In elementary school, things were easy. Buy cards for everyone. Memory serving me poorly, this may have ment both boys and girls, but I am hoping it was just the sex of ones choice. I would write 20-30 Peanuts cards, droping each in a large envelop affixed to the given recipients chair. Low and behold, I would return to my desk to find roughly the same amount of cards addressed to me. How wonderful! The class was full of good cheer, hopped up on sugar from the teacher, and the notion that Valentine’s Day was complete shame far from the grasp of our one track minds.

Highschool came and my notion of the day changed ever so slightly — it is by far the loneliest day on the calender. The school had the grand tradition of senior kisses, where by you, or your friends, could purchase a peck on the cheek from some wanted upper classman. My freshman year I recieved a kiss from a hottie named Pleasance. Promptly after I rubbed one out in the science center lavatory. I also got a kiss from a large bussomed girl named Betsy. She was a junior, and being a sad young thing I suddenly imagined she liked me. Wrong. Betsy was just being nice. Subsequent years followed with more pity kisses and increasingly lowered esteem. My senior year was the final straw, not a single young lady bought a kiss from me.

What kind of Saint would wish such a thing?

Well, none really. There were, according newadvent.org, three St. Valentines, all martyrs and all had their feats on February 14. And thus we have a name and a date for the occasion, but are still lost as to where buying women gifts and celebrating love on the day comes from.

A little further research (wikipedia and newadvent) and we find that thanks to Chaucer, the feast of Valentine became associated with romance. Why? Damned if I know, my brother is the families Lit. scholar, not I. I do know that the Italian Renaissance was full of putti (fat cheribic creatures figuring in loads and loads of paintings), so that winged marksman of love adorning so many Hallmark’s has, at the very least, minor connections to the one of the Saint Valentines. As in, both spent some time (real or fictional) in Rome. This may also account for the belief many feckless men have that Italian dinners are incredibly romantic. Fictionalizing some account of the Saint, as Chaucer did, seems to have galvinized loads of people throughout time to woo women on February 14. And, while many people have also thought about going on a violent rampage on this day, a few people did in 1929.

Violence never once threatened my Valentine’s. Bodily harm, however, has been endured (thank you alcohol). In my college years, Valentines Day went much like any other. Wake up, consume bloody mary, attend class, resume drinking. Later I usually ask myself this question: I wonder if anyone is lonely enough to sleep with me? Answer: NO.

Much to my disbelief, bars on Valentine’s Day were not swarming with women who were gasping for it. Just people equal to my levels of social awkwardness. Even when lubricated, a room full of shy and nervous people does not make a party. Life went on, the day past, all of us went home and woke to a common bedfellow, a hangover.

Post-college life was more fruitful. I celebrated proper Valentine’s days with gifts and meals. Partially for my own amusement and under the guise of archiving interesting objects of material culture I bought special edition air force ones and limited edition pendents, forcing them on my then partner. She accepted, and feigned interest, and we were, if for a fleeting moment, happy ever after. In the throws of love I didn’t once consider that my purchases, not being technically mine, would be a useless attempt at collecting as I would not have the items in perpetuity.

The conflation of romantic gifts and the concept of “forever” came from the marketing genius of De Beers in partnership with the advertising firm N.W. Ayer. Sometime in the 19th century diamond engagement rings had become de rigur, but like all fashions there remained the possibility that the trend would slow or fall completely. De Beers wanted to ensure that interest in diamonds as symbols of love would remain, and as such N.W. Ayer worked to change and mold social attitudes about diamonds. Engagement rings were shown more clearly in film, celebrities employed and the notion of bigger and clearer diamonds equally bigger and better love was born. The slogan “A Diamond is Forever,” came into play in 1948 and with it the cultural construction of the stones meaning was further solidified. Today, diamonds are not just for engagement (obviously), and every tick tack jeweler in the nation flogs diamond heart pendants, earings and bracelets for Valentine’s. Love, romance and the stone. Brilliant marketing from bottom to top really.

