. Editor Laurenzo Taurino talked to the artist, Ed Templeton, about skateboarding, painting, photography and his views on life.

Focus on media: After all those years in the game, hip-hop icon and turntable innovator, Joseph Saddler aka Grandmaster Flash, is still driven by an unstoppable love for music and strikes back with his brand new studio album in 20 years, entitled 'The Bridge: Concept Of A Culture.' For his mature offering, Flash managed to find a balance between fun and seriousness and delivers danceable as well as thought-provoking tracks, composed without the use of any samples. Legendary and up-and coming MCs drop verses over tracks that are balanced between now and vintage sound. There's a lot to gain from our interview with the original 'cut creator.'

Form & fashion: Zaha Hadid, adored for both her academic and practical skills as an architect and professor, internationally acclaimed for pushing the boundaries of design and the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, just released a new collection of futuristic shoe silhouettes in collaboration with Lacoste; limited edition of course.

But of course there are a lot more interesting topics, people and styles in issue 28. As per normal, we have been very open-minded over the past three months; geared up to broaden your horizons with lots of needed and useful information and clues on upcoming freshness. So, get yourself some copies of streetwear today, a.s.a.p.