“There is no algorithm to define cool, you just know it when you see it.” This is the quote that set the cogs in motion for R+I Creative’s latest short series, “The Pursuit of (Cool).” R+I, a creative label specializing in video content, branding and “big ideas,” has attempted to define what is cool in a series of night trips through the streets of New York for their latest work, “The Pursuit of (Cool).” The films, as R+I puts it are “just about hedonism, sharing and meeting cool people with stories,” essentially exploring individual perceptions of “cool” and the influencers who have shaped these views. In the most recent installment, Coltrane Curtis, MTV personality, fashion critic, and managing partner at Team Epiphany, shares his thoughts on the jazz musicians who have impacted his own sense of fashion and style. In this episode, Curtis elucidates on the “acceptable elegance” of jazz artists like Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis and Mos Def. He expresses that, beyond the music, these jazz musicians have shaped his fashion modality, from Ellington’s distinctive off-white denim jacket (the popularization of which many falsely credit to James Bond), to Marsalis’
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respectable arrogance, and the “supafly” Mos Def. Cool. 183 wetheurban