Diamonds are the best example of power of advertisers to push consumer perception and desire (in the Valentine’s day context). Our current hype market follows the belief that special editions are a way into consumers hearts. When the editions mark a special occasion, they must be doubly “special” right? They must perfectly articulate the love of an interest and the joy of sharing it. After all, how can you love someone who doesn’t at least understand your passions? It also must be special when the mecca of our hype market, MAGIC, falls around the same time as Valentine’s? A grand ode our infatuation with products and spending and looking good when looking for love. Undoubtedly, its just coincidence.

In fact, last year I was at MAGIC for Valentine’s. I went to PURE. A hooker told me I looked lonely. I was. She said she would do anything to make me happy. Like Betsy before, she was just being nice. I didn’t have enough to cover love’s tariff…

I participated in the Montgomery Prize during my second year, and chose NMAH before I had picked an object. They had the broadest mission of the three, and I thought I might be able to find something a little more exciting. My classmates focused on more or less traditional antiques (toys, handbills, tools, broadsheets, toasters, etc). I walked fifteen minutes from my apartment to my favorite Mom and Pop and picked up a pair of Adidas Mutombo’s for $35.

The rationale? Well, selfishness for one. The size available was the exact size I wore when the shoe originally came out. (How’s that for nostalgia?). And, I thought I could build a compelling story that would surely wow the judges.

Signature shoes, to me, are inherently interesting. Beginning with Chuck Taylor, the idea is so tied to basketball and shoe culture. With the Mutombo shoe, I saw the potential of weaving a rather interesting tale combining athletic, corporate and personal interests.

Logically, I began by giving the assembled audience a brief rundown of the history of signature shoes in basketball (and because I am lazy I will quote from my original paper):

“The Converse rubber company of Malden, Massachusetts developed what is considered the first Basketball shoe in 1917. After several years of limited success, a young amateur ball player from Akron, Ohio named Chuck Taylor was recruited to help sell the Converse product. In 1923 the shoe was revamped and the Converse all-star that is familiar to many of us was born. With Chuck as its spokesman the shoe, to use a great understatement, became quite successful. The idea of using Athletes to sell Athletic shoes solidified, every major and minor shoe corporation built a stable roster of stars (Pete Marovich with Pro-Keds, Dominique Wilkins with Brooks, and even coaching legend John Wooden with Wilson Bata) particularly in the basketball arena through the seventies and eighties.”

As we all know, by the nineties the signature shoe was really big business. Sports Illustrated ran a really nice tidy piece relating that fact, and thanks to Larry Johnson’s relationship to Converse, I had a clear link from Taylor to 1992. Also, with Larry edging Mutombo as rookie of the year, I had a great segue back to my object. Luckily, even the most out of touch intellectual is aware of Michael Jordan, and since Nike’s sales in the US for the years in question (1992 and 1993) averaged just under $2 billion, it was a rather simple task to outline who was boss in the sneaker world.

While Adidas had emerged the market leader in the U.S. during the 1970s, and got its hip-hop stripes via Run-DMC’s 1986 hit “MY ADIDAS,” things were looking rough in 1992. In February of 1993 they hired former Nike executive Robert J. Strasser, who was pictured in the New York Times holding a Mutombo sneaker, to head newly created Adidas America. The company hoped that basketball would spearhead a renaissance. Adidas developed a shoe that was built for the center position, bulky and stable, but also an indication of Mutombo’s personality, past, and the proposed future of basketball, the African continent. The geometric patterning on the sides and interior of the shoe share a distinct resemblance to the cut-pile raffia textiles of Mutombo’s homeland, Zaire. This design cue follows not only Mutombo’s personal history, but figures cleanly into a popular urban aesthetic of the time. Afrocentric imagery and patterning were popular, and of course, who can forget Cross Colors. Plus, the connection of Adidas and hip-hop was already so firmly in place.

All this working together, I played up another point that museums love as well: Collectors. Few would probably argue against the hypothesis that, to an extent, hip-hop and street basketball play a major roll in forging a generation of sneaker collectors. Mentioning the proliferation and steady growth of periodical and web literature catering to collectors, as well as a few books, I hoped to hammer down the point that a ready made audience existed for museum interpretation of the shoe. It seemed supremely appropriate for the popular culture galleries at NMAH, reflecting clearly the aesthetic of the era, Adidas corporate history, and allowing entry into a longer trend of signature footwear.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t win.

I did, however, continue to think a lot about signature shoes. Growing into sneaker culture during an era heavy with athlete driven models, I remember fondly Grant Hill’s time with Fila and the battles waged on the tennis court between several members of the Nike family. You were not a star unless you had a shoe, and most importantly, people wanted to wear those shoes.

In 1992 I was swayed by Reebok’s ill fated Dan vs. Dan campaign, the first time in my memory personalities were really pushed to sell a non-signature model. I regard this as interesting because I think it connects to trends in current iterations of the signature shoe.

During countless hours of college and NBA basketball this past holiday season, my interest in the signature shoe was reinvigorated by Nike’s new House of Hoops commercial. It states something to the effect of people wanting to wear an athlete’s foot on theirs. Get a taste of the glory, and not just live vicariously, but FEEL as well what the athletes have (at least technology wise). The idea of the commercial is great, but seems a few years out of date.

The cache granted athletes in the market has certainly dwindled (at least in traditional sports, as signature models for skate seem vibrant still), and attention granted to a new celebrity endorser passes with little enthusiasm. However, I have begun to consider shop model shoes in the same vain that I view athlete pro models. They are designed to appeal because of connection to personalities, spaces and places, and linked to the elusive notion of cool. Athletics is about performance more than ever, but off the field cool, and the connection to cool sells as well as ever. Linking back to Dan and Dan, the shop signature shoes are simply stamps on existing general models, just kicked up and (to use the most dreaded word in our common vocabulary) hyped up.

When done most effectively, these shoes can tell a story just as broad and exciting as the Mutombo can. Huf’s Air Trainer 1 designed by Benny Gold, in my view, is an exceptional articulation of place and space. From the theme to the materials, it is easily read in the material culture/art history vein, and smoothly fits into a discussion current marketing trends.

To be honest, a great number of the many boutique designed shoes are useful as a starting point in a material culture analysis of contemporary trends. Naming some over others is a tad unfair, and my picks for those that are good, better or best are no more than examples of my subjective taste. What I really want to impart is my firm belief that these types of collaborations are significant in the overall history of the signature shoe. They have breathed a breath of life into catalog models and resuscitated interest in sneakers. They are what the kids are driven by, and if they are not buying them, they are buying things that are in essence cheap imitations. The beauty of this? Whereas I might have been called out for wearing the mid-price model based on a popular signature shoe, some kids will be lauded for their colorful GR dunk that bares passing resemblance to the UNDFTD clerks pack.

Cheaper. Easier. Cooler. Shop signature shoes are a great boon to the industry. They also privilege the perceived expert in a way unseen in traditional signature shoes. Sure, some nerds know Tinker Hatfield designed the Air Trainer 1, and give a nod of respect to HUF for using that canvas. But, for the most part, the “connoisseur” supersedes the true designer and is lauded for the extreme coolness of their color schemes.

Occasionally this backfires. The High Hair dunk, for example, was a brilliant concept that was lost for, perhaps, being too subtle aesthetically. The shoe fit an idea, captured regional identity, and was playful in articulation. Perhaps lacking a link to a major personality or shop killed off the potential of mega hype. As with sports stars, not all cool guy leaders are appreciated.

In total, these releases indicate the conflation of consumerism and culture that calls into question authentic interest and participation. Steven Vogel’s recent interview with Ian MacKaye relays this point very nicely, especially in regards to NIKE SB. Streetculture exists in a rare balancing act between, what I will call here the vernacular, and the corporate iteration. There is a good amount of leverage generated for the key players, enough to not completely water down the end product, but often enough those who have INFLUENCED the players are thrown unwillingly into the fray. Sadly, this leads to a lot of pretending.

Part of the issue remains with the over reliance on nostalgia to push numbers.

I find myself wondering how a shift back to athlete driven sneaker culture is possible. Not in the sense of Nike SB, for only the P. Rod shoe actually pushes sneakers toward newness, but outside of sports that still hold that cache of difference and cool (and, yeah, cool is overused in the last few pages). Adidas’ plan for Gilbert seemed to fuse the limited and superstar molds that independently work to sell sneakers. Nike has tried with Lebron, and to be honest, who can truly say that those limited editions were either exciting, or genuinely generated interest. (Let’s face it; they are a product of the disgusting cult of sole collector magazine).

Thankfully, there are several footwear companies emerging that go back to basics. Thrill with material choice, and avoid the problematic world of collaborations and signature models altogether. They won’t ever rule the sneaker world, for signature and sponsored products will likely always be with us, but they provide something for those of us wanting to cut through the crap, and will grow into a historic foil for the signature shoe for later generations of interested consumers/scholars.

This year I was asked to contribute to one really great year end review, and to write blurbs for another. I consider the former a great honor (thank you, Steven), and the latter a bit of a pain in the ass. Given that my views are available elsewhere and more so that my lists are completely off base, it seems appropriate to finish the year with a post about something so often avoided in year end reviews, the best (or really, my favorite) exhibition. 

2007 was a pretty good year for me and exhibitions. Without second thought I would say that in this calendar year I visited a wider variety of exhibitions than in any other, in more cities and in more diverse settings. Some were curated by friends, others by foes. Some displayed the work of new acquaintances, others the craft of dead cabinet makers. It was a year in which breadth of voice was privileged, and collaboration between the museum world and the practitioner expert delightfully achieved.

On that note, my favorite exhibition of the year came in the form of the Imperial War Museum’s (LONDON) Camouflage instillation. When launched, the exhibit received considerable attention from the streetwear blogs, in most part due to the association with the good people at Maharishi. I thought this brilliant – expand audiences, bring in intelligent collaborators and push the boundaries of the museum a little.

Despite my initial excitement, I was wary of what I might find. Fearful that the praise might be unjustified, and that the sum of its parts would come off as a lame attempt at cool. Turns out my fears were unwarranted.

The exhibition played out in two clear parts. First, there was a concise and complete history of camouflage in military use from World War One, and second, an exploration of camouflage in contemporary fashion. From my perspective, the opening section was the stronger. The history was full and the sources varied, and the presented objects were so engaging. From discussion of the artistic influences of early military camouflage, both naturalist painters and cubism, to the earliest vogues in fashion (popular camouflage parties) there was so much to discover and a wealth of connections to make and dissect.

Things either forgotten or simply unknown clicked. Disruptive camouflage on ships, for example, made such an amazing visual statement, and the paintings and photographs depicting them worked as both documentary artifact and art object. The duality of everything presented made the experience so memorable, as each and every selected article shared historical value and aesthetic sensibility. And it wasn’t just history, art and fashion; there was some science thrown in too, and also a dash of humor.

The Imperial War Museum, point blank, does visitor interactive correctly. Through video and reproduction pamphlets, the curators offered examples of how the general public engaged with camouflage. Protecting homes, protecting bomb shelters, and disguising tanks; after this portion of the exhibition I felt as if I could do it all. There was also an opportunity to test my understanding and knowledge of the history, bang on a touch screen, and celebrate being smarter than my brother.

Highlighting the exhibition was a long case displaying a wealth of camouflage from a range of inter-national military units. The shapes, colors, patterns and even cuts of the clothing were astonishing. Even amidst such a bounty of terrific objects, the uniforms shone. Of course they did. That’s why we were there! Still, I was refreshed that the uniforms not only exercised star power, but as the central objects they were treated as such. Brilliantly lit, simply explained and, in the flow of the instillation, a perfect segue to the more strictly driven fashion portion.

Given the excellence of the first half of the exhibition, I must admit to being a tad let down by the fashion element. The scholarship was certainly weaker, though the points solid and well articulated. Perhaps I was upset by the reliance on the contemporary. Or, it might have been a result of having just literally been at the DPMHI store two hours prior. I felt the drop off in historical connections, but not in visual impact, which was maintained throughout.

Despite my downplaying of the final section, what should be applauded is the contrast of dense history to clean celebration of aesthetics. I cannot recall another exhibition that so simply and easily appealed to a multitude of learning styles. It offered so much, so quickly, to so many. I have complaints about every exhibition I attend. Its in my nature, I’ve worked in the field; I scrutinize everything from hanging hardware to the material labels are printed on. And, yet at the Camouflage show, I could only complain about the limited text in a portion that was so stunning I really forgot about reading altogether.

I’ve done the work no justice. It was perfect balance of history, art, science, sociology, and that cantankerous beast we call fashion. It set a new standard, and I am pretty sure I will spend the rest of my life trying to match it in my own work.  

I am always interested in how pedagogy differs from discipline to discipline. An essay dealing with arts education by Alison Armstrong, struck me. “Visual Literacy: Humanities and the Fine Arts Curriculum” (which you can read here if you please http://www.nccsc.net/2007/8/15/visual-literacy) emphasizes the importance of humanities training in arts education. Education in literature, poetry and history assist in better visualizing thoughts and theories. Armstrong’s ideas (and those that buttress them) are completely valid. There is danger in over specialization! Not only can it be boring, but creativity too can be stifled.

Armstrong mentions artists in history who are accomplished writers and musicians, but does not discuss music as an integral part to of visual art education. If the literary can expand and push thought, so too should music. The aesthetics of streetwear are so dependent on musical culture (rather than music in the strict sense), that exploring the musical connection appears, at the surface, fruitful.

I saw Nigo DJ for the Teriyaki Boys a few months back. Now, to be certain, Nigo competently covers the decks without displaying any real musical genius. However, his musical forays are indicative of the cross pollination of streetwear and several forms of music (often more accomplished than Mr. Number Two). Theoretically, both the DJ and streetwear designer share similarity in cobbling together bits and pieces of pre-existing material to formulate a new sound, aesthetic and cultural product (and BAPE is famous for liberally “remixing”). But, this is not new to either exercise. Ginsburg and Burroughs played with cut ups well before this, happily experimenting while holed up in a cheap Parisian hotel. Here the literary and aural come together, as the rhythm of the spoken words changes with the reforming of each given work. With streetwear, the music and the visual product remain separate, despite obvious influence and suggestions of compatibility. There are, of course, references to music in much design, but it is a visual created to compliment rather than stem from the sounds.    

Music has, and does, influence art (no groundbreaking thought here). An exhibition of Romare Bearden’s collages at the National Gallery was wonderfully narrated (via audio tour) by Winton Marsalis. This connection, between collage and jazz, simply and clearly relayed by one of jazz music’s great orators hammered down a simple point — artists of different mediums are often attempting to use their chosen vocabulary to explore the same ideas. The joy of the audio tour came in Marsalis reverence for Bearden’s work, and sense of shared agenda.  With jazz and painting connections to emotive phrasing can be challenging for people (like myself) who are not cognizant of the nuances in each.

Streetwear, and much of music’s complimentary visual, avoids this problem all together. Rock (and its many derivations) and rap being the two keystone musical genres informing street culture as it stands, allow for literal to visual interpretation. And so, we get lots of lyric inspired graphic, often text based. This has set the standard. My essential question here is: can sound really begin to push and influence the visual?

I’ve been thinking for some time about this, and reached no real conclusion. Perhaps it is fruitless. There are obvious roadblocks too. For one, the idea of literacy as it applies to non-letter based arts. In some respects, it is so much easier to understand visual arts than to understand (really understand) music. Literary, visual and aural arts all intertwine in fascinating ways, and require separate vocabularies for discussion and dissection. The Annales School, founded by Febvre and Block, championed new studies of history focused on everyday lives. Sound was an important aspect. For example, in my work, I have pondered how electricity changed the environment of the tattoo shop in the late 20^th century. Essentially, what people heard, and what people hear, is as important to a full examination of life as what they tasted, felt, heard, read and saw.

Since a vague sense of history (read nostalgia) seems so important in current design, where does that sense of sound history fit in? Above, I identify what we may call the precedents for musical inspiration in visual street culture. Armstrong’s notion of the danger of specialization does not apply as concretely to street culture as it does to arts in the academy. People have broad and diverse interests. They do not, however, often articulate those interests in broad view. The danger comes in narrow thinking rather than narrowly focused efforts. It seems that the wide lens approach of the Annales School could be equally beneficial to design (in the streetwear sense), as it was to pushing history back to the concerns of everyday life.

Let me now attempt to round back to the impetus for this discussion — Visual literacy and humanities education. There are many courses offered in music, and in my experience they rank quite low on the priority of many students. The visual and the literary are privileged, and pop music, especially, has limited appeal to most academics. In reverse, pop music often replaces the literary in street culture. Recognizing that, more creative interaction between sight and sound seems very possible. Promoting and exploring the wonderful dialogue that already exists between music and streetwear beyond the base impact might just be an avenue for creating new cultural forms that some people are starved for. 

 

 

Some of you know it. To those, you know what I’m talking about when it comes to this record.

But I’ll assume most of you haven’t heard it. That’s fine of course as you all will be quickly trolling What!, iTunes, or YouTube (in that order) to steal download and accept its dominance for the year.

“All My Friends” is a song of positivity; one about moving forward while recognizing how much of your life has been wasting away. All the while, you accept this and take none of it back. What is done is done; you can only move forward.

For me, “All My Friends” was a life line and a wake-up. First time I really gave a shit about the song was in May, while trying to understand how certain components of my life could be crumbling while others were moving forward. “All My Friends” like all prominent tracks in my life served to bring me back to reality. Big ass slap in the face to fuck on.

Thats why I give a shit about music. The impact of the sound to make me care a little more than I did before.

Over the last year, the obsessive part of me needed to ensure that everyone around me was made aware of “All My Friends.” It is not very often that I find any impulse to share music this personal with people, if not simply for the expected reaction of most. Half the time, people will smile with blank response; shaking their heads in a manner that only be described as “accepting.”

Being “accepting” of music by my definition is comparable to saying “Who Gives a Shit.” It is a problem for me. I give people the benefit of the doubt always. As much as I look for that glimmer in the eye of a first time listener to actually get it, click with it, I’ve become more aware that for most, listening to music is background – something that is kept running on loop in order to bring repetitive tempo to their work day or their lives.

People happily “accept” what is being passed to them by terrestrial radio. Accepting to listen to what they play. Boring familiarity. God Bless the hip-hop mixtape for at least trying to bring some freshness to their listeners.

Categorically, rock and crossover rock, has been dying a slow death on commercial radio to classic hits and the familiarity classic hits bring. Classics tend to be defined as any music older than a decade that broke Top 20 radio charts. Classic crossover is so in demand that over the course of the last 5 years it has re-formulated radio formatting, bring us the concept of Jack FM. Wiki that shit for more information.

All the while that radio’s hand is being forced to play crossover classics, a progressive new sounds are being shuffled in and out of Myspace players online. Music is clearly thriving in this venue but I’m not arguing if new music is being heard by that generation. They clearly have the time and the energy to engage themselves to new shit online. What I’m looking to tackle is the everyday, music listener thats my age – the majority of the listening world – this is the consumer that does not give a shit.

Its impossible to not see the similarities between “accepted music” and those trying to re-pawn off bad 80′s fashion to an (assumed) unintelligent consumer base.

Like commercial fashion, people tend to gravitate to the familiar. It is no wonder why everything on the radio basically has the same re-worked beat. Make your own Top 10 list for the year. I doubt most people can even come up with 5 but if they do, they probably draw themselves back to the familiar. Very rarely does some new sound ever surface to rotation on terrestrial radio. Worse off if it does make impact, the music industry will adapt like fruit flies and swarm every last dollar into sucking what they can from it. We’re then back to where we started. Familiarity.

So what the fuck stopped people from caring about music? When did the romance in new music die? Forget blaming MTV and terrestrial radio.

In trying to understand the “who gives a shit” phenomenon with music, you have to try to find a time; a moment in life of people when music does not become important. Most will argue that music remains an important component in life while the discovery and romance dies. Do we blame life in general for forcing us to re-prioritize music or does the mind stop being curious; becoming content with what it knows? That whole familiarity argument again.

How can this be changed? Not fucking easily it would seem. The self destruction of the music industry itself is not helping the cause at all. Heavy rotation does nothing to combat this. In fact heavy rotation looks to actually worsen the average music loving individual from being able to expand to further unfamiliar sound.

My bet is that if you actually gave listeners pure variety on the radio that they would become more honest listeners. People would be more adept to understanding what they like and dislike. Today, they only like and dislike a handful of tracks.

Think of street fashion for instance. Unlike terrestrial radio, we have ridiculous numbers of blog entries blinding our screens with heaps of cotton options. It’s a full on slug-fest as designers and brands battle out to grab the short attention of a handful of consumers. It may all look the same but it is not heavy rotation. The option to pick and choose what you like and dislike is right there in front of you. As repetitive and re-purposed as product is on hype blogs, the viewer is at least able today to recognize familiarity and decide what choices they will make when purchasing.

Terrestrial radio and the music industry as a whole simple does not offer this option to the listener… unless the listener gives a shit – enough to hunt down and find something fresh. Radio looks like a terribly lost cause in the United States. College radio, the traditional vehicle for music discovery seems to remain that last vestige of hope for the unassuming.

There is an energy in caring about anything that is not materialistic. Music cannot be worn as a sign of prestige, but it can impact a single individual and bring them together in ways that wearing BBC hoodies cannot. When you give a shit for even just a moment, you may be able to see that there is more to it than you first heard. You may actually care a little.

Here’s a list of what I gave a shit about in 2007.

A Place To Bury Strangers A Place To Bury Strangers 2007
Aesop Rock None Shall Pass 2007
AIR Pocket Symphony 2007
Apparat Walls 2007
Arcade Fire Neon Bible 2007
Arctic Monkeys Favorite Worst Nightmare 2007
Art Brut It’s A Bit Complicated 2007
Babyshambles Shotters Nation 2007
Band of Horses Cease to Begin 2007
Battles Mirrored 2007
Beirut The Flying Club Cup 2007
Black Kids Wizard of Ahhhs [Demo] 2007
Bloc Party A Weekend In The City 2007
Broken Social Scene Kevin Drew’s Spirit if … 2007
Bruce Springsteen Magic 2007
Burial Untrue 2007
Clientele God Save The Clientele 2007
Daft Punk Live at Vegoose 2007
Deerhunter Cryptograms 2007
Deerhunter Fluorescent Grey EP 2007
DJ Hell Live at Watergate Berlin Apr 20, 2007
El-P I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead 2007
Feist The Reminder 2007
Heartthrob Piknic Electronic Mutek June 3 2007
James Murphy & Pat Mahoney Fabriclive 36 2007
Jay-Z American Gangster 2007
Jens Lekman Night Falls Over Kortedala 2007
Kanye West Graduation 2007
Laurent Garnier Live at The End London 2007
LCD Soundsystem 45:33 2007
LCD Soundsystem All My Friends (Single) 2007
LCD Soundsystem Sound Of Silver 2007
M.I.A. Kala 2007
Marco Carola Fabric 31 zzz 2007
Maximo Park Our Earthly Pleasures 2007
of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? 2007
Pan-Pot Pan-O-Rama Album Release Show 2007
Panda Bear Person Pitch 2007
Pela Anytown Graffiti 2007
Radiohead In Rainbows 2007
Rilo Kiley Under The Blacklight 2007
Rob Heppler, Jeff Carvalho, Frank Rivera WeeklyDrop 2007
Spoon GA GA GA GA GA 2007
Stones Throw Stones Throw Podcast 2007
The Field From Here We Go Sublime 2007
The National Boxer 2007
The Ponys Turn the Lights Out 2007
Viva Viva Viva Viva Demo 2007 2007
Whitechapel True Believer 2007
Wighnomy Brothers Live at Piknic Electronic Mutek June 3 2007

One conversation that has been consistent in the past week is the idea that one segment of street is slowly but surly heading towards what could conceivably be described as a bubble.

I’ll discuss the bubble from the point of view of consumer transitions. Not in terms of precursor to depression, I want to make that clear.

Deardorff’s Glossary of International Economics defines a bubble as “A rise in the price of an asset based not on the current or prospective income that it provides but solely on expectations by market participants that the price will rise in the future. When those expectations cease, the bubble bursts and the price falls rapidly.”

Let’s avoid the idea of ‘thought income’ and look more closely at the idea that the market participants being the “assumers” in the model.

The assumers (say ‘hype crowds,’ not to be confused with deciders) are using the information sources at their disposal to make assumptions and (maybe) expectations towards what direction the market will take. In modeling this towards the fashion of street we can assume the relevant release dates, sales cycles, celebrity placement, and overall output of designers and brands to be the variables in making said expectations.

But what the fuck happens, “When those expectations cease…” as mentioned in Deadorff’s definition. More to the point, has the printed matter game become so thick with options that the overall expectation — the expected output by labels and brands as a whole — is now showing less impulse buys by their very customers than in the past?

In other words, is the “hype” game slowing down in conversion rate?

Rumblings throughout the industry are beginning to point in this direction. More and more the story is that payments are coming late, short and that storefronts domestically are looking to liquidate wares while more product lays stagnant on shelves.  The cause and affect of this expected change can be seen in terms and conditions of many outlets today;  shorter shelf life before discount, increased pressure to allow for sales, and even returns.

Looking at it from the other direction, has the expectation by brands/labels that their consumer is an impulse shopper looking to gobble up each and every last piece of ware being thrown at them changed?

Is the hype crowd today able to siphon out the shit from the good? This is clearly a two way conversation that tends to bore into exactly what a brand will put to the market and even the idea that the street fashion consumers today are becoming more individual than on demand crowd responders.

I used to fear that the idea of being an individual was slowly being lost to the internet hype culture. Peter once mentioned to me how he believed that the culture was “overlapping and folding on itself before it even has time to cook” which didn’t allow the hype crowd enough time to purchase and convert before the next “new thing” slammed onto their screens.

Peter certainly was valid in saying this, expected even. Hype crowds are being fed so much product with an incredibly short life cycle that even they MUST be exhausted from it all. At some point it, the general crowd will slow down their pace of purchase and to this idea, kids are not being sold on what they may have been sold just three years ago.

Today’s hype crowd culture was not dumb. They never were. They simply bought into the excitement of a new culture, a new scene, that made it ok to not buy into the mall world (though many of the brands of street are readily available in these outlets today i.e., brands need to get paid). The expectation of the hype crowd did not need to be factored into what brands and lines offered. The formula was pretty clear: they would buy anything. Was the crowd simply green with the attraction of product, even those formulated to be limited”*?

Perhaps they felt some community spirit to being part of a sub-culture that spoke to them. Perhaps today they feel compelled and attracted to brand/lines that are growing up with them, instead of the lines that remain stagnant to two year old rehashed ideas.

Today, the hype crowd is not green. They know the drill and have more time to digest (in quick spurts) what enters the market.  Their decision making will slowly transform back from the crowd to the individual.

And while they are impacted with a new form of the new, another core of new wave of hype kids will form their own crowds and reactions to the market.

The impact of the old and new crowds is surly realized by brands and designers who ready new seasons. The intended outcome, as argued by Nick many times over, is will a brand grow with their consumers or will it remain in line with a new generation of kids who want to be part of the next wave of hype crowds.

The expectation, in general terms, revolves around where a brand will remain positioned.

We all know the brands do it for the love, but the reality and the intention should be to put product on the market that people will buy to allow for growth in one form or another. The new wave will learn from the previous class of alumni and will hopefully beg for more than what was thrown to their former classmates.

Those that do not cater to the former or the present will hit the bubble. It is more than wakeup time for all. The glory days are shifting towards necessary change. The new wave will be here soon and I’m betting they have learned a thing or two.

* People always talk about limited and the idea of short run product that can only be consumed by an elite few. But what happens to the idea of limited product when the amount of limited offerings as a sum is as large as the non limited runs made available? Count the posts on the hype sites. You’ll more likely find less “non limited” press announcements than not. We’ll discuss this further sometime